Hi, I'm Nicholeen Peck and I teach all about parenting, good communication and family
relationships and strengthening the family all through that lens of the principle self-government.
In this video I'm going to be talking about why most parenting advice is wrong.
In this video I'm going to be talking about parenting advice and how to know when parenting
advice is wrong and also going to be telling you some good parenting advice that you can take and I
can promise will work. When I became a parent, I got a lot of advice and I think many people hand out
advice freely about parenting. The thing is is not all of it is sound. I remember one person telling
me that I should allow a child to scream for x amount of time. Another person telling me to only
feed them this much time, another person telling me to you know pick my battles about certain things
and that this one particular issue that I was talking about was not a big issue when actually
I felt like it was kind of a moral issue and so I thought well that doesn't sit right, that
doesn't sit right, that doesn't sit right and then occasionally, I would get some nuggets of wisdom
from a friend of mine who would say oh, you're worried about not getting everything on your list
done. Well you need to make a different list. You need to make a list of things you actually will
do in the day, not just all the things you hoped to do and I thought that's true, that's a
true thing. I like that advice. Why am I not writing hold the baby, hold the baby, feed the children you
know the stuff I for sure I'm going to do every single day? Why am I instead writing everything
about laundry and cleaning when there's so many other things that are much more important to me?
She taught me about priorities in her one little piece of advice. So there's been good advice,
there's been bad advice and what I have found is that a lot of parenting advice is actually really
unreliable. It's not sound and the reason why is because much of it is not principled. Okay so let's
understand why a person gives parenting advice. So someone is having a struggle, they voice their
struggle whether it's on social media or in person or something and there's another person who's like
oh, well I've already thought about this before and and this is the excuse i came up with for myself
or this was my coping mechanism that i came up with myself. I'll just take a picture,
it'll be fine you know don't worry about it, just laugh it off but in reality something inside, a
really principled person says wait a second though, I'm the parent, I'm supposed to handle
it, not just take a picture and post it online. I've got to like actually do some parenting.
You know so people say things sometimes in jest, maybe they're trying to be funny, maybe they're
trying to lighten the mood, maybe they feel like that parent is taking something too seriously
and so they want to help them you know just take a step back and not get so intense
about a situation but they oftentimes will lead them off track and that parent then feels like
something else now is falling apart because now they've stopped investing as deeply in the
child or something, which is not a good idea. Advice comes because a person has good intentions
but that doesn't mean that it's true and sound advice so that means you have to have a kind
of a discernment to know what advice is good and what advice is bad. Let's talk about a few pieces
of parenting advice that I already know are bad. Parenting advice differs depending on which age
child you're talking about. When a child is young, a parent can often hear advice like this.
Oh they'll never know the difference, they don't know if that's bad or good you know you
could watch whatever you want or they can't get addicted yet. They can't be spoiled yet or
whatever it happens to be and actually they can be spoiled, they can get addicted, they can recognize
something is wrong with a movie or some piece of content that's going on in family life.
They know. They may not be able to put all the words to it but something doesn't feel right.
Maybe a piece of advice for a young child might be something like well you got to let them just play
a little bit and explore and don't take things so personally, don't be so uptight about stuff and
so then the parent might be allowing a child to scale a stack of bookcases which is very dangerous,
especially if it's somebody else's house and you don't even know how the shelves are secured. I have
had people come to my homes with their toddlers and let their toddlers climb all over my house,
all over the furniture, everything. Showing total disrespect but also like not safe and they
will look at their toddler and go and act like this is no big deal. It's just how they are, you
can't correct anything when they're that age. Many people think you can't correct problems when a
child is young. This is a super common perception to have that if their vocabulary isn't robust
enough, that you actually cannot talk to them about anything that you have to just handle it
and when a child is older. Let's say they're in their teen years or even just kind of growing
up a little bit older, maybe they're 10 or 11, parents get the idea oh if I haven't taught it
already. It might be too late and some parents will say well you know you can't fix everything. I mean
sometimes they're just gonna do whatever it is and I mean you just kind of have to let them do
it at that point because you know they're already old enough that they're not gonna listen to you.
Those types of bits of advice are just wrong, they're not even true at all. For years I did
treatment foster care and people brought troubled teens ages 12 to 18 to my home to stay and you
know what? We help them have behavior changes, heart changes, improve relationships, all kinds of things.
Even the BBC in 2009 made a documentary of our family called The World's Strictest Parents where
there were two 17 year olds brought to our home to stay for eight days and after two days of tantrums
and us being firm and doing the teaching that we needed to, they actually totally changed by the
end of the program they were crying and begging not to leave our home. If someone were to tell me
oh you can't change them, they've had too much of a history, they've got too much baggage, they have too
much anxiety, they have too much- I would say don't give me those excuses. I'm going to help the child.
So we need to focus on what we know is true. Super important when we're talking about advice
that we're going to be giving or getting from other people. We're going to talk about what makes
good advice, good parenting advice that is and I'm going to give you some of my best parenting advice
but before we do that, click that subscribe button. There are a lot of videos on this channel that
talk about self-government, parenting, creating a good relationship with your family members,
you're not going to want to miss those. Click subscribe now. So what makes good parenting advice?
It's not just the intention or the heart of the person giving it because we've already seen
that that can actually be really problematic. What makes good parenting advice is actually principle.
So, many people do not follow what's principle and what's not but if you can identify a principle
then oftentimes you can identify good advice. Your principled parenting advice is oftentimes going to
lead you to setting better priorities for yourself as well. So priorities, principles. These are things
that end up leading to good parenting advice. So what is a principle? So there's a principle
of roles. Okay each person has a role in the family. So what is a mother? Okay, the principle of
mother and her role, she nurtures, that's what mother does from the time the baby is in her belly,
she nurtures that baby and that child. No matter what, she can't stop. It's part of who she is so it
is definitely a principal part of her. It is her role. So that is something that is going to lead
to a truth. If somebody helps you better nurture your child instead of just make excuses because
usually the bad parenting advice is the stuff that gives you an excuse, a scapegoat that makes you be
lazy and not do your role. But the good parenting advice is the kind that is going to lift you up in
who you are, it's going to empower you to do more and to give you something that you need to do your
role better. So the role of the child, the role of the parent, these are principles that we can use
to help us as we're discerning what advice is good or bad for us to follow. Other principles
are principles of say obedience. Obedience if you look the word up can only be a thing if a person
actually already knows the law first. So, you can't be obedient to a law that you don't know exists. So,
obedience is a principle which means that action is based upon a law that's understood. So, a person
understands cause and effect and then they can be obedient. Anything else if they haven't been taught
the law ahead of time is actually just choices and either they bugged you or you liked them
and it's not real disobedience. So, if you're going to try to help your child learn obedience then
that means you have to pre-teach them ahead of time all the things that they need, that's
a principle. The principle of obedience. There are many principles, principles of good communication,
principles of calmness, principles for how to drop a subject, principles for how to be understood.
These are all principles and if anyone gives you information for how to better live these
principles then you're probably going to be getting some good parenting advice. So, what
is the difference between a principle and just you know a rule that you have for yourself? Maybe
don't sweat the small stuff is a rule that you have for yourself. Is there a principle in there
anywhere because lots of times rules are based upon principles. So let's talk about principles.
Principles are broad. They are overarching where rules can change or sometimes they have to change
depending upon circumstances. Principles are things that are eternal. Okay they last forever so not
just in that one circumstance where rules might change all the time. I mean think of how often
laws change just based upon people's preferences. It happens like every day way too often in my mind.
When we find a principle that we want to live by, it can be super empowering. Now, I want to share
with you some good advice that I could give you that I know is based upon principle which will
hopefully help you now I don't know what you're dealing with butIi do know some principles that
can help every single family. My main principle in my home culture that I have used to parent
my children as well as all the foster children that have ever come to my home is the principle
of self-government. Self-government is being able to determine the cause and effect of any given
situation and possessing a knowledge of your own behavior. A person is capable of doing that
a person should be able to do that and it leads to freedom, that's another thing. When a person follows
principle, it should always lead to more choice and more freedom. Rules are meant to restrict
someone and oftentimes takes away the choice of a person but when a person has self-government,
that means they are controlling their own behavior. They are learning how to analyze themselves and to
make plans for themselves, that's a principle that they can live for more freedom and success in life
which is why I would want them to learn that. In order to live the principle of self-government,
a person has to have a structure. So in our family, we use skills as a structure that
we follow and all of the skills that we use are actually based upon principles. So
what is the skill following instructions based upon? So, a person if they honor the roles in
their family should follow instructions from the authority, which is the parent.
When parental authority is honored, roles are honored so we're living by principle. When the
parent chooses calmness which is another principle and they are correcting or teaching their child
with love and calmness, then they are parenting by principle and honoring the child's role as a
learner and their role as a nurturer and a teacher of their children. So, any advice that would point
a person in those directions where they're going to be calmer with their children, they're going to
teach them more things, increase their learning and the children will learn to accept that teaching,
those are all going to be good pieces of parenting advice. Very, very different from manipulative
tactics that so many people try to tell when they are giving their bad parenting advice. When a
person follows principle, they follow honesty which means that we're not going to be manipulating our
children. That means that we have to have established ahead of time how we will correct
the problems with our children. This is part of the law that we set up. So, we set up what
our negative consequences would be our positive consequences, what the skills that we are going to
use are going to sound like. I'm talking about the exact words. The children can know the exact words
so that they can then better hold themselves accountable when those corrections happen
because here's another thing, a principle. A person has to accept their consequences in order to learn
self-government, that's one of the four basic skills that I teach children and that is how to
accept a consequence. It's a six step process. So, if everything is laid out ahead of time, a person then
knows that they have the responsibility to take ownership over their thought,
their emotions, their behavior and they can better communicate with everyone because everyone has the
same language to follow. Predictability is a great thing that leads to decreasing anxiety and if you
are principled then the predictability goes up, the anxiety goes down. Good parenting advice is hard to
find and i would like to beef up these little bits of parenting advice that I've just given you now
by giving you access to a full class. On this channel, I created a class called the not so
known secret for parenting success and in that class, you will find key skills and principles
that you can use to help you and your children unite together and have changes of heart. So,
click on the link to the not so known secret for parenting success now and I'll see you there.