What is the proper role of parents and children? That is a really important topic. I'm Nicholeen
Peck and I teach all about parenting, family relationships, and communication
all through the lens of self-government. And in this video, we're going to be talking about roles.
In this video, I'm going to be talking about why roles are important. And what happens when roles
are not understood within a family and what we can do about it to make sure that we have functional
families instead of dysfunctional ones. That's right. A family who does not observe proper roles
oftentimes experiences dysfunction. So, a functional family is when everyone understands
their roles. And they live according to them. Now, some people are very turned off by the word roles
just in general. Please don't allow yourself to be. Roles are a real thing. We have roles
at the office. We have roles in our community, in our countries, in our churches. We have roles
everywhere. In our friendships. I think people have used roles in a negative light because of
some of their maybe, advocacy or activism or whatever. And it has made people hate roles
altogether. Especially related to things in a family. I'm not talking about responsibilities.
Roles and responsibilities are 2 different things. So, I can have the role of mother. But
I could also have the responsibility to make dinner. But my husband could have the role of
father and have the responsibility to make dinner. So, anyone can make dinner. Anyone can mow a lawn
or take out a garbage. Or go to an office. Those are just responsibilities that we take on. Roles
are deeper than that. They're much more ingrained in who we are. In fact, they're oftentimes
self-evident. For instance, I'm a girl. What does it mean to be a girl, to be a woman? Did you know
that I won't find satisfaction within myself unless I really acknowledge that truth and say,
"what does it mean to live that role the very best that I can be? What does it mean to be a powerful
woman nowadays and to make sure that that's clear?" Also, something that's self-evident,
I'm married. So, I'm a wife. What does that mean? What is the role of wife? Or another self-evident
thing, I have children. That means I am mother. So, what does it mean to be mother? What is the
role of mother? We have to understand these things about ourselves. Otherwise, we are never happy. In
fact, people are often looking at other people's roles and wishing that they were someone else.
But guess what? No matter how much you wish, you don't get to have somebody else's role
really. Your true self-evident roles don't ever go away. If you have children, you are a parent,
that's it. So, let's talk about some of these roles and how they lead to proper function.
Before we get into what you can do to create better roles in your family and how some of these
roles and some homes are going off track, click that subscribe button. There are so many great
videos on this channel that you are not going to want to miss. And if you subscribe, you'll
have a greater chance of seeing them. It will also help us get other people to this channel who need
to see this type of video too. I've been teaching parenting for a lot of years. In fact, many years
ago, I started taking in treatment foster children when I was just a young mom and had two little
toddlers of my own. When I took in those treatment foster children, what happened was, I recognized
that they didn't fully understand roles in the family. And I had to make sure that was very clear
for them. I was going to be their mother. Even though they had another mother, they needed to see
me as an authority figure. And I had to make sure that that was clear for them. They also needed to
know what it meant to be a child as well. So, I realized after a while when we explained this that
this was new information. I thought, "Well, every family that's functioning probably understands
this." So, when people started asking me to write books after we started in a BBC documentary
called the World's Strictest Parents, I thought that roles was just understood in society.
Boy, was I surprised!
I wrote my first book called Parenting A House United. And when I released that book,
people started asking me questions. And I said, "Oh! Well, that's a roles' issue."
And I thought, "Oh, no! I thought everyone understood roles. I guess I really was more
different than other people than I thought I was." So, I ended up writing another book called Roles:
The Secret to Family, Business, and Social Success. So that I could help people see through
the eyes of a family in this case study type story what roles really did for their family. How it can
help people take on more responsibilities and respect each other greater. Not leading to more
separation. I think many people think when you think about roles, you're putting people in boxes
and then you're isolating them from each other. And that's not true. In fact, when you understand
roles, it should create more unity. So, anyway, the second version, the second edition of my book
Parenting A House United, I definitely added some more stuff on roles there so people would
not have those types of questions and confusions like they did when the first edition came out. So,
what is the role of mother? You could go into great detail there. If you asked a child,
your child might say, "Well, she's a nurturer or she cares for us. She's always there for us.
She teaches us stuff. She helps us with things." Those are all things called nurturing. Mother does
do nurturing. Doesn't matter if mom goes to the office or mom's home all day or whatever she does.
Mom is a nurturer. It's in her heart. There's just something about her connection to the child that
will always be a nurturing connection. That's what she wants more than anything else is to
raise them up good to teach them. So, she is a teacher. This is a valuable part of mother.
Mother teaches the children many things. She points them in the direction
of where they need to go as they're growing up especially when they are younger children.
Mother is the heart and hearthstone of the family. So, many people's emotions and their goals are
tied to mother and the energy that she carries in the home. So, this is another thing mother
needs to remember. If mother's stressing out, if mother's feeling selfish, that's actually going
to impact the whole home negatively. If she does not live her role. So, what is the role of father?
If you were to ask a child the role of father, he might say something like, "Well, he's a protector.
He provides for our family. He presides over our home." Things like that. They could say different
things. They might say, "He wrestles with me. He's fun." Or they might say, "Well, he teaches us
cool stuff." You know? There's different things that they might be thinking about father.
But father definitely has a role. He is also a teacher. So, that's important to understand. So,
what is the role of child? Well, every child especially when they are children has the role of
learner during that phase of development. So, they really should be learning from the teachers.
If the teachers don't teach, that creates dysfunction. If the learner doesn't learn,
that also creates dysfunction. So, teachers and learners need to both follow their roles
in order to properly keep the home in a functional setting. We could discuss roles further. We could
talk about the role of an oldest child versus the role of a youngest child. The role within the
sibling relationships. We could talk about more characteristics of the role of child or parent. We
could go on for quite a bit of time. Although I'm not going to spend a ton of time there. The point
that I wanted to make in this video was that when we understand our roles, it leads to function.
And that it's not very hard to talk about those roles with each other. Children usually know. I'll
tell you the answer they don't know though. When you say, "What is the role of 15-year-old son?"
They go, "Hmm, I don't know." And that's because usually they don't spend the time thinking about
it. They might say something that might make you like a little sad. They might say, "Well,
my role is just to do whatever you say." Oh, no. They're losing touch a little bit with who they
are. They are a learner, yes. And they should help out in the home, yes. But their role is to learn
and to grow during this time, right? That's the point of being a learner. So, hopefully,
they're also thinking of their role as "I'm attached into this family and I need
to increase my attachment and my communication there." There's a lot of action steps that come
from understanding our roles. Many families are experiencing trouble with roles and the reason why
is because we are not deliberately taking the steps to talk about what the rules are in our
family. And having times where we come together to really have those roles work. So, in our family,
we do deliberate training for our children so that they understand that we are teaching them. This
is how you solve this problem. Or this is how you communicate if you want to tell us something.
There's a skill called disagreeing appropriately that we teach our children. So, we deliberately
train them. Not only that though. We also have family dinners where we come together and discuss,
report to each other. We also have family activities. Again, another focus on bonding where
we do fun things together every week. We also have family meetings. We have couples meeting,
family meeting, and individual mentor meetings. During these times, we set goals for ourselves
and for our family as a group. And we check up on how we're doing. We also consistently
follow through with praises, pre-teaching, for new good action that we want to have them take
and correction. So, we help them in all the different areas of the communication
in their actions to keep them going in a forward direction. This consistent effort on the part of
the parents to do that teaching shows them how important they are and helps them move forward
in their own self-government and in their connection with the family as well.
Super important.
If we are just going into digital devices all the time because we are just worried about what
we want, our stimulations, or our to-do lists; we actually start fracturing the roles in the family.
People have needs. If those needs don't get met in the family, the roles start to fall apart. That's
just how it goes. So, you have to say "What is the need of father? What is the need of mother?
What is the need of child?" Those needs will be properly met if everyone is living
according to their roles. I'm not trying to tell you who to be or what to be. I'm just trying to
tell you that if you actually are a husband, then you're a husband. That's what it is.
If you're a parent, you're a parent. That's what it is. If you're a child, you're a child.
The best thing we can do is not to fight against those roles but to embrace them and figure out
the best way we can live them. Because when we do, that leads to the best function. So,
I'd like to give you some tips on things you can do to help your family be more functional. I teach
self-government. I actually have an entire program called the Teaching Self-Government Program
of courses and trainings that I do. And in these trainings, I always talk about skills
that we need to teach our children. Skills such as disagreeing appropriately, accepting "no" answers,
accepting consequences, following instructions. As well as praising, correcting behaviors in a calm
way, learning how to be calm when you feel like you're going out of control. Stuff like that.
And I talk about how to do these types of meetings in a way where they don't turn into lectures
or labors that people do not enjoy, right? We want a family meeting to bring people
together to strengthen the bond which then strengthens the roles. If it doesn't,
then we might need an adjustment. I have a video that goes into much more detail about the skills
and the different components that you need to have the proper feeling in your home
to maintain good teaching, learning, and those roles that are so important.
So, if you've enjoyed this video, please click on the next video which is called "The not-so-known
secret for parenting success". And we will give you a whole lot more there. It's actually a full
class that I'm giving to everybody here online for free so that you can start getting your
family going in the direction that you want them to. Click on the link now. I'll see you there.