Hi, I'm Nicholeen Peck and I teach all over the world about parenting, good
communications and how to build strong family relationships through the lens
of self-government. And in this video we're talking about why you shouldn't bribe kids.
In this video, we're going to be talking about why people bribe and what they hope to get out of it,
and some of the surprising lessons that might be taught to you and your children because you're
doing bribing and then what you can do instead of bribing that will be more effective at helping
motivate your child. So why do people do bribing? We all know that it's a type of manipulation to
coerce someone to changing their behavior. So why do we do it when we know that it's
a bit manipulative? Well, we get desperate. What happens is we're in a store with a child and the
child is screaming and having a problem, and we think, what could we do to make it through this
shopping trip and get this child to not cause a scene and make the shopping experience horrible
for everyone and we start thinking about what buttons we can push, what levers we can pull
to change the behavior in that person temporarily. The problem is when we start changing the behavior
temporarily, it might not be as temporary as we think it will be. So I want to tell you a story
from my life. When I was a young mom and I was in the store with my oldest child, he was two
years old and he was having a total tantrum. He wanted something from the store. I told him no,
that he couldn't have that thing, and then he started completely melting down. It was the
type of tantrum where everyone was looking, and I assumed that everyone was thinking, oh, that mom
must be a horrible mom. It's your first child. You don't know that everybody's really probably
thinking been there. It's okay, got this. But I thought they were judging me, and so I thought,
what could I do to help my child? So then I said to my child, I leaned over to his ear while he
was screaming and I said, Quinn, if you get happy right now, then mommy will take you over to the
bakery and we'll get you a cookie from the bakery. He instantly stopped screaming because who doesn't
love a cookie? And so I told him, oh, good job. You're being so calm and happy. Let's go over
to the bakery. So we go over to the bakery, we get him a cookie from the bakery, his favorite
type of cookie because I was ready to do anything to make sure that we didn't ever have this type
of experience again. Boy was I wrong that we would not have this type of experience again
because the next time we came to that store, my son started having a tantrum as soon as we got
into the first aisle of the store, he started saying that he didn't want to be there and all
this kind of stuff and then I thought to myself, let's see. Well, last time we gave him a cookie,
but I don't want him to think that he gets a cookie every single time and that I'm going to buy
his favorite cookie. So maybe this time I won't buy his favorite cookie. I'll just get him one of
the free sample cookies that they give out from the bakery, because that's when they used to do
that. So I said to him, hey, if you get quiet and if you can be happy on our shopping trip,
then I will get you a cookie from the bakery. So I made him wait just a little bit. We did some of
the shopping and then made our way to the bakery. And when I was there, we didn't pick his favorite
cookie because he said, I want that cookie. It was his favorite cookie. I didn't pick that. I said,
oh no, the bakery gives special cookies. He waited for a second. It was a free sample cookie,
a little one. I handed it to him. That's not what he wanted. He started having a tantrum again.
So what did he learn that first time when I gave him that cookie? So on that first shopping trip,
when I gave him that cookie, he learned I get my favorite something if I have a fit. Now on this
second shopping trip, he's learning, I get something, but it might not be my favorite
something, but I want my favorite something. So he started pushing for his favorite something. Well,
I didn't give in on that because I was realizing I might have created a monster and I didn't want
to have this problem every time we went to that store. So I said, this is the type of cookie you
get, and that's it, because this is the one that the bakery's given us, and it's a nice cookie and
just trying to convince him that this cookie was good. Well, then the next time we came to
the store, he said, mommy, I'll be good if we can have a cookie from the bakery. He started
leveraging it so that he wouldn't even have to go out of control. He started saying, if you bribe me,
I will choose to be good. Whoa, that was not good. I thought, what have I done here? I have made it
so that he thinks the only reason to be good and happy and calm in the store is if he gets
something out of it as a reward. Now, one person could say, well, but that's teaching cause and
effect. But there is a difference between teaching cause and effect and bribing. So teaching cause
and effect would be me saying, Hey, what type of a shopping experience do we want to have today?
And then discussing how we want it to be calm. We want to have a good time and then we might say,
and after the end of our shopping trip when we've had a good calm shopping trip, then there might be
this type of a treat for you. Maybe I have a piece of gum that you could have or something like that.
And I set it up ahead of time. But if I wait till a person is crying or whining or if they intend
to cry or whine, if they don't get what they want, and then I say, okay, you can have what you want,
then that's called bribing and it teaches lessons that aren't very good. So we're going to get into
what some of those lessons are for parents and for children, why we don't want to do
those and what we should do instead, so that you cannot get trapped in writing. But before we do,
click the subscribe button now. This channel is dedicated to providing great information that you
can't find other places about how to teach your child's self-government and unify your
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So what did the child learn? The results of all of that bribing was that my child learned that
he deserved something if he had good behavior. Is that why a person should be kind, calm, polite,
respectful to other people so that they get something out of it? That's the wrong message,
isn't it? They should actually understand the difference between what is that good behavior
that makes them happy, and what is behavior that makes them not happy? And they should want to have
their own personal happiness and have a good bond of connection with the other person. That
should be more important than getting something out of another person because then we get to a
place where we're exploiting each other with our emotions. Now as a parent, I'm also learning that
I have to try to find a new button every single time in order to get my child to behave properly,
to respect me, and to have a good bond with me. Is that how it should be? Should I be looking
for a manipulative button to push? Should I have to get ultra creative every time? Should that be
required of my parenting in order to have a good connection or bond with my child? I hope not. If
I bride my children, I'm actually teaching myself and my children that I'm not a valid authority
in their lives. And then what happens there? Then that opens the door to more contention
for our relationship in everything. Cleaning the room, doing the daily chores, getting the
homework done, whatever it is that's going to be coming down the line. I am saying I don't have the
authority. It's really the candy. It's really the video game or the cookie or whatever it is
that has the real authority to change hearts. I'm teaching my children that they can't have a change
of heart without someone, them, something and I'm teaching myself that I cannot help my child
have a change of heart or even bond to connect properly with my children without something to use
as leverage. That shouldn't be how it is. There are better ways to teach and parent children, and
that's what I'd like to talk about now. So I teach self-government. I actually teach parenting, and I
teach people how to communicate better with each other, but I do it through the principle. So what
is self-government? Self-government is being able to determine the cause and effect of any given
situation and possessing a knowledge of your own behaviors so that you can control them. So that
means that you analyze yourself and you determine which behavior or which choice you want to take so
that you can get the best result for yourself, but also as you mature for other people too. So when a
person is self-governing, they're seeing how they connect with the other people around them. They
are seeing roles. So this book here Roles: The Secret to Family, business, and Social Success
helps parents and children understand through a story of a family what their roles are in the
family and how they can better help their roles be in the right place so that they can connect
properly instead of having dysfunction. So when people don't have the right roles in the family,
and I'm talking parent-child role, if the child starts telling the parent what to do
or not listening to the child and undermining the parental authority, which is part of their role,
then the family has dysfunction and everyone ends up unhappy. Now, there are other books that I've
written to, in fact, there's many. I've written 11 books. Here's six of them here that I highly
recommend for helping you so that you don't have to do bribing anymore. So there's the Roles book,
which is going to help you understand your role as a parent. But then there's this book,
Parenting A House United. Parenting A House United is a book that goes into my whole parenting
program and how you can learn self-government in your parenting so you don't have to get angry, so
you can be more calm and the skills that you need to teach your children so that they can learn
cause and effect without having to be manipulated. And some of those skills are taught in these four
children's books. These four children's books teach the four basic skills to self-government,
which are following instructions, accepting "no" answers and criticism, accepting consequences and
disagreeing appropriately. So let's think about those four basic skills for a moment. Which one
of those four basic skills could help a child in the store when you might be tempted to bribe them
or could help them when it's time to leave and you've got to get out the door quickly and they're
just not moving fast or they're not getting their chore done? Which of these skills could
help. Following instructions is going to be your go-to. Does your child know the five step process
of following an instruction? Do they know to look at the person, keep a calm face, voice and body,
say, okay, or ask to disagree appropriately. Do the task immediately and then check back. If
they know those five steps and they can do them, then they can be successful and if they know how,
you will calmly correct it after if they don't do it, then that will also help them with their
cause and effect lessons. But let's think of that third step. Say okay or disagree appropriately.
The disagree appropriately skill is also going to be very beneficial for children and I want you
to know something. Children can learn this skill younger than you think. My two-year-olds could
disagree appropriately with me. I'm a grandma. I've got a 15 month old grandbaby who already can
do a baby disagree appropriately with her mom. She'll start whining and then her mom will say,
Clara, we don't talk like that. And then little 15 month old Clara will go,
mama. And then her mom will say, yes, Clara. And then she'll use her little sign language
to tell her what it is that she wants. She's 15 months. She knows what a calm voice is and not,
and how to get her mother's attention the appropriate way and how to be understood. That's
the whole key to disagreeing appropriately. It's a seven step process that a person can learn and
when a child learns how to communicate properly with their parent, they don't need to complain
and whine and not get things done, which are the moments when we are most tempted to bribe them.
Probably one of the most important things that you could learn as a parent to not bribe your
children is how to be in control of yourself, how to have self-government over you. So I have a help
for you. It's actually a free gift that I'd like to give you, and it is my Calm Parenting toolkit.
So in the description below this video, there is a link that says Teachselfgov.com/toolkit.
If you click on that link right now, it will take you to the Teaching Self-Government Calm
Parenting Toolkit, which is a beginner course for learning self-government. It's a great starter
because it starts with calmness, and without that calmness in place, it's hard to get everything
else going. You can solve the problems with your children with calmness, but learn how to
alter the thinking within yourself and within them at the same time. So click on the link to
that Calm Parenting toolkit today and start you and your child on the road to calmness so that
you'll be ready to learn the other skills that I have on the Teaching Self-Government website too.