Hi, I'm Nicholeen Peck and I teach parenting, communication and self-government all over
the world and in this video I'm going to be talking about how to teach self-control to
a 5 year old.
Do you have a 5 year old? The age 5 is amazing. This is a time where they
can learn so many things but also emotions are also riding a little bit high, their anxiety
levels are a little bit higher because they're still young children so, because of that,
they do need to start having lessons in self-control. In this video, we're gonna be talking about
what self-control looks like for a 5 year old and what lessons you can focus on teaching
them now. What does self-control look like for a 5 year old? What should a 5 year old
be able to do if they truly have self-control? Well, they should be able to do the 4 basic
skills that I teach in my Teaching Self-Government Course. Those 4 basic skills are follow instructions,
accept "no" answers and criticism, accept consequences, that means calmly, and disagree
appropriately. That's right, children can start to learn these 4 basic skills even as
young as 2 years old. So, definitely by age 5, they should be able to say, "Okay, do a
task immediately, come back to mom or dad and say I took out the trash. Is there anything
else?" or "I put the clothes away, is there anything else?" or if mom says no, you can't
play on that video game, then the child would say okay and then drop the subject. Always
keeping a calm face, voice and body through all of these skills and they would also learn
how to voice their opinion in an appropriate way by using the 7 step process with the disagree
appropriately skill. If a child truly has good self-regulation or self-government when
they are age 5, they should be able to also see when they are calm versus not calm. They
should be able to see when they're happy versus not happy and choose to be calm and be happy.
They should be able to stop themselves from overreacting and course correct. I know that
seems like a tall order for a 5 year old but I promise you it is completely possible. All
of my children by the time they were toddlers were able to do this. In fact, you know they
can do it because when they're having a tantrum at the store and you say something like, hey,
if you choose to stop crying, I'll give you a cookie and then immediately go, okay, I'm
fine, that shows you how fast they can self-regulate if they want to. So, what we need to do is
instead of bribing them which definitely was that store experience, bribing is no good.
No good on bribing. We need to teach them the skills that they need for self-government
success. Before I get to my process for how you want to set things up to teach your 5
year old self-control, I would like to know what types of misbehaviors specifically that
you're dealing with at your house. It could help other people as well so in the chat,
how about you tell me what types of concerns you have and what specific ways you're hoping
to learn self-control for your child. And if there's some other idea you have for a
video that would get more specific on this, be sure to put that in the comments too and
I'll get to that. So, let's get into the process of teaching our 5 year old how to control
themselves. The first thing you have to do is you have to decide which skills your child
needs. Now, just a little hint, if you teach your child the 4 basic skills of self-government
which are following instructions, accepting "no" answers and criticism, accepting consequences
and disagreeing appropriately, then that child actually has all the skills that they need
to conquer 99.9% of their behavioral problems so it might be a good idea to start there
and I do have some amazing children's books that each teach 1 of those 4 basic skills
which are really fun, definitely geared to the 5 year old age. I think you'll really
enjoy them. So then what you do after you learn those skills, you have to also learn
those skills that you need to correct the problems so, what skills do you need as a
parent to be self-governed and in control of yourself as well so that you don't fall
into old habits. So, that's important for you to understand. After you have those skills
in place and you've learned those, by the way, you can learn those parenting skills
in my Teaching Self-Government course and on teachingselfgovernment.com, there's plenty
of resources there also that you can choose from to teach you some parenting skills. Then
after that, you're gonna want to pre-teach your child so prepare them for success by
teaching them the skills. Reading them the books, practicing the skills and talking about
how you'll correct them and how you'll praise them when things go right or when things don't
go right so that they are ready for the future. Then, what you do is in the moment, when they're
gonna need one of those skills, maybe you're gonna give them a "no" answer or something
like that, then you do an additional pre-teach. This type of pre-teach is called a prep. The
prep would sound something like this, I'm going to give you an instruction. Do you remember
the steps to following an instruction? And then they might list those 5 steps to you.
At that point, you would praise them, tell them they've got it and say here's your instruction.
I need you to go clean your bedroom, okay, or whatever it happens to be and hopefully
they follow right along with those 5 steps to following instructions. They should because
you prepared the space. That pre-teaching is key for the 5 year old. Now, if they don't
follow the instruction, they don't keep a calm face, voice and body, they don't say
okay, they don't clean their room or check back, then you're going to need to correct
it. So, this is where you're correction skill comes into play. You would correct them and
they would get the opportunity to earn an extra chore after this calm and descriptive
technique that I teach and then as part of the correction, there is addition pre-teaching
for future success. So, you would have moments of role play where you teach your children
again, the appropriate skill, how to handle the situation the right way so that they don't
have a problem the next time. So, pre-teaching is heavy for all ages but especially for young
children and that type of consistent pre-teaching, correcting and praising is going to lay the
foundation for that child to learn self-government. 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. Now, at first we have to teach our children
self-government. They don't automatically learn self-government or self-control all
on their own. We have to teach them it's possible by consistently following through with teaching,
correcting, praising, learning cause and effect now so that they will remember that cause
and effect for the future. A big factor in your child learning to have self-government
is if you have self-government too. Do you lose control because if so, your child might
learn that losing control is okay, especially if a parent rationalizes why they lost control.
If you lose control, own up to it, do your interaction again the right way and with calmness
and then your child will see the example of self-government, the self-government that
you want them to have now and for the future. Self-government is possible for people of
all ages, even age 5. But it really does hinge on calmness. So, I have a free gift for you.
For everybody who's watched this video, I am going to give you completely free the Calm
Parenting toolkit. My Teaching Self-Government Calm Parenting toolkit is a great course that
begins your journey in self-government through mastering your calmness and helping your children
master theirs as well. So, in the description below this video, there is a link to the Calm
toolkit. Click that link and get started on your free Calm Parenting toolkit today so
that you can improve your self-control and they can too.