Hi, I'm Nicholeen Peck and I teach all over the world about parenting, good communication,
how to build strong family bonds through the lens of the principle. And in this
video I'm talking about parenting an autistic child, the self-government way.
In this video, we're going to be talking about what autistic people's needs are,
and we're going to talk about self-government and how self-government can help meet those
needs. Autistic people oftentimes have higher levels of anxiety. Now, I know this is going to
be different depending on where somebody's at on that spectrum, but autistic people do have
unique ways of processing their world around him. That's one of the things that makes an autistic
person so special. They can see things that some of us cannot see. So one thing that can be very
distracting or disconcerting to an autistic person is the level of anxiety that they have to deal
with. Now, not everybody has the same amount of anxiety on the spectrum, but usually anxiety is
one of those defining features of an autistic person when a parenting system is predictable,
this is going to decrease anxiety, which is going to be very helpful for autistic
people who are being parented. Another thing that autistic people oftentimes deal with is they will
get stuck in a certain type of processing and it feels so annoying to be thinking about the
same thing again and again. Now, obviously this relates to the anxiety, but can sometimes feel
like a completely different sensation. It's like, I can't stop thinking about this. It's not that I
want to think about this or that I'm even worried about it. I'm just stuck thinking about it. And so
that's frustrating as well. So being able to know what's going on inside your own mind and how to
change some of those thoughts so that it can move you in a direction where you are feeling like you
have a little bit more control over what's going on can be very beneficial to autistic
people. So let's talk about self-government. What is self-government? Self-government is being able
to determine the cause and effect of any given situation and possessing the knowledge of your own
behaviors so that you can control them. Listening to that definition, it could be easy to think,
well, wait a second. Autistic people have a hard time making themselves do certain
things that they don't want to do. But actually what I've found over the years of working with
autistic people in my own home, because I was a treatment foster parent for troubled teens,
I did treatment care and so many autistic children came through my home. But also I
have worked with many families who have autistic children and they have had great success. There
even as an autistic website for resources for autistic people that actually suggest
the teaching self-government parenting system for working with autistic children. I would like to
share experience with you briefly. So I've been to a lot of homes who have autistic children who
are using the teaching self-government skills, and I have been blown away by what I've seen
of all ages. What happens usually is when you give the autistic child something to hold onto,
something concrete, they get very excited about that. They also love the predictability of the
teaching self-government parenting system, and I'm going to talk a little bit more about that
in just a moment. Recently, I visited a family who had four autistic children. This family has
a lot of different processing. Every one of the children is at a different place on the spectrum.
They all have unique strengths, unique weaknesses just like anybody else. And they all have their
communication hangups or their anxiety issues that they might be dealing with. The family really dove
into the teaching self-government parenting system and amazing results occurred. In fact,
one of their children really, really struggled with anxiety. The father reported to me that this
particular child has learned how to get calm weight and practice their calm self-awareness
skills without even being prompted. This was a huge step forward because this particular child
had a lot of difficulty trying to self-regulate and would consistently have to be prompted and k
sometimes even when prompted would not be able to get to a place of self-regulation because of
overprocessing, which is very characteristic of many autistic people. I want to talk to you more
about how the teaching self-government parenting system can help your family. But first, see that
subscribe button. You are going to want to push that button because when you push that button,
you will see more videos just like this And even if they don't say autistic in the title, they
will work for you. For years, I've worked with troubled teens and many of them were autistic,
and this is what I did for them. But I didn't just use this parenting program with autistic children.
I actually used it with children who have ADHD, OCD, ODD, children who struggled through different
trauma or addictions. The principles and skills in the teaching self-government parenting system can
be used for anyone. So let's talk about what some of those things are so you can see how they'll
help you. This book here, Parenting A House United, is kind of the central piece to the teaching
self-government parenting system. In this book, you learn four basic skills that all children need
to know, and in these four children's books you also learn those four basic skills. So
these books are meant to teach the children the four basic skills and are designed for children
probably developmentally, ages 12 and under. The four basic skills of learning self-government are
following instructions, accepting "no" answers and criticism, accepting consequences and disagreeing
appropriately. I have met autistic children that have struggled with all four of these four basic
skills and some that have maybe just struggled with accepting consequences or disagreeing
appropriately. Disagreeing appropriately can be especially difficult for an autistic child
because it does take pulling back, waiting for the right time and then following through with
the process and sometimes that pulling back can be very difficult, especially if
the autistic child experiences higher levels of anxiety. But it is possible, I promise you, you
can learn it. It does take some practice though. So as with any parenting journey that you're on,
you know that if something is really going to be a lasting fix, a lasting help, it's probably
not going to be an ultra quick fix. Well, when you have an autistic child, you will have to do
more repetitive teaching. Now, I will say some autistic children pick it up so quick, in fact,
even quicker than your average child who's not an autistic child. But the majority of them do take a
little bit more repetition because there's certain ruts in their brain that they automatically go
into their go-to behaviors that they have to decide not to trust that go-to behavior anymore,
and they have to insert something else in its place. Now, this is the beautiful thing about
the skills training that we do in the teaching self-government parenting system. When you are
going to remove a habit, or in the case of most people, those habits are technically skills
they've developed for themselves. If you're going to remove that habit, you have to replace it with
something else that a person can hold onto. So these skills create a nice predictable thing that
they a person can hold onto as they're trying to gain more self-regulation over themselves.
You will teach your child about calmness. What is a calm face? What is a calm voice? What is
a calm body? As part of these skills, you teach them how to drop the subject inside their head
as well as with their words and their actions. I know for some families you might think there is
no way that's not even possible. They never drop a subject. They fight everything. It's a habit.
It's a habit. Doesn't matter if they're an autistic child or not, it's a habit and they
can make progress on it. I've seen it happen many, many times as I visited people's homes
who have autistic children and as I've brought those autistic children into my home as well.
Another thing with the teaching self-government system that is really helpful is the predictable
corrections and the predictable pre-teach us. So the pre-teach help format the brain to succeed,
which is going to be very helpful. And then the prediction, the predictable corrections help
the child recognize, oh yes, I've been corrected like this before. It sounded just the same. Okay,
that's right. I can accept this consequence. And the consequences are such that you can modify them
to adjust to whatever level of being able to do an extra chore or a consequence that your autistic
child is at. I do highly recommend looking into the TSG parenting course or the TSG three Day
Parenting Mastery training, or at the very least, reading this book, Parenting A House United, to
get all of the details on the consequences and which ones are going to be preferred. I had a
conversation with one of my favorite autistic families. I spent a lot of time in their home,
got to know them well, and they truly are dear to me. As I was talking to them, they explained to me
how one of their autistic children was starting to struggle with his behavior with adults. He
was getting more and more aggressive and they realized something. They realized that there
was too much stimulation and it was making it so that the child, even though he knew the skills
was struggling. So one thing that you want to do is you want to make sure that when you're having
these corrective teaching moments with your child, that if at all possible, you may be relocate
quickly to a quieter area so that you can have a greater focus and there's not as much stimulation
going on in the background. Turn the TV off, see if you can get other people engaged in something
a little bit quieter so that you can have a really good connective teaching moment.
I know some people who are autistic have a hard time looking people in the eyes, so if that is the
case, I highly recommend holding out your hands when it's time to have eye contact and have a good
teaching moment or a conversation so that they can then put their hands on top of your hands so that
you can have that connection while you're doing a correction. Corrections should be connective
moments that help the entire family. I am just getting started. There are so many more things
that I could tell you that will help you with your autistic child. The whole teaching self-government
parenting course and program will be beneficial for you. If you've enjoyed this video,
I know that you will like a full class about self-government that I have here on the channel
called the Not So Known Secret for Parenting Success. It will go into greater details about the
skills and principles that I've been mentioning, and you'll be able to see how the predictability
will decrease anxiety, increase connection, and help your autistic child thrive and communicate.