We put so much effort into teaching our children and helping them solve their
problems. There is nothing more frustrating when
we're teaching a child or trying to correct a child
and they seem like they just don't care. They're not listening.
You can say anything you want and they're not making a change.
Many parents have been there. I've been there myself
because i'm the previous foster parent of many troubled teens.
For years we had youth ages 12 to 18 come to stay at our house
to do treatment care. I'm Nicholeen Peck and in this video, we're going to talk
about how to discipline a kid that doesn't care.
There's nothing that we can do to make a child care, okay? You cannot
manipulate a situation in a way that will change
their heart for them. That's not how people work.
People have control over their own conditions of heart
which means that each person has to learn
to change their heart on their own. They have to develop the desire
for a heart change. That change of heart is the premise behind
everything i teach with the teaching self-government parenting system
and in my teaching self-government courses and
books. We need to reach the heart of a child
and give them the truth that they need so that they will
choose with their own agency and choice to change their own heart.
One of the key lessons that our children need is they need the lesson
of self-government. What is self-government?
Self-government is being able to determine the cause and effect
of any given situation and possessing a knowledge
of our own behaviors so that we can control them. So, what that means is that
a person understands cause and effect. And then
they also understand their own behavior and how their
behavior brings about certain effects. And then
they analyze if that's what they desire to have happen or not
and what changes they need to make. So, there are some
key things that a person can do to set up a
really good self-governing environment that will lead
toward helping a child choose to care. So, there's a 5-step process that I
use to help my children go through
self-government instead of just get reactive and
obstinate which is what is happening when they say they don't care
and they're not going to do it anyway.. Now, this is the same procedure that I
used for all of my foster children who were very strong-willed children,
okay? They were ones who (some of them) had ODD,
oppositional defiant disorder. And I will say it takes some work and
some practice if a person truly does have oppositional
defiance. And they will push hard but this is the
process, this is the formula that we went through consistently again
and again to help them choose to master themselves.
There has to be a stopping point and I'm going to point out to you
in a little bit where that is so that they know
there isn't any point in continuing this abstinence.
Instead they need to point their control on themselves. If a strong-willed person
points their control on themselves, then they end up self-governing.
Strong-willed people are incredible at self-mastery
and self-government. The key thing is they just have to choose to want to do
it. So, step number one is to create a plan.
Before your child is going to care, they've got to have the whole big
picture. They've got to have a plan of what
you're doing with this family communication
and this parenting anyway. They've got to have a plan for how they can be
understood and be successful in their communications.
Which means you need to teach them certain skills. In my teaching
self-government parenting course, we teach four basic skills --how to follow
instructions, accept no answers, accept consequences
and disagree appropriately. When they learn those 4 basic skills
and the 5 parenting skills because they learn all
the parenting skills as well. Because it's totally predictable. No
surprises, no tricks. When they learn all of those things then
they are more prepared to make better decisions in the minute
when they want to be oppositional. Step number 2
is pre-teaching. So, right in the minute when you're going to be giving a child
an instruction or a no answer, something that you feel
like they may not want to do, you're going to remind them of some of
the training that you already gave them in the planning step. So, this preparation
is called pre-teaching. This is when you tell the child ahead of time
right before you give the instruction you would say something like, "I'm going
to give you an instruction. Remember to follow an instruction. You
look at the person, keep a calm face voice and body, say okay
or asked to disagree appropriately, do the task immediately and then check
back. If you choose to follow that instruction,
then I will praise you for that give you a high 5 and it won't take that much
of your time because it's a quick one today.
If you choose not to follow the instruction then you will be choosing
to have to have a little bit more time taken to do a correction
and you'll get the opportunity to earn an extra chore. Here is your instruction."
So, step number 3 is i actually then deliberately take action. I give
instruction or i give no answer and I don't worry about how they react to it
because i have already prepped them for success. Now, they could choose not to be
successful. That's on them but I can't make choices
for them. I can only have a structure that holds them accountable
for all of their choices. So, let's say that I give them that instruction
and then they go off course. They're not going to do it, they don't want to,
talk to the hand, "I don't care". The next step
is i do a correction. They know my entire script for how to do a proper correction.
And I have other videos on this channel that you'll want to take a look at that
go into detail about doing corrections. So, maybe check out some of those videos
that we have maybe the one that's posted here
could be useful to you for finding help with doing correction. Because I don't
have time to go into that in great detail
during this video. But correcting the children is vital. It teaches them cause
and effect. And this helps them learn for the future
that i probably should have done it a different way.
But let's say you do a correction and they still don't care.
What do you do then? Step number 5 is the place where we point them toward
the stopping spot, okay? Remember how I said I'm going to show
you where that stopping place is. Well, in step 5, if they still don't
care after we do a correction, then we have a word for that in our
family and that word or phrase rather is that they are out of
instructional control. If they are out of instructional
control, that means they are refusing to follow any instruction from
parents. If they will not follow instruction from
parents, then the parental authority is frustrated
and the relationships are in a state of dysfunction.
When your child is in a state of dysfunction
and they're seeing the relationships in that way, then
you cannot actually teach them. You have to get them back to a place of function
back to a place where they will honor your role as
parent. And this final step which we call the rule of
3 is that step that leads them back to that place of function
that helps them decide is this really worth it.
"I'm getting close to my stopping place." Or
"My biggest largest negative consequence that I could get."
So, as parents, we have a stopping place too. In our family,
we have 4 consequences that we use regularly. And we know that when we get
to that last consequence that we're going to use,
we use 3 of them in the rule of 3 and one of them
for just every other interaction. But when we get to that third consequence in
the rule of 3 then we know that we don't have any more
that we have to do except for just wait for them to get
calm as well. This rule of 3 is something that I talk
about also in other videos that I have here on this
channel. So, you might want to start searching
around for videos about misbehavior power struggling, stuff like
that so that you can find more information about the rule of 3.
I also teach it in such great detail in my course and stuff. So,
you're going to get the best training there. But the rule of 3
is an interaction that we have with our children which points toward calmness.
We do 3 things 3 times. We do a pre-teach
an instruction and then a correction. And we do those things with the same script
every time so that they're predictable and they connect with the prefrontal
cortex of the person that we're talking to. So, when a person
is going out of control and they really don't care and they're trying to
manipulate you and and pull rank or show dominance over you, they're in an
emotional part of the brain. Even though they're using some frontal
cortex to do that manipulation, we want to pull them out of that
emotional part of the brain and help them problem solve better.
Think more clearly about the interaction so that they can make wise decisions
instead of just cutting emotional manipulative decisions which is what
they're doing when they're choosing not to care. So,
this is when we use the rule of 3. The rule of 3 is not used for tiny
children. I have a Calm Parenting Toolkit which is linked in description
of this video that you can find more information about
what we do for little children when they go out of control.
The rule of 3 is something that we use for older children and there's also
more information about that in that calm parenting toolkit as well.
So, what do we need to do to help our children?
We've got to make a plan --pre-teach in the minute,
give clear instructions, show them cause and effect by correcting
and then when they go out of control, be their advocate to bring them
back to calmness. That's 5 steps that if we
use those steps with our children then we can help them
better find control over themselves in those moments
when they need discipline because they're showing that they don't care.
If you like this video, you're going to love the next video I have. It goes into
more detail about skills and self-government and it is the video
called What Is The First Step In Effective Parenting?