Is it okay to calm down before the rule of three? People ask me that question all
the time. I'm Nicholeen Peck and I teach all about parenting, good communication, and how to
build strong family relationships through the principal self government and in this video,
we're going to be talking about calming down, and what the rule of three has to do with that.
In this video, we're going to spend a little bit of time talking about the rule of three and
talking about calming down and having a calm down spot as well and the best practices for helping
your child get calm when they want to. So there is a difference if a person wants to calm down or
if they don't want to calm down. If a person doesn't want to calm down, a calm down spot,
or a trigger spot can be helpful when they're younger, but when they're older, it's not going
to be as helpful. In fact, often times, if you've seen my other video how to use a calm down spot,
you will recognize that I only use a calm down spot regularly for children ages like six and
under because usually once they hit about age seven, they want to be disconnected from people
and they start using the calm down spot more like a timeout and as a means of disconnection
instead of as a trigger spot to focus on their own calmness. However, I did find out years ago when I
was doing therapeutic treatment care for foster children, and they were all teens between the
ages of 12 and 18, that there were some times when having a calm down spot could be very beneficial
before a person gets the opportunity to do something that I call the rule of three, which
helps them get to a place of being in control and being calm. It's important to understand that a
person has to be in the front brain to solve a problem well. So when you are in mid brain, this
is the emotional part of your brain, the amygdala part of your brain, you only have about 40%
ability to solve your problems. Some of your brain is not able to engage in solving the problem well,
because you're not having front brain activity. The further back you go in your brain, like if
you get the fight or flight part of your brain, you only have maybe 10% ability to actually solve
your problem. We want to keep a person in front brain, this is why calmness is so vital to problem
solving. So because I understand that, I know that I'm not going to focus on solving a problem
with my child until we first point ourselves to calmness. So once we get to calmness, then we talk
about the problem and what we can do to solve the problem. So let's say I already brought a problem
up to my child, and then they start to go away from calmness, I'm going to stop addressing the
problem, get everybody back to calmness and then we'll go back to addressing the problem again,
that is how important calmness is in helping a person learn to self assess so that they can learn
cause and effect better and better self govern. So because that is one of my cardinal rules of
self government, I'm going to make sure that everybody gets all of the opportunities possible
to learn how to calm down. It is a skill that you have to learn how do I get calm? What is it that
I'm thinking that makes me not calm? What type of breathing could benefit me if I'm wanting to get
calm? So deep breathing is the number one thing that a person can do to get calm because it helps
them disengage that midbrain and start engaging front brain. If you start thinking breathe in,
breathe out, breathe in, breathe out so you automatically are going to breathe,
because you have to stay alive. But if you just start focusing your attention on the breathing, it
takes you to front brain. So this is the beauty of having a calm down spot that you can go to again
and again. This is now a place to remind you to be calm, and you can do breathing that reminds you to
be calm. Now you can boom, get ready to be calm. So let's talk about the rule of three. In case
you're new to teaching self government and to this channel and you don't know what the rule of three
is. The rule of three is a skill set that I use with my children, I do three things three times
and this helps engage the prefrontal cortex keeps me calm and them calm at the same time so that
they can get to that place of calmness, so proper teaching or instructing can happen. Now I want to
talk more about this rule of three and how to use a calm down spot in connection with the rule of
three. But first, click subscribe. This channel is dedicated to helping you and your family find
more unity and success through good parenting good interactions and the principle of self government.
Click subscribe now. So let's talk about that rule of three. So in the rule of three, I'm going to do
a pre teach an instruction and then a correction and I'm going to do those things three times,
if necessary. So if a person chooses to be calm, before I get all the way through the full rule of
three, then they will do the steps to following an instruction. So the steps to following an
instruction are they'll 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 they can't,
or won't do all five of those things, then they still need me to carry on with the rule of three.
So if they do choose to do the rule of three, on that first instruction, they actually earn no
negative consequences for that rule of three interaction. However, once we get past the
instruction, and they don't do it, and then I need to do a correction, then they would earn the first
of the three negative consequences associated with the rule of three. So there are three consequences
that are really vital that they understand for the rule of three, and they are geared toward a good
character development, and also helping the child get a lot of practice at following instructions
if they do not follow instructions, which is why they got into this predicament in the first place.
When a person does the rule of three, they are choosing to be calm through the interactions. Now
normally, when a person is going out of control, I just immediately start the rule of three. However,
if I have determined that that person needs just a little bit of time, and if they had a teeny
bit of time to just pull back for just a second, and think and breathe, that they could get calm,
that is still self government, that is still just as effective as using the rule of three. And so
what I will do is, I will say to them, hey, how about that, when it seems like you're going out
of control, I say, it seems to me that you might be going out of control and we'll need to do
the rule of three. But before we do, I'm going to give you five minutes in a calm down place. Now,
I would never do a calm down spot for an older child for more than five minutes and this is
because a person can calm themselves down in five minutes or less, if they want to.
That's the key thing they have to want to. So I'm only using a calm down spot for older children,
if they want it to be effective for them. If they don't want it to be effective for them,
and they're gonna go to the calm down spot, not be calm and yell belligerent things,
then I'm just going to start the rule of three, because that is going to engage the prefrontal
cortex and they're going to earn those negative consequences quicker, which is what they need.
And I am all about benefiting them. I am their advocate, I'm trying to help them see that they
don't have to handle their problems in ways that are non productive, that they can do better and
they can connect and get understood if they just come to a place of calmness. So but if they want
to calm down, they can do it in five minutes or less. So what I would do when I'm just starting
a calm down place with my children, I would say okay, we're going to do a calm down place,
when it seems like you're going out of control for five minutes and then after you get really good
at calming yourself down in five minutes, we'll move that to three minutes, then to one minute,
then to no minutes because you can learn. It might take some practice and a little bit of time,
but you can learn how to tell yourself to be calm, right in the minute as soon as somebody starts
the rule of three, or has any type of conversation with you where you're getting corrected. That is
how I would use a calm down place in conjunction with the rule of three. Now after the person has
their three minutes or their five minutes, then I'm going to go to them and say Okay,
so our five minute timer has just gone up, it looks like you're doing pretty good at being calm,
I'm gonna go ahead and begin the rule of three. But remember, if you follow the first instruction,
you don't earn any negative consequences for going out of control. It's only if you don't follow that
first instruction, then we will start doing the corrections associated with the three consequences
in the rule of three. So here we go on the rule of three. So now I'm going to start this dialogue
where I do the three things the three times. Now just so you know with the rule of three, when you
start learning that from my website, which is teachingselfgovernment.com and some of my
courses there like the TSG parenting course, what you will see is you will see that that pre teach
in the rule of three is the most important part. So just a little tip there as you start learning
the rule of three. Calmness is important. We can't teach our children, correct our children without
calmness. We've got to have calmness and they need to have calmness. So what is your calm down spot?
Have you thought about that? Are there certain words that you say that make you start to get
stressed or go out of control? Then you need to calm down spot too. No one is probably going to do
the rule of three with you. You've got to parent yourself. Well, I would like to help you. I have a
calm parenting toolkit that I would like to give you for free. So the calm parenting toolkit is
a mini course that goes through 10 tools that you can use to help be calm when someone else
isn't and how to help them get calm without losing your calmness at the same time. In the
description section below this video, there is a link that says teachselfgov.com/toolkit. If
you click on that link, it will take you to the calm parenting toolkit, and you can have it for
free right now. So click on that link, get that course, get started on the road to self government.
It is the great first step at learning to self govern you and find calmness for your family.