Hi, I'm Nicholeen Peck, I'm a parenting expert. I teach self-government parenting all over the
world and in this video, I'm going to talk about how to teach a child respect and discipline?
Even though every child is different, there is a formula for creating a great
family government or environment where a child can learn self-government and that's what we're
going to talk about in this video. 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. The more your children have self-control or self-government
the more they will be disciplined and follow your instructions. So what is that formula?
I'd like to share with you four pieces of the formula that you can put into practice in your own home,
in your own life so that your child will learn self-discipline and respect. Let's talk about respect.
What does respect mean? Respect actually means to revere another person or to reverence
that other person. To relate to them or have a relationship with them, where you know who you are
and you know who they are. So many parents will come to me and say, "I think there's two problems.
I think I need to better respect my children and my children need to better respect me", and I look
at them and say, "You're probably right". So, what does it mean for a child to respect parents? That means
that they'll follow the parent's instructions, they'll accept "no" answers from their parent,
they'll help out around the house, they'll do the things they're told, they'll not complain in wine.
So if they have to discuss, they'll discuss openly and they'll disagree in appropriate ways, that's
all respect. So parents have to teach children how to do that. I'm going to get into that in just a minute.
But what does it mean to respect the parent? Well, who is the parent? What is the role of parent?
Parent is a teacher, parent is the leader. So if a child is going to respect their parent.
Then they have to be willing to be the student and if the parent is going to respect the child.
They need to be the teacher of the child. If those roles get confused then there's
dysfunction in their home. One of the first key pieces that you have to have in place
for your child to learn respect and to be disciplined is for the family roles to be in
place at home. There's got to be function, you have to maintain the parental authority at your house.
Otherwise, there will always be a battle overpower. If there's a battle over power at your home that's
a sign that your relationships and your roles are dysfunctional. So, how do you maintain this parental
authority and this leadership in your home? So, tone is the second element that I wanted to share with
you in this formula for creating a self-governed family environment. So what is tone? Tone is the way
that you feel or the way the environment feels. Does a home feel welcoming, and safe, comfortable, loving.
Those are all tone elements. So, how should your teaching tone feel? It should feel calm,
trusting, honest, safe, accepting, loving. These are all good tone elements that you need to
have when you do all of your teaching. These are not submissive tone elements. In fact, they are
very assertive because you will maintain them no matter what they do. If they are yelling in
your face you will maintain calmness. Because you have the authority as the parent.
If they are having a meltdown instead of coddling them, you will maintain authority and leadership and
you will help them feel safe but you will point them in a direction that will solve their problem.
This is the tone of self-government. The tone of unity that a family needs in order to create that
mutual respect and discipline. Before I get to my next and very exciting points I want to invite you
to subscribe to this channel. Because every day there are new videos that come out that teach
new principles of relationships, communication, and parenting, and I think you'll find them very useful.
Go ahead and subscribe now. The third piece to our good parenting formula is structure.
You have to deliberately decide what you want your home structure to be
in order for it to ever be successful. So there are many creative people out there who create
new parenting ideas and consequences as they go all the time. But what happens is the anxiety in
the home increases. Because the children never know what the parents are going to be throwing at them
and I hope we can all agree that fear is not a very productive tone element. If your children
just have fear of you they may do what you say but their hearts will not be turned toward you.
In fact, they'll probably be turned away from you. So, you need to have a structure established that
everyone understands. Common language, common skills, that everyone can use to succeed.
In my teaching self-government parenting course which is on teachingselfgovernment.com. I teach four basic skills.
Those four basic skills that children learn take care of 99% of their behavioral problems.
Those four basic skills are following instructions, accepting no answers and criticism, accepting
consequences, and disagreeing appropriately. Each one of those four basic skills has a skill set
attached to it. Which means, that there are certain steps for doing the one skill. For instance, to
accept a "no" answer or criticism, you look at the person, keep a calm face voice and body, say "okay",
or ask to disagree appropriately. That's one of our other skills and then you drop the subject.
When a person pouts or whines, has an attitude problem talks back, when a parent tells them they
can't do something, or maybe at a time where they don't get their way in a game or something else.
They are not accepting a no answer. So what would I bring up to them. I would probably say, "You're not
keeping a calm face voice and body. So that shows me that you're not accepting a no answer", or,
"You're talking back to me right now, which seems like you're wanting to disagree but you're not doing
it in a way that is disagreeing appropriately". Of course, then I would refer them to that skill right".
Or, "You're pouting right now and you won't talk to anybody, this is you not dropping the subject.
That means that you're not accepting a no answer". So you see, you can pinpoint the different pieces
of the skills that they need when everyone knows the skill. Then it doesn't need to be something personal.
So when someone's asking for a cookie and you say "no" and they whine about it. You don't
have to look at them and go, "Stop whining, why do you always whine?". All of a sudden that's personal
because you're talking about something they always do and how you don't like their response
or the way that they handle their problems. But if you looked at them instead and said, "Just now
I gave you a "no" answer and you looked at me but did not keep a calm face voice and body.
You didn't say "okay" or disagree appropriately, and you're not dropping the subject. So you're not
accepting "no" answer". And then you would point them in the direction of what they should be doing.
This is super powerful. So these four skills are vital. There are also five skills that I teach to parents.
As well as four other formats for solving problems as a group. The family needs to come together.
They need to be united and be on the same page in order for everyone to respect everybody and not
take basic corrections personally. Another piece to this self-government formula is consistency.
In fact, as I meet with parents all over the world now for over 20 years. People tell me pretty regularly
that one thing they struggle with the most is lack of consistency. That they know what they want to do.
They know the skills they want to use yet. They fall into old habits. Well, the only way to conquer
a failure in consistency is to keep trying again and again. Sometimes we're not perfect in fact, many
times we're not perfect. But a person who is going in the direction of self-mastery and discipline
is a person who picks themselves up acknowledges where they went wrong and tries again. They do
it repeatedly over and over, and as you keep trying to govern yourself better.
Then your children will do the same. They will consistently follow those four basic skills as
you consistently follow the four basic skills and the five teaching styles. We've had a great
time talking about respect and discipline and the type of environment that you need. I think the next
video you'll enjoy is, how to get a defiant child to obey. Click on that video now so that you can
learn more self-government skills, to improve your connection and your child's success.