Do you want to know the secret to setting family rules? Well I've got it for you. I'm Nicholeen
Peck and I teach all about parenting and family communication, as well as relationship development
through the lens of self-government. This is what we're talking about today.
Rules are important and you'll know how to set great ones for your family by the end of this.
In this video we're going to be talking about the difference between rules and principles
and why you need to know the difference so that you can set great family rules for your family
but also we're going to talk about some of the rules that you really need to consider
to make sure that your family has the greatest success. House rules are really valuable. In fact
if we don't have house rules, people absolutely do not know what to expect in a home environment.
It actually increases anxiety in children and parents to not have rules clearly established.
For years I did treatment foster care for troubled teens. They were all between the ages of 12 and 18
and the day one, when they would enter our home, we would take time to talk to them about
the house rules that we had. Now this didn't mean that we were just sharing things like
wake up is this time, be sure to make your bed, put things away that you get out and stuff like that
but we were talking about things that were even more basic and more vital to making sure that our
house would run smoothly. Things like principles of self-government and we have certain skills that
actually teach these principles of self-government that are the basis of our house rules. In 2009, the
BBC made a documentary of my family called The World's Strictest Parents and in this documentary
they brought us two troubled teens, they were both ages 17 from England to stay for eight
days. When you watch this video which you can see on my website which is teachingselfgovernment.com,
you will see that there is this moment where we sit down right when they get to our house and
we go over the family rules. In fact you will also see that James and Hannah, the two teens that came
to our home for the filming, didn't necessarily like or agree with all of our rules but what
you'll also see is at the end of the program, both James and Hannah were crying because they
didn't want to leave our house. In fact both of them came to us and said please, don't make us go.
We feel so safe here. Please don't make us go. So in the end, they wanted to stay in the environment
with the rules, they felt safety there, in fact they never wanted to leave. Sadly, we did have to
send them back home to their parents but I think that that experience changed their lives forever.
I know that it definitely changed our lives forever. So let's talk about the principles that
we shared with James and Hannah that you're going to want to be sure and share with your family.
Before I get to the principles of self-government that you are going to want to be sure to take
notes on, click the subscribe button. You're not going to want to miss all the great content on
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Rules and principles are different from each other. In fact rules are usually based upon
principles. So principles are more foundational and definitely more steady. Principles are
eternal so they are forever in their nature, which means that they are unchanging. If you have a
principle that applies to one situation, it's going to apply to every situation,
so that's how you know that it's a principle. They're also founded upon truth and usually
they just ring true to everybody when they hear them. Now a rule is different. A rule is sometimes
how you apply a principle in a certain situation but also rules can just be made arbitrarily. Think
how often laws change just because one person has a grievance and goes to talk to a senator about it.
This happens all the time. Is that rule necessarily a principle? The answer is no.
Well in our family, we wanted all of the rules that we made for our family to be based upon principles
so we thought that starting with principles as our basic skills would be the very best foundation for
any other rules that we needed to add to them. So we have some principles that are skills. The four
basic skills are following instructions, accepting "no" answers and criticism, accepting consequences
and disagreeing appropriately. And each of these four basic skills has a skill set attached to it.
For instance, when a person is able to accept a "no" answer, they look at the person or situation, they
keep a calm face, voice and body, they say okay or they ask to disagree appropriately and then
they drop the subject. So is it a principle that a person is helped by dropping the subject? The
answer is yes. If they hold on to things in their head forever, it eats them up. Is it a principle
that if a person wants to, they should choose to be able to be calm? Keeping a calm face, voice and body
at any time? Yes, our children can make choices. All four of these steps that are part of the principle
of accepting a "no" answer are all principles in themselves. So when a person chooses to accept
"no" answer, this prepares them to honor boundary lines, to respect other people and to be able to
choose to be okay when things don't go their way. This empowers them, it helps them use their
choice in powerful ways. After we taught all the children that have ever come to our home as well
as our own children the four basic skills, then we were ready for other rules that we could use
to build upon these four basic skills. So whenever our child breaks some sort of rule in the family,
usually we are going to be doing a correction for one of those four basic skills that I mentioned
because all of the rules that we have in our family relate to one of those four basic skills. We
decided that we wanted to have some set rules for important things so that our family would all be
on the same page with our virtues, our morals and the way that we were going to live our lives. We
didn't want to have to battle over certain things like clothing standards, word usage, substances that
we would take into our body and not, rules regarding digital devices, stuff like that,
so we created something called a family standard. Our family standard is basically a list of rules
that our family has related to all of those things I just mentioned plus many more. How did we create
the family standard? Well we had a family meeting with our family and we said okay, what types of
standards do you think our family should have? Give us input. So the children gave input but
that didn't mean we were going to necessarily use their family standards because what if they said
something that didn't match one of our principles? Well then it wasn't going to happen, right? So
anyway we took those things into consideration and then me and my husband had a special meeting where
we scripted this standard. We made a plan for all the rules related to grooming and hygiene, health
and mannerisms as well as things we would watch and listen to and read and our social conduct
and all of those kinds of things and then we listed them out. Then we had another family meeting
where we presented it to our family. At that point, we needed to go around the home and get rid of all
of the things in our home that did not match that family standard. We did this purposely so that we
would be prepared for bringing other children into our home because for years, we did treatment foster
care and we wanted to have something written up that we could give them on the first day so that
they would know all the rules right after they learned the basic principles of self-government,
roles and those four basic skills. If you want your family to be more successful, then you need
to make sure that your family is prepared to live the principles and rules that you want to live by.
If you're adding them in bit by bit, that's okay, it's pretty good but it's way better if you lay
them out way ahead of time. If my child comes to me and says mom, can I color my hair this color?
I'm automatically going to prepare the child to accept "no" answer because on our family standard,
it already says that our children would not dye their hair unnatural colors. Now, some people may
think that's a little extreme but that's just what we decided as a Peck family would be one
of our standards. You can decide your standards all on your own but the important thing is that you do.
Then the children usually don't even ever come to ask because they automatically know the answer
is going to be in "no" answer and they need to be prepared to accept the "no" answer when it occurs.
So if you want your family to be the most successful, they absolutely need to learn those
four basic skills and you need to lay everything out for them, maybe even in a document that they
could sign so that everybody's on the same page. This decreases all kinds of stress and
communication about standards and the differences of standards and when we'll watch TV and when we
won't, all those kinds of things that might be coming down the road. If you would like to
know more information about teaching the four basic skills, especially since we've only talked
about one of the basic skills today which is accepting "no" answers, then I invite you
to watch my next video which is four skills to transform your parenting. In that video you'll
learn about all of the four basic skills and how you can teach them in your home.