Do you want to know the best method for teaching children to get along
with others? I'm Nicholeen Peck and I teach parenting all over the world through the lens
of the principal self government and in this video, we're talking about teaching children
to get along.
In this video, we're going to be talking about two different things that parents can do to help their
children learn to get along with others and these skills might be easier than you think. I
know that a lot of parents struggle with children who engage in sibling rivalry, or maybe who have
a child who doesn't get along with friends or other people very much, there seems to be maybe
a lot of contention and emotion associated with interactions with other children. Well,
this can happen. I mean, for one thing, they're immature, right, and they're learning and growing,
their prefrontal cortexes are developing, which means they have to learn how to solve their
problems. But another thing is, sometimes they just don't have a skill that they could utilize
to solve their problems yet, and parents can teach those skills to their children. A lot
of times when children don't get along, they spend times blaming other people. Sometimes they tattle,
sometimes they argue or get physical. These are all either passive or aggressive behaviors. But
there is another way that a child can behave, they can behave in an assertive way. When someone
is assertive, that means that they plan out how they are going to communicate with another person,
before they actually have the moment of communication. So what would an assertive child
do? An assertive child would know skills ahead of time that they could use to solve problems
with other people and then when it comes the time that they need to use those skills, they would put
the skills to the test, and then follow up to see how they did later. But how is a child just going
to magically learn the skills that they need to communicate well with others? Well, they don't.
Usually parents have to show either by example, or they teach the concept to the child directly. Now,
I want you to think for a minute, how is it that you solve your problems with other people,
because the way you solve your problems with other people, is probably going to end up being
the way that your children solve problems with other people too. If you get emotional, if you
have arguments with other people, if you feel like the victim of some of your communications
that you have with other people, your children could see that and think that that's the way
that they solve their problems too. Either they're the person on top or the person on bottom. Now, we
don't want our children to feel that way. Whether you are doing that or not, you may be seeing a
child who has learned bad communication skills by observing another person. But don't worry,
there's something that we can do to help. Years ago, I did therapeutic treatment care for foster
children, they were all teens between the ages of 12 and 18 and they did not have great problem
solving skills that's why they came to my house. Now sure, many of them were non neurotypical,
they also had some trauma that they were dealing with. Regardless of their problems, the solution
actually was the same, they needed to learn good communication skills. So we focused on teaching
them the skills that they would need for self governing. Now, what is self government? What does
that mean? In short, self government means self control or self mastery. But my actual definition
of 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. So when a person
has self government, that means they analyze themselves and the circumstances around them,
and determine which behavior or way of processing would help them the most, and would also benefit
the other people in the group. So they are taking a lot of personal responsibility. So we decided
that we would teach the foster children that came to our home how to govern themselves. I also
raised my own four children with the principles of skill and skills of self government, and they
became different people than I even thought was possible because of it. In fact, people have
come to me repeatedly and said, Nicholeen, your children are so happy. I've never known people so
happy and it's because they know how to maintain happiness, even if they don't get their way. Now,
we know that the majority of contention occurs because a person doesn't get their way. So how
do we help them prepare? A lot of the solutions that I'm going to be sharing with you come from
this book here, Parenting A House United. This is my best selling book that outlines how to
incorporate the system of teaching yourself and your children's self government at the same time.
I'm going to get into some specific steps that you can do to help stop sibling rivalry, contention
between friends, and to help your children learn how to get along. But before I do that,
click the subscribe button now. There's a lot of content on this channel that you're
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I've got two key skills that I'm going to be sharing with you and teaching you
today that you can teach your children so that they can better manage themselves when
they're with siblings, or friends, or really anybody for that matter.
But before we get to those skills, it's really important that we understand really,
step number one. Step number one for a family is deciding what type of a family do we want to
be? What do we want our relationships to be like with each other, and with other people as well.
If we can get a picture in our minds, or what I call a family vision, in our minds of what type
of family we want to become, then that gives us something to work toward. In our family,
we created what we called our 20 year vision, the 20 year vision was of our whole family 20 years in
the future, at a specific event, we created a lot of details for this event, specifically centered
on what type of relationship or feeling that we wanted to have with each other at that event,
20 years in the future and then we worked toward that event every single day. If our family ever
had a moment where we weren't getting along, where people were fighting over seatbelts, or oh, you're
breathing my air, that's mine, the different things that children will argue over, I would
stop them. And I would compare the feeling that was happening right then to the feeling that we
wanted for our 20 year vision in the future and they knew immediately something was not the same.
So they needed to make a change. This is when I would do a correction. Now in my TSG parenting
course, I talk about how to do column corrections. I'm not going to be covering that in this video.
But let's get into some of the skills that they can utilize that when you do a correction, you can
remind them of. In my teaching self government program, I teach four basic skills. These
children's books each teach one of the four basic skills. This one teaches following instructions.
This one teaches accepting consequences, accepting "no" answers, and then this one teaches disagreeing
appropriately. We're going to be focusing on these two skills today as we talk about what
you can teach your children so that they have less communication problems with each other. This
book here, Porter Earns A Quarter, teaches the skill accepting no answers and criticism. So whether
you're accepting "no" answers, or whether you're accepting criticism, the skill set is the same.
So let's talk about what constitutes a "no" answer. A "no" answer is when somebody tells you know, that
one's obvious. A "no" answer is also when things don't go your way you wish you could be first,
but you can't be first, or somebody doesn't share something that you wish they did. Somebody takes
the last piece of cake but you want it the last piece of cake. Any time that you don't
get something you want, that's essentially like hearing a "no" answer. Also boundary lines. So any
boundaries that we should not cross over also constitute "no" answers. We need to stay out of
other people's space. Those are "no" answers. This helps children hopefully make better decisions
before they even get in a circumstance where they would need to be told no. So what are the steps to
accepting a "no" answer? Let's talk about that. There are four steps to accepting a "no" answer
or accepting criticism and they are to look at the person, this maintains connection and shows,
I'm okay with you. You're okay with me. We are okay with each other. Step number two, it keeps
a calm face, voice and body. A person can learn what calmness looks like, feels like and sounds
like coming from them and what it doesn't. And they can choose to be calm when they communicate,
this will decrease contention because it will mean that the person is deciding not to take stuff
personally. Step number three is you say okay, or you disagree appropriately. Now, we're going to
be talking about disagree appropriately in just a few minutes. When a person says okay, that doesn't
mean that they completely agree with the other person. That just means that they're saying, okay,
that happened or you know what, it's not worth it. Okay, you can have things your way. I'm not going
to spend my time arguing with you about it. I'm just going to be okay with the fact that I don't
get my way right now. That's what it means to say okay, then step number four, which is the hardest
step for most people is drop the subject. That means don't think about it anymore. Don't talk
about it anymore. Just let it go. Just choose to move on to the next topic of concern or the next
project that you happen to be working on. In fact, if a person can learn to drop the subject, they
will be more optimistic and happy for the rest of their lives because it is the people that keep
focusing on something again and again. They keep processing something they can't stop, those
are the people that have higher levels of anxiety, depression, stress, fear, and ruined relationships
because they just can't get done with something that happened before. So being able to drop the
subject is a skill of freedom. This book here, Paige Takes The Stage, teaches our second skill
that we are going to need, which is disagreeing appropriately. Now, when a person disagrees
appropriately, this doesn't mean that they will always get their way. What it means is that they
will be heard and understood. But you can pre teach your children to know that if someone
takes the time to disagree appropriately with them, they should listen and when all possible,
show them that it works. This will point back to you being the type of family that you want to be
for each other, you having certain relationships, that means something to each other as well.
So what does it mean to disagree appropriately, when a person disagrees appropriately,
they use the principle seek to understand than to be understood. So what they do is they look
at the person or the situation, they keep a calm face, voice and body, they say that
they understand the other person's point of view, then they share their point of view,
they listen to what the other person has to say. And then they say, okay, and drop the subject. So
if in the end, the answer is still no, then they drop the subject and move on. They don't sit and
worry about whether they get a turn with that toy, or that video game or that last cookie,
whatever it happens to be. So let's talk about how these two skills actually help solve the problems
then. When a person knows how to accept a "no" answer, that is going to solve so many problems,
because so often the contention starts because one person crosses over a boundary line, or one
person does not accept a "no" answer from somebody else or maybe someone is mad that they lost or
didn't get a turn first. That's when things don't go their way. If they can learn to just
keep calm, say okay, or disagree appropriately about it, and then just drop the subject and
let it go, that they are not going to start a fight in the first place and what about
that disagree appropriately one? Well, when a person learns how to disagree appropriately,
then instead of fighting back with a person who may have crossed over a boundary line,
they can say. I'm going to disagree appropriately with you, I know that you want to play with that
toy, but I actually was already using it first, and I'll be done with it in just a few minutes,
then you can have a turn, okay. And at that point, hopefully they can bring about reasonable
conversation. Now if they can't, obviously, you're going to have to help the children understand when
is the appropriate time to come to you and have you helped them use the skills that you've taught
them or maybe sometimes you might even have to do a correction. Children can learn to problem solve
their own problems, if they have the proper skills in place, and you can teach them those skills. And
here's the thing with the four basic skills as well as all of the other skills I teach in
the teaching self government parenting course. And that is that everyone needs them, parents,
children, everyone. I have a free gift for you. Remember, I talked to you about that? Well,
it is a calm parenting toolkit, which is actually a course. It's a mini course, it's got 10 lessons,
10 tools that you can utilize to be calm when someone else isn't and to get you on the road
to self government. In the description below this video, there is a link that says teach
selfgov.com/toolkit. Click on that link right now and you can get the calm parenting toolkit for
free and be on the road to a calmer you and better communication and calmness for your entire family.