Do you want to know what to do instead of lecturing because lecturing is not effective,
I will explain why. I'm Nicholeen Peck and I teach parenting and good communication
all over the world through the lens of the principal self government and in
this video, we're going to be talking about lecturing, and what you should do instead.
In this video, I'm going to share a true story from my life and somebody who has recovered from
lecturing, and then we're going to talk about lecturing, what we hope to accomplish when we
lecture people, and then what to do instead. All right, are you ready for a story from my life?
My dad was a lecture, I'm talking top of the line first class lecturer to the point that he could
lecture almost the entire night long and I know, because I tested it. Now there's something you
need to know about lecturing, it's not effective. Lecturing just makes a person power struggle with
you. It is a type of power struggling technique, people lecture because they want to feel a person
change or come their direction. So basically, it's a way of wearing somebody down, it does feel very
manipulative to the person on the listening end of the lecture. They feel like you're wasting
their time, they feel like you are trying to control them and manipulate them. So you don't
want to engage in lecturing. Now let me share this example. So my dad who was a lecturer, he one time
told me no for something, I can't remember what it was, maybe I wanted to go do something with
friends or something like that, then I didn't want to accept that, I countered with well,
but why this and that, and the other. I remember I went into my room because I was frustrated.
And I started just like, I'm going to bed, right? A little power struggle. So he came in,
and he sat on my bed like a loving father and he decided he wasn't going to power struggle with me,
he was going to talk to me about it. Well, his talk started as a talk, but turned into
a really huge lecture. The biggest one I ever had in my life. So within the first 30 seconds,
I knew my dad was right and I was wrong. In fact, I probably walked away from him because I knew he
was right and I was wrong and I didn't really know how to express myself. But I did not admit
it because I was strong willed. And a strong willed person does not want to admit when they're
wrong, even if they know they're wrong. They like to just chew on the fact that they were wrong,
and then decide never to have that same experience again. That's what the strong willed person does.
Well, anyway, Dad was going to convince me that I was wrong, and that he was right and he was
going to carry on. Now he was a debate coach. So if you can imagine what type of a lecture I had,
it had all the proofs in it, all the things, right, that the big coach would present to somebody if
they're trying to convince them and I decided to play with him. I remember I hit a point where I
thought he's just going on and on, you know what, let's see how long he can really go. So I decided
to use my strong will in a very non productive way and to see how long he would lecture and
what I found is that he probably would have gone the entire night, which actually tells me he cared
a lot. People who lecture care a lot. So recognize that about yourself or your friend who happens to
be a lecturer. So what happened when I made my dad go all night long. This is how I did it. So
I decided that every time he said something that I knew was true, I was going to counter it in some
way. I was going to present to him why I thought that wasn't exactly accurate. I was going to give
him an exception to the rule or I was going to give him some sort of counter that made it so that
I didn't have to exactly believe that. I would partway believe, I would egg him on, draw him in
and see how long he would keep trying to convince me. The clock in my bedroom was just behind him.
And so I could see the time ticking by. I knew that my father had to wake up at like, 5, 5:30 in the
morning. So I kept him going saying yeah, but I mean, I see that but not really because of this.
I kept him going until 2:30am and then I remember looking at the clock thinking that's late enough.
So then I looked at him. I said, you know, Dad, you're right. I'm sorry. I think
I misunderstood. You're right. Okay and he was like, Oh, I'm so glad we had that good
conversation and you know what, he probably walked to his bed thinking it was worth it.
My daughter respects my authority. She knows and she understands. I knew he was right way,
way back. I was just playing a game with him. He would have gone the whole night. That's how
much he cared about our relationship. So do people who lecture care? Usually, some of them
may like the sound of their own voice, but most of them do really want to do something
that's good. So now what do we do instead of lecturing, since it's really not effective,
it seems manipulative, and it can even disconnect people who we're trying to connect to. Well,
let's talk about that. But before we do, click the subscribe button. This channel has so much
information that will help you so that you don't have to lecture and so that you can have effective
communication with your family members. Click subscribe now. I am known all over the world
for teaching the principles of self government, which actually you're taught in this book here,
Parenting A House United, this is a best selling book and it has really changed thousands and thousands
of families over the years. So in this book, I talk about the ways that I talked to my children.
In fact, I talked about how I prepare them to accept those words from me and that teaching,
I talked about how I choose my words carefully, and oftentimes stick to a script so that I don't
fall into manipulating or so that I don't create more anxiety for my children. So when the family
understands certain words that they need to say, when they have a script that they have prepared,
then everyone has higher predictability, which means less anxiety, this is a great thing. As soon
as a person starts lecturing, the anxiety goes up, because now we don't know how long it will be,
they have stopped listening to you. Now they're just wondering how long it will take before you're
done. They feel ill used. So when I know what to say and I know my children know what I will say,
we all have the same skills and understanding of those skills that saves tons of time,
no more lectures, people can have changes of heart, changes of behavior quickly and we can spend our
time talking about things that we care about a whole lot more than how somebody rolled their
eyes or something like that. So let's talk about taking that time. I'm going to teach the skills,
skills like following instructions, accepting "no" answers and criticism, accepting consequences
disagreeing appropriately. I'm also going to teach them my exact skills for correcting behaviors. I'm
going to teach them something for instance, like, I'm going to describe what happened,
I'm going to say just now I gave you a "no" answer, and you didn't look at me, because step number one
to accepting a "no" answer is to look at the person. So then I will do a description of what happened,
then I will explain why that's not a good idea and I will usually do that in one to
two sentences, then I will say something like when you choose not to look at me,
I'm not sure if you heard me, which then makes me want to do more talking. Now see
they don't want the more talking. So that's a rational that matters to them. Right? So those
first two steps of a correction, and those are just two of seven steps, help me not lecture to
my child. So then when I tell them what they should have done, that's step number three, I
say what you should have done was, you should have looked at me, because that's the first step
of accepting "no" answer. And then you should have kept a calm face voice and body, said,
Okay, you're asked to disagree appropriately, and drop the subject. Now I'm going to go on
for my correction from they're going to tell them what negative consequences they earn,
we're going to practice things the right way, there's going to be some praises in there. This is
how I correct to the children. This stops me from lecturing about something. Do I need to hit some
moral place every single time that they roll their eyes? Or don't look at me or don't follow through
with something? No, they know, when they haven't done it correctly. I just teach them the steps
to the skills that they should have followed and then we just refer back to those steps to
the skills and then touch the heart just a little bit with that one or two sentences that's in the
rationale step. That's all you need. So how are you going to make sure that you really nail it
without lecturing? Well, you might have to take a second before you actually do the correction and
think out your words, especially if you're the type of person who thinks all their thoughts as
they're speaking. Take a second, stop yourself and think, Wait a second, what do I want to say here?
What is the reason that would matter to them? What did they do? What should they have done?
Those are the three main questions we have to ask ourselves, then we engage in the conversation. Now
correction is really powerful, and the children learning those skills also super powerful. This
prepares everyone for success. But there are other things that we can do preemptively to make sure
that problems don't occur in the first place that we might get tempted to lecture about. So in the
teaching family government system of parenting, I have certain things that we do ahead of time,
such as we pre teach all of the skills so everyone knows them. Then we also have family meetings
where we discuss problems we might be facing as a group and decide how the family will handle
those problems as a group. We also have something called a family standard which is where we
handle things that might touch on some of our morals, things like how we're going to dress
and not dress and what words we will say and not say, what movies will watch or not watch, the ways
that we'll spend our time, how we will interact with digital devices. All of these things are
contained in the family standard and when you have those things pre taught to the children, then
they automatically know the reason why you would tell them no for something, you just have to say,
oh, that does not fit with our family standard. So I'm going to need to give you a no answer. Boom,
it's done. You don't have to keep talking about it again and again. Now sure, every once in a while
you might feel like you net need to add a few additional bits of information. But by and large,
the pre teaching will make it so that you don't have to do the lecturing after the fact. I am
just scratching the surface here on teaching self government and you can see how teaching
self government is perfect for conquering lecturing. But did you know that almost any
problem related to your family relationships can actually be solved because of the teaching self
government parenting system? I would like to help you know more about that and so I
have created a free class that you can access on this channel. The class that you should go
to next, the video that you should go to next is called the not so known secret for parenting
success. It's a full length class that will give you a lot of the nuts and bolts you might be
looking for to put this system in process. Click on the link now. I'll see you there.