Do you want to know how to get your parents to say yes?
Well I've got some tips for you. I am Nicholeen Peck and I teach all about parenting,
good communication and how to build strong family relationships
and in this video I'm going to be giving you some tips for how to help your parents agree with you.
In this video I'm going to share with you some skills that you can use to help your parents agree
with you and also share with you some tips about getting them to agree with you that you might not
have thought of before so prepare to be surprised. I teach self-government but a long time ago when I
was a teenager, I actually didn't get along with my parents very well at all. In fact there were skills
that I was missing drastically, we fought all the time. I was constantly trying to get them to see
my point of view and I was constantly failing. In fact one time I remember even getting really
aggressive with my parents and even hitting my own mother because I wanted to get my point across so
much and guess what? There was no point in that, it didn't work. It just made more of a division
between me and my parents. So what changed? There was this amazing moment that happened with one of
my neighbors that literally changed my whole life. It changed the way I see everything and brought me
to self-government as a way to live my life. I was over at a friend's house and we were planning
for a party that we wanted to throw. It was me and her mom and her and we had this fun party planned,
I was 14 years old and we were going to invite boys and girls and we were going to do all these
fun activities and then all of a sudden it hit me, ugh I'm not going to be able to go to this party.
My parents never let me do anything. All we ever do is fight so I said that to my friend and her
mom, I said I'm not going to be able to go and then my friend's mom asked me a question. This question
literally changed the whole trajectory of my life and it helped me get my way. I never saw it coming,
literally never saw it coming because I was a strong-willed person, I was used to fighting
to try to get my way. Sometimes I would wear my mom down and it would work occasionally
but then other times, it just didn't work at all and so it was super hit and miss
which meant I had to be fighting all the time. It's really draining. This is what my friend's mom said.
She looked at me and she said Nicholeen, have you ever thought of just saying okay,
that threw me back. I said what? That would never work, that's what they want me to say and she
said no really Nicholeen, I challenge you. You go home, we will postpone this party for two weeks.
You go home and for every time they tell you to do something or not to do something, say okay
and be okay. Now, I want you to ask yourself which is harder, to say okay or to choose to be okay.
Well for me choosing to be okay was definitely harder. Anyone can say anything but being okay,
that's different. So I went home that night and I told her I was going to prove her wrong. It was not
going to work, I told her she couldn't contact my parents, she promised she would not do that
and I went home and it was dinner time, we eat dinner, my mom tells me I need to do my dishes
and I thought okay here it is. I'm gonna say okay and be okay and so I said okay and I stood
up and I started doing the dishes. Now this was unusual for me because I was the type of person
that would try to like say oh no because somebody else left their dish in the sink and so really, I
shouldn't have to do that or you know oh, I have homework, I would come up with excuses you know
and I wouldn't do it usually but this time I just did and oddly enough it only took me
about seven minutes. But anyway because dishes don't actually take that long I've noticed even
though you think they do when you're standing there doing the same thing again and again.
So anyway, I said okay my parents, looked each other as if they had seen a ghost. They were shocked,
what just happened, what did this girl want, what was she going to ask for and I thought
well this is interesting. Clearly they're shocked but that's not going to make a difference because
I reasoned surely they don't like me, they don't care about me. So then the days go by I'm
saying okay and being okay to everything and then the big whammy. My mom decides to test me hard and
she tells me that I need to clean my room which she had been trying to get me to clean for weeks,
actually probably months. She kept walking by and just shutting the door because I never was doing
it. She said Nicholeen, you need to clean your room and I said okay and I started cleaning it
and I remember her watching me clean my room in disbelief. She was just looking around watching
me pick up everything so then this thought came to my mind and the thought said I am so powerful and
I thought yeah, I am so powerful. I just chose to be happy, I picked it. Nobody is ever gonna make me not
happy again. I chose to say okay and to be okay and I reasoned I'm gonna get anything that I want
and you know what actually I kind of did get anything I wanted after that. mean not completely
but if I wanted to do stuff with my friends like go to the party, I could go, I went to the party,
I went to the mall with my friends, I went to the movies with my friends, I had friends over.
Suddenly I wanted to have them over because I had a better relationship with my parents and so I
didn't mind people seeing my relationship with my parents where before I was kind of trying to hide
it and I didn't want to be around it. Everything changed for me when I learned to say okay and
be okay. Those are two vital things to some of the key skills that a person needs as an adult
to be successful. I didn't even know but I actually was inventing skill sets for myself. So there are
two skills called following instructions and accepting "no" answers and criticism
which basically mean to say okay and be okay. They have more steps to them than that so that you can
fine-tune where you can improve but basically it was I can follow instructions from my parents now
and I can accept their "no" answers that changed everything but there was still something else I
needed to learn. I'm going to tell you what that other skill is that you need for success, that
thing I definitely needed to learn but before that click the subscribe button. Do you want the inside
scoop on what you can do to improve relationships with your family. Just because this is a parenting
channel does not mean that you are not going to get what you need t. Really all good relationships
just come from good communication and that's what I teach so click the subscribe button now.
The other skill that I needed to successfully communicate with my parents and get my way
was a skill called disagreeing appropriately and sadly, I did not learn this skill completely until
I actually was parenting teenagers of my own. Well they were troubled teens that were foster children,
my own children were babies at the time so I was still a young person. I was in my early 20s
when I learned this skill but I thought oh whoa, this would have changed everything for me. So the
steps to disagreeing appropriately are you look at the person, you keep a calm face, voice and body, you
say that you understand the other person's point of view, you share your point of view, you listen
to what they have to say, you say okay and then you drop the subject. What if I would have had that as
a young person? Well I can tell you what would have happened my parents would have been amazed that I
was so mature and I could communicate with them in such a confident way but I also would have gotten
my way more. I know that because when my children disagree appropriately with me, I really appreciate
getting that extra understanding from them so that I can help them get more of what they need
and even what they want. Those are three of the four basic skills that you need for success. The
only one that we haven't really addressed is the one accepting consequences. If you want your
parents to listen to you, to understand you more and for you to get your way more then you need to
be willing to accept consequences, be willing to accept correction. They have a role to teach you.
Part of being a parent is being a teacher and being a child is being a learner. If you don't
want to learn or they don't want to teach, you're going to have dysfunction every time.
So choose to be okay with them correcting you. It'll make all the difference a guy named Sean
Covey introduced me to the concept of a relationship bank account years ago.
Basically he said you know what? People all have like a bank account on the inside.
Parents have a bank account, children have a bank account and there are ways that we make deposits
and withdrawals in our relationship bank accounts. I was blown away. I'm like that's actually true.
Every single time a child follows instruction from parent or accept "no" answers from parent
or disagrees appropriately to parent that's like making a deposit inside your parents bank account.
But every time that you're disrespectful, every time you roll your eyes, every time that you don't
follow instructions or you're mean or rude, that's a big withdrawal and it takes lots of deposits
to get ready for such a big withdrawal like that. So if you want to get your way more often,
make way more deposits than withdrawals. I know withdrawals can happen from time to time,
that's just part of being human and learning and forgive yourself for that and fix it. But if you're
focused on making deposits, doing all of those four basic skills that we've talked about, communicating
openly with your parents, they're gonna have a lot more trust in you, that's right. When you make more
deposits, when you follow instructions, they trust you more, that means you end up having more freedom,
that's what happened to me and my parents when I was 14 years old and it changed everything. My
mom started coming to school to check me out just because our favorite department store was having a
sale. My mom would have never done that before but she felt like we were close enough and that it was
important enough for us to have that time because we had a good relationship finally. It took a long
time and a lot of it rested on me. I remember sitting in church one Sunday and my dad was at
the pulpit and he said I want to thank my daughter for teaching me what it means to be a good father.
I knew what he meant. I had chosen to do these skills and that had changed everything. He had
changed, he became a better version of himself because I chose to be a better version of myself
too. There are so many more things about calmness and controlling yourself that I could teach you
but you know I think one of the best ways that you could learn is by seeing what I teach your parents.
So if you go to the video how to discipline a disrespectful teenager,
you will see some of the principles and skills that I'm sharing with your parents
so that they can do a better job working with you. Now I'm not saying you're disrespectful,
I'm just saying it could happen to any of us, it definitely happened to me and if you want them
to see your way more, see what they are going to try to do with you or maybe even give them ideas
about how they can parent you better so you can have a stronger relationship.
This whole channel is full of ideas for how you can improve your relationship with your parents
which in the end gets you more of what you want. Click on the link to that video now.