Hi, I'm Nicholeen Peck and I'm joined here with my son
Porter and we are going to be talking today about instilling a good work ethic in children.
Hi, everybody I'm Nicholeen Peck and I teach all over the world about parenting, family
communication and building good relationships and in this video I have asked my son Porter who's 17
to be with me to talk about work because work is actually a pretty important part of our family. So
we're going to talk about work and what that work atmosphere in our family has done for his life as
he's just getting ready to launch into adulthood. Well, Porter thank you so much for joining me on
this video. There's a lot of people who want to see you. Yeah, they're like yeah we hear from
Nicholeen, all the time but what about the children and I'm thinking holy cow. My children are
almost all gone now but I'm so glad that you're not gone yet. Yeah, we were able to have you here.
So let's talk about work. Okay let's talk about how do you feel about work maybe we should
start there. I mean we're going to talk about how to help other people feel good about work but
where are you at when it comes to work at age 17? I think work's really important obviously.
I've been taught really how to work hard and I really appreciate that. A lot of places where I go
to work, they don't know how to work and I'm just like okay but yeah work is really important.
Some people just were never -some people don't know how to read a clock like they were just never
taught things I was like okay so I'm really grateful for my family for teaching me how
to work how to garden. We do garden. We garden a lot. Right, Porter? So we have a half acre of ground
which doesn't sound very big but we use all of it. It's all landscaped with vineyards and orchards
and vegetable gardens and everything and I'll tell you what, Porter can do it all. Like there are times
when I've been out of town speaking and porter will just prep all the ground, all the dirt, he'll
get out all of the irrigation hoses and get it all working and everything or he'll weed all of it and
I mean Porter when you're out there and you're doing that work,
what type of thoughts are going through your mind like what is it that you're thinking about that
opportunity that you have to work? Work, it really just clears your mind, working just clears your
mind. It's kind of like a reset, it just makes you it like humbles you for real like. Yeah
you're working and you just see the progress that you do and it's just so satisfying. Yeah
I love that. I love that you say it humbles you, it resets you because I definitely feel the same way.
In fact this is a principle called georgic. So it used to be very well understood among
people that when you were working at something, that's when your mind was the most at ease. So the
fact that you're feeling that reset, that actually is a healing feeling and a lot of people think
that work is going to hurt them. So as we're trying to help other people know how to instill a work
ethic in people, don't you think it's important that they know how to present it? I mean we should
be presenting it as a healing thing, a feel-good thing, not a let's get the drudgery done and then
do something fun thing even though I mean it is nice to do the fun thing after too.
So we're going to be getting more into Porter's training with work and how he motivates himself to
work but before we do that, click that subscribe button. There are so many great videos on this
channel pertaining to work and chores and good communication and calm family relationships,
you're not going to want to miss those so click the subscribe button now. So Porter there are four
different ways that we have taught work at our house and I'm sure I just say them and you know
immediately what it is so how about you explain to everybody what is family work? Family work is
you're all working as a family, you're all doing one project all in sync, in unison and
it's just like a well-oiled machine. It is like a well-oiled machine. Everyone knows what needs
to be done and we're all working together and oftentimes family work was short. It
would be like 30 minutes of family work per day. Okay this is good for our bonding but
it's also good to just clean up one area, we'll be like okay for family work today,
the family room. Let's get going, but it's also a really great opportunity
to have the family bond together and I think that's an important thing about family work but
do you remember some of those summer days when family work was longer than 30 minutes?
Okay so how about you tell people what are some of the things that we do that sometimes family
work is longer? There's definitely the deep clean of the house. Oh, yeah the spring cleaning, one of
the longest and then there's the gardening which takes long too. Those are lots of long days. Yeah,
what about canning season? Oh, yep there's season too. Canning season or when we're getting ready for
a camping trip. Yeah, there's hours of work packing the trailer, loading everything up, hooking it all
up. The thing about Porter is he can do everything that my husband can do and you know what? He's
actually been able to work alongside me in the same capacity that I can work with my husband
since he was probably nine years old honestly because he has been working and has such a good
work ethic because he's been doing it for so long and I think that's an important thing to recognize.
So not only do we do family work as a family every single day but we also do our own work
every day. We are assigned, all of us have certain areas or things that we work on. So maybe one day,
it might be Porter's time to clean the bathroom or it might be his day to do dishes
after dinner or maybe it's even his cook day because part of work is cooking
and Porter you've been doing things like laundry forever. Porter could fold and put his own laundry
away when he was three years old. He started taking it to the washer and dumping it in and starting it
when he was five and changing it. So I mean yeah we had to have a stool because he was little
but he did and we had a special laundry basket that could fold up you know into like a little
circle and it could pop open so it was nice and easy and light he could drag it through the
house. I don't know if you remember that longer, I remember it. Anyway that was part of our life, it's
always been part of our life to have everyday jobs, right. So that's definitely been a key thing
for our work, don't you think? Oh yeah, for sure. Yeah, yeah. So what else do you think could be
an important thing that we could talk to them about different ways that they could be working
together to instill that work ethic? There's definitely so the family things, the personal
things but there's also extra chores. Yeah extra chores. So when do those happen? So if you don't
accept a "no" answer, you don't say okay, you get corrected and then you get an extra chore. Yeah
you get the opportunity to earn an extra chore and when you're doing that extra chore, is it
just serving you? No, no it serves the whole family. So the whole idea of the extra chore is you are
being corrected and you are doing something that requires your effort. I'm not just taking something
away. So it's your effort that you're putting in and it's serving other people around you which
is really good. So, work is the antidote for a sick character and if Porter is going to roll his eyes
at me or have an attitude which really doesn't usually happen then I know that probably his
character is struggling right there a little bit so all the more reason to go have some of that
reset time and to do some work but I don't let you get the opportunity to do that work until you're
what? Calm. Yeah, you got to be calm first then you can go accept it and then of course we can
talk about whatever it is for sure. So Porter I'm thinking of one more way that we use work in our
family. Porter is a highly motivated person and he does his own work, his own projects. So what types
of projects or work have you done for yourself? I have always liked to have a clean room so that's
one small one, that's just like cleaning it all the time. Every day, every other day whenever it gets
messy because I can't focus in a mess or dirty anything like that. I also love doing
the lawn, I love seeing it all fresh, nice and cut, nice and clean, clean lines. You do like clean lines,
I do. You're like your dad. Yep, yeah. I like to carve my initials in the lawn, it's different.
Just like a bike, like fixing a bike, you know? Just the motivation. I love getting
my hands dirty, getting in there, putting some elbow grease on there. You know yeah, yeah, no
that's totally you. Okay so let's talk about the motivation for those types of things. So maybe tell
everybody what is it that motivates you like why do you want to have this work and by the way,
like you have had three jobs. You've done shipping for teaching self-government until
just recently for years and years, you've taught with me at conferences, you've run my booth at
conferences like an adult does oftentimes even better than most adults that I've had help me.
You work for a food establishment, you also work your guts out on all the sports teams you're on
and going to the gym and everything but you also have worked construction a ton with your dad. I
mean this is a lot of work that you're doing so this shows that you truly have that work ethic
and that that's been instilled in you. How do you keep perpetuating that work? What do you do to
motivate yourself. Well I really just think of like I want to learn everything that I can, I want to be
the best at everything that I can and so the more I learn, the more I do stuff, the more I get better
at it, the more I start to like it, the more I can do other things. So you're actually looking at your
own skill development saying I want to be a man, yeah and you're like okay, that's one more step in
helping me become a man. Yeah, that's awesome, that means you have a long view and I think
that's probably the thing that people get hung up on, when their child does not want to do anything,
the child is having a very short view. They're like what do I want right now but what you're saying is
that you've actually been trained to think what do I want in the future? So we have meetings and
times that we meet where we talk about the future. Let's talk about that next. So, Porter let's talk
about the meetings. Okay so every week we have a meeting that's called a mentor meeting, that's
right. We have the mentor meetings and you like the mentor meetings? Right, yes, yes. Okay so why do you
like the mentor meetings. It's personal time with mom and dad, you express your feelings,
it's like just you and them, you that is a personal connection that you can't
get anywhere else. You're gonna make goals, you're gonna basically your whole week what do you want
to do, what do you need to do and you just make a plan. Mm-hmm. So this is huge and in my teaching
self-government parenting course, I talk about these mentor meetings and how to set up a really
good mentor meeting we've been doing these since Porter was a teeny tiny little guy and he would
draw all over the mentor meeting paper but now we actually fill out all the lines and he will
make plans for himself and he will set goals for his work goals, like to earn a certain amount of
money for different things, things he wants to work on, he will bring up ideas to us like hey, I think
we should cut the lawn on this day because that's the best. I mean you bring up things that are like
action items and this also happens in our family meetings. So, we also have family meetings that
happen every week which addresses more work that we're probably going to be doing as a family. You
know the only other thing i can think of that really has made an impact as far as work ethic
goes is your parents like to work. Yeah, your parents like to work, I like to work, dad really
likes to work, he does, he likes to work and so between the two of us, we've shown you works
good, it's not bad and we've not given work a bad spin even if you earn an extra chore, it's not like
hahahaha you've earned an extra chore but it's well you get the opportunity to do
an extra chore now, a little character development, no big deal and work is always no big
deal and it's a good thing and I think that goes a long way for the children and we also do
service for other people. Lots of service for other people so because our family is engaged in
that type of work, we also show the value of work. So, I think a lot of people when they want to teach
work ethic to children, they think of money but our family hasn't been handing out money all the time.
We've just been literally working and loving the work. All right if you have enjoyed this
video then I'm pretty sure you're gonna love our next video which is called the not so known secret
to parenting success. It's going to go into a lot more details about following instructions
and key skills that you might need to help your children start liking work at the beginning.