Hi, I'm Nicholeen Peck and I teach all about parenting, good communication and improving
family relationships all over the world through the lens of self-government and
in this video I'm going to be talking about dealing with feisty, defiant four-year-olds.
In this video we're going to talk a little bit about four-year-olds, four-year-old behavior
and what we can expect there and then what types of things that parents can do to help
their four-year-olds conquer some of their troubling behaviors. So, let's talk about age
four. What an exciting age, so it's also a really frustrating age. It's exciting for parents because
for those four-year-olds, they're starting to learn so many things. The letters, the colors, the numbers,
they're hooking pieces together, they've got all these synapses that have been formed in the brain
and hooking different sections of the brain together. It's super exciting to watch a child
go from the toddler age into now this childhood age, which happens around age three and four.
So four-year-olds have a lot of energy, they're hooking together lots of pieces
and for the four-year-old, they're looking at their world and their life and they're
starting to feel smart. They're starting to feel like they know all kinds of things
and with this increase in intelligence and putting pieces together, also we get a little bit of
defiance that comes in, we get that independent spirit that rears its head and they start
testing boundaries, seeing how much control they have, what type of manipulations that they can do
that don't get them in trouble necessarily. So, they start testing the boundaries. Now, boundaries can be
tested at almost any age but four years old is a really common age for testing out the boundaries.
Also age four, it's super important that they are hyper focused on what is the right thing to do
and what is not the right thing to do. So, sometimes they test just because they want to see what it
feels like to do something that's not the right thing to do. So, they see opposites very drastic,
stark between objects between feelings, between relationships, activities, personalities. So, they're
starting to discern a lot more so there's a lot of brain development that happens right
around this time as they're hooking all of these things together. So, it's important to
recognize that some of the things that they do are just because they are trying things out, they're
curious, they're testing the waters so they do need to have some certain you know specific deliberate
training to help them during this stage so that they don't end up developing behavior that is not
okay. Feisty behavior is definitely something that you can see with the four-year-old but lots of
times, that feisty behavior is actually something that they have learned environmentally. Now not
always, there are strong-willed people, of course. Many of them, in fact. I think a lot of our children
nowadays are strong-willed. They definitely have that freedom spirit and they're trying to
pursue all of the ideas that they have with great energy and vigor but, there are some behaviors,
some sassy behaviors, some disrespectful behaviors. Lots of those behaviors are actually learned
and maybe the people teaching them weren't actually realizing that there were young eyes that
were taking note and feeling like those behaviors might be things that they want to try out as well.
A good example of this is the video that came out years and years ago. Now, it was the one where
there's a little boy in a kitchen, he's probably a lot older and he was talking to his mother, I
believe and he's like no Linda, listen, listen, listen and somebody is filming the listen Linda
boy and it was hysterical. I mean rightly so, you see this boy who's actually trying to give a
lecture to his mother or whoever is you know over him that he's talking to, whoever's name is Linda
and he's doing it in such a way that it seems like he has authority over her and he's using
phrases that at his age which was probably around age four, he would not have had those
types of phrases in his vocabulary unless he had heard them from somebody else.
So, he had heard one person censoring another person or maybe it's happened multiple times
in his view and so when he wanted to be heard, he started to take on that approach that a parent
or a grandparent would take on with a child or an approach to communication that you would take on
when you're trying not to listen to somebody else while telling them they need to listen to you at
the same time. So, that old video actually gives you an idea of how easy it is to train children
environmentally and not even realize it. So, in that case they were taking a video because they
probably thought this is hysterical, he thinks he's the mom or you know or the parent or something
and he was completely outside of his role. Now, of course laughing at it and that kind of thing is
not the right way. We don't know what happened off camera if they corrected him or something
but in that moment, they were surprised. Surprised enough to take a video at this
little guy's behavior and I don't know his exact age but he looked around age four. Because children
are starting to put together so many of the pieces to their environment, then at age four they start
feeling like they want to tell people what to do and so they assert a little bit of dominance
or see how much dominance that they can assert during this time. It's super important for parents
to take action to keep roles in the right place so that the defiance does not increase and so
that relationships are not damaged and the child doesn't develop some bad habits that they're going
to have to overcome later which will actually become more pronounced the older they get. So,
let's talk about the type of environment and skills that you need to put into place to help
your feisty defiant four-year-old but before we do, hit that subscribe button. There's a lot of
great video content on here about teaching your children self-mastery, self-government.
You're not going to want to miss those so subscribe now. So, what do you do to help this
four-year-old? So at the age of four while they're putting together all these pieces of their life,
you actually can help them a whole lot more than you think you can. So, there's a lot of training, a
lot of comprehension that they have that parents probably don't even realize that they have. So,
you can talk to your children about more things than you think is basically what I'm saying here.
And so keeping that in mind, you want to definitely have a pre-teaching mindset with your children. So
what in the world does a pre-teaching mindset mean is that means that you prepare your child
ahead of time to connect the dots before they are in the minute where they need to connect the dots
so that they are more successful. So, with a child who is maybe starting to experience with defiance
and they're being a little bit rebellious or testing boundaries during this stage, what I
would definitely do is pull them aside and have a special conversation with them about a behavior.
It doesn't have to have just happened. In fact it's usually better if it didn't just happen.
You pull them aside at a time when it is not the moment when they've misbehaved and you say this
is what I've noticed that has happened. Let's talk about it. Do you see why this might be a bad idea?
This is what people think about your behavior and you when you do this, people get annoyed by you or
you know people want to reach out to you and help you or you know whatever kind of rationale that
you want to give to them but you explain this is what people think, this is what your behavior
is, let's talk about better ways to get your way. Let's learn some skill development for that.
Some of the best skills that you could be teaching your four-year-old child are the four basic skills.
There are four basic skills that I have taught my children and all of my foster children that lead
them towards self mastery and putting together so many of the social pieces in their brain so
that they learn how to communicate with others in effective ways. The four basic skills and these
skill sets that are attached to these four basic skills take care of 99% of their behavior problems.
The four basic skills are taught in these four children's books. So this one, London Larae Says
Okay teaches the skill following instructions. To follow an instruction, you look at the person, keep
a calm face, voice and body, say okay or ask to disagree appropriately, do the task immediately
and then check back. This book, Porter Earns A Quarter, teaches the skill accepting "no" answers and
criticism. There are four steps to that skill. This book, Big Win for Quinn, teaches the skill accepting
consequences. There's six steps to that skill and then finally this book, Paije Takes The Stage,
teaches the skill disagreeing appropriately and here's a fun fact. I have four children and these
are all my four children. So our family, there's cartoon pictures of us in these books which is
kind of fun. When a person learns how to disagree appropriately with other people, how to accept
"no" answers, how to accept consequences, how to follow instructions then that person actually
is empowered to have good behavior. So, you're giving them content to hook into their brains with
all these little synapses, you're hooking pieces together. Oh, you want to get more of what you want,
disagree appropriately. Oh, you want to feel more of a connection during you know go to bed time then
let's follow instructions. Let's keep calm, follow instructions so we don't have to have any
problems. Now, another thing that's really important about four-year-olds is being consistent in your
feedback to their behavior. So because they are forming all these connections in their brain,
it is important that you make sure that you teach them cause and effect. So for a person to learn
self-government, they need to learn cause and effect. As well as the four basic skills, it's
super important to have skills for how you will correct problems, how you will praise circumstances
because if a person is going to learn cause and effect then they need to see that the good equals
good and that the bad equals bad and they're looking for those polar opposites. Remember they're
looking. So, we need to be praising the children six to ten times for every one time that we correct
them, which means we're going to be noticing all of their efforts and stuff and praising those things
on a regular basis and then our corrections to the children need to be consistent as well. So if we
consistently correct our children, they learn cause and effect and they'll come back to those core
four basic skills that they need to for success. So, it's important that we are consistent in our
interactions with our children so that we can help them do much more self analysis and make better
decisions for themselves. Now, all of those skills for correcting the behaviors, praising behaviors,
teaching the children, discussing with children, getting them to open up to you, you can find all
of these skills and trainings on my website teachingselfgovernment.com.