Hi, I'm Nicholeen Peck and I teach all over the world about parenting, good communication and
family bonding. And in this video, I'm talking about how to discipline a disrespectful teenager.
In this video, we're going to talk a little bit about discipline and what makes good discipline
and how to apply good discipline to disrespectful teenagers. Essentially, the word discipline
relates to the word disciple. So when a child is disciplined, the whole idea is that you help them
become a better disciple, you help them honor their parents. So that seems a little biblical,
doesn't it? Because that's actually where it comes from, the whole concept of discipline. I do like
to think of discipline as teaching children. So rather than doing something to a child,
I like to help the child learn how to govern themselves. And this requires consistent
teaching on the part of the parent. So I teach parenting through the lens of self government.
So what is self government? Let's learn that. Self government is being able to determine the
cause and effect of any given situation, and possessing a knowledge of your own behavior,
so that you can control them. So what that means is that you analyze yourself,
you give yourself "no" answers, you give yourself instructions, you correct yourself,
you motivate yourself forward. So this would mean that a child, if they're self governed would say
to themselves, Oh, I just had a disrespectful thought, I don't think I'll do that. I think
instead, I'll use this other skill that mom and dad taught me called disagreeing appropriately,
that's going to be more productive for me. So the person actually makes deliberate plans for
themselves and moves themselves forward. By doing self assessment on a regular basis. Part
of the self assessment is keeping in mind who they really are to the other person. Usually, if you're
having trouble with disrespecting your family is oftentimes because there are role problems.
Years ago, I wrote this book called Parenting A House United, it's the one I'm the most known
for, talks about all the skills and principles of self government to help unify a family.
But when I wrote that book, I assumed that everyone understood family roles. And I don't
mean responsibilities, because anybody can cut the front grass, or make a dinner or go to work.
What I'm talking about is actually the roles that each person has with each other. So if
those are not maintained in the family, then we lose sight of who each other is, we start becoming
very selfish. And then we have dysfunction. So I ended up creating this book to solve the problem
called Roles: The Secret to Family, Business and Social Success. And it's a story of a family,
the Justice family, and how their children don't want to help out, they're showing some disrespect to
parents, the parents are also having a little bit of struggle, figuring out what's going to
work best to help their children. And then you see how they learn about their roles, and how they fix
the roles in their family. And in the meantime, learn self government too. So it's a really fun
way to learn. It's something you could even read with your children. But if you have teens that are
disrespecting you, then something has probably replaced their affection or they have forgotten
who you are, and who they are. Now, they may not say they've forgotten that, but they've forgotten
what it means to be you. So if you're a mother say, what is the mother of a family? What is her role?
She is the heart and hearthstone of the family. She literally holds a tether to the heart of all
of her children, and she's able to guide them, direct them. And every time they make a decision,
they're usually thinking, would mom be okay with this decision? Because she has that type of a
moral compass for the entire family group. So what about Dad? Who is Dad? What is his role?
If he's provider, protector? These are things that are oftentimes applied to the role Dad,
what does it mean to truly protect your children? Well, it doesn't that mean that you are the
example of who they are trying to become, that you show them how to relate with all of the
problems in the world that they find around them. Both mothers and fathers are teachers
to their children, and children all have the role of learner. If we get teachers
not teaching or learners not learning, we have dysfunction. And we have to go back to roles.
When you have a child who is disrespectful to you, whether they are in their teens or
otherwise, that is a state of dysfunction. And it usually is a sign that you have a roles problem.
So I recommend definitely looking at roles first, and then going to all of the skills and
principles of self government that are going to be useful. So let's talk about those.
So let's talk about the skills and principles of self government that are going to be really useful
to you as you are focusing on improving your technique for helping to discipline or teach your
teenage child that might be having problems with respect. So let's talk a little bit about that
word respect. When a person respects another person, that means they honor who that person
is. This is why the roles bit is so important. When you respect a person, you revere them,
you highly regard them, which means that you acknowledge their value. When you have disrespect
for a person, you usually are behaving in a way that is indifferent, which shows that you don't
necessarily value that other person. So we want to make sure that we're creating good bonds and
connections as a family in order to increase each other's value all of the time. So in our family,
when I did treatment foster care, I was bringing in disrespectful teenagers into our home,
they weren't part of our family, why should they care about me at all, except that they they were
court ordered to go to my home. So I had to start reeling improving that bond, and that relationship
with those teens before I could ever touch their heart and help them learn self government. In
the end, when a person learns self government, it's because they've chosen to have a change of
heart. And I wanted that for all of my children and all of the foster children that we helped do
therapeutic treatment care for. So at the end of the day, we decided to put a very heavy focus on
the relationship and that good open communication, straightforwardness instead of manipulation.
This meant that at the very beginning, I was going to need to teach my children and foster children
what was expected of them, what type of skills that they would need for success. So in our home,
we teach for basic skills that really take care of almost every problem they might have, or are the
solution to every communication situation. These four basic skills are following instructions,
accepting "no" answers and criticism, accepting consequences, and disagreeing appropriately.
For instance, let's take disagree appropriately. We're gonna discuss disagreeing appropriately and
a whole lot more. But before we do, click that subscribe button. Now, this channel is dedicated
to helping you learn what you need to become a better parent, to unify and bond with your
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So let's talk about disagreeing appropriately. Disagreeing appropriately should actually be a
child's favorite skill because it helps them get their way sometimes with the parents,
which is not a bad thing. A child can have their way, especially if they talk
to you in an appropriate manner. So when a person disagrees appropriately, they look at the person,
they keep a calm face, voice and body. They say that they understand your point of view,
they share their point of view, they listen to what you have to say. And then they say okay, and
drop the subject. So they don't get to control everything, but they do get to be heard. And
that's important. This disagree appropriately skill is going to be helpful for parents,
teachers, employers, siblings, friends, everyone. And it is a power skill that we can use to solve
problems with our relationships with other people. And I've got to tell you something,
the disagree appropriately skill is kind of a magical skill, because
it's the gateway skill to self government. When a person is not wanting to self govern themselves
then they are usually in the midbrain or back brain, they're being very emotional and making
a lot of excuses for themselves based on emotion. In order to go front brain, we've
got to start thinking logically, and disagreeing appropriately is the skill that helps a person
keep a logical focus, because they're looking at what everyone is doing around them. So once
you've prepared the space and taught your children how to follow instructions, accept "no" answers,
accept consequences, disagree appropriately, and you have times where you check up with
them. So I talked about how to have really great meetings in my teaching self government course.
But you have those things going on. Now you're ready to teach them how you will correct them.
So this is important that they know exactly how they will be corrected to. No surprises, it
decreases anxiety increases the chance that the correction will stick. So you teach that ahead of
time, and then you carry on with the correction. Now some of the best ways to correct children are
actually to describe a situation and explain why it's not a good idea whatever happened,
describe what should have happened, and then tell them what negative consequences they have earned.
And then help have them follow through with that but then also practice doing things
the right way. So you don't have a problem in the future. Now, I know sometimes kids will be like,
I don't care. You can correct me all you want. I'm not doing it. I don't care. This actually
means that a child is out of instructional control. If a child is out of instructional
control, and I'm talking child, meaning teenager, all the ages are children, okay? If they are out
of instructional control, then we do something called the rule of three. I teach this in my
teaching self government parenting course. So this is something where I do three things
three times to help a person get pointed toward calmness. When a person is disrespectful, they're
focusing only on themselves, which is one micro detail and they're forgetting the big picture
of communication. So if you bring in one of the tones of good communication such as calmness,
it opens that vision up again to how their communication is actually bouncing off of
all of the people around them. So we keep pointing them back toward calmness with this thing called
the Rule of Three. They can earn three negative consequences in the rule of three, but they don't
have to. In fact, at any time, they can choose to just be calm, and then they won't earn those three
negative consequences. But I make sure that I do a pre teach, an instruction and a correction. Well,
if they need the correction every single time during the rule of three so that they get some
good predictable and repetitive correction that helps bring them to a place of choosing calmness.
So you do have to be prepared ahead of time. If you are going to help a teenager
lose that disrespectful tendency, you've got to make sure that you are ready with the skills you
teach them what they are ahead of time. Another thing that is vital for helping a teenager with
a disrespect problem is making sure that they feel understood. Now, remember that disagree
appropriately skill is super important at that. But also after they do get calm,
get to a place of real understanding. Make sure you have good conversation about what happened
and help them make plans for better communication in the future. Parents should always be willing
to talk to the children and be understanding so long as the children's not out of control.
So in my family, if a child is out of control at the time then I say, I know you want to
talk about this, we will but we have to choose to be calm first, then we can talk about it.
There's a reason for that. You can't sort out any problem when you're in mid or back brain,
you have to get the front brain and so long as you're not calm, you are not in front brain.
So we get to come first, then we solve our problem and we talk about it. If you want more
help with your calmness, I have a calm parenting toolkit that I would like to give you for free.
So in the description below this video, there's a link that says teachselfgov.com/toolkit,
that will give you my calm parenting toolkit with just 10 lessons that are all tools that
you can use for calmness, and it will give it to you for free. So click on the link to that
video now and I'll see you there.