Do you want to know how to get kids to react calmly to bad news?
Well you're not alone. Children do not like bad news. Well I mean nobody does
but their anxiety levels are much higher. I'm Nicholeen Peck and in this video I'm
going to be talking about bad news and some skills that your children need for success.
Nobody likes bad news but for children, bad news can be especially hard to take. They get their
hopes really up, they're processing the world at a different speed and through a different lens
than the adults that are all around them and you match that with higher anxiety levels because they
aren't in complete control of everything that happens to them and just their developmental
levels and well sometimes you have the recipe for emotional disaster. Just one no answer or losing
a running race, losing something that's really dear to them, these are the kinds of things that
can make life hard for a young person. Well in this video I'm going to be talking about a simple skill
that you can teach children that will help them to be able to accept bad news like champs but first
I'm going to introduce you to my friend who's seven. Her name is Avonlea and we're going to be
working on the skills with her today. She's going to be talking about this amazing skill called
accepting "no" answers and criticism. Hey Avonlea, thank you for coming and being with me today
and saying okay to being on a video for all these people to see. So, Avonlea you're seven years old,
right? Yeah, that's actually a pretty big age and I know you have a little sister and you
have a big sister. Yeah. Does everything always go your way at home? Do you get everything you want?
Nope, you don't, do you? So sometimes maybe somebody does something you don't like,
that could happen, huh? Yeah, so today we're going to be talking about a skill
and this skill is called accepting "no" answers and criticism. Have you heard of this before?
You haven't heard of this skill before. Okay well we're going to learn it.
Avonlea. I'm going to show you this book right here. I wrote this book called Porter Earns A
Quarter and it's actually about my son Porter so this is what he looked like when he was little,
he's kind of big now actually but in this book Porter learns the skill to accepting a "no" answer.
I feel like you've seen this book before, have you seen this book before? Yeah, okay and so you
know that Porter likes soccer and there's stuff that happens to Porter in this book like he's
playing soccer and someone takes the ball from him and he gets knocked down, right, that's not
fun, is it? Those can be disappointing times. I also have another picture in here I want to show you.
Look at Porter in this picture with the frog on his head, do you see him? Look what seat he
has to sit in, the middle seat. Does he look like he's liking to sit in the middle seat?
No, lots of times people like to sit by the windows, huh, and sometimes they don't like the middle seat.
Well porter didn't want the middle seat. Does he look like he's okay with it? Nope, he's not
okay with it but at the end of this book, we see Porter... let me show you look at how happy Porter
is at the end of the book and this is because he learned a skill. That skill that he learned is
the skill that I'm going to teach you today and it's called accepting a "no" answer. Are you ready?
I'm gonna teach Avonlea the skill accepting a "no" answer and accepting criticism because that's the
same skill but before I do that, hit the subscribe button. There are so many wonderful videos on this
channel that you are not going to want to miss and they are all regarding the topic self-government
for you and for your children. So what is self-government? You need to know that
because these skills that we're teaching and that I'm going to be working on with Avonlea
here, this accepting and "no" answer skill is one of the four basic skills of self-government.
So there are four skills that if a person learns the skill sets to these four skills,
that takes care of 99% of their behavioral problems. So those skills are following instructions,
accepting "no" answers and criticism, accepting consequences and disagreeing appropriately.
These skills help a person self-evaluate so that they can self-regulate. Self-regulation is another
way to say self-government. Self-government is being able to determine the cause and effect of
any given situation and possessing a knowledge of your own behaviors so that you can control
them and even though Avonlea is seven, she can learn to self-regulate and to self-govern herself
by analyzing herself and following through with a skill or with a plan that she has made ahead of
time. We're going to help her make that skill and that plan today so that she can use it in all of
her situations in life. Okay, you ready? All right so let's talk about this skill. Step number one
if you want to follow along with your fingers so you can remember. You can if you want to but I know
that you have a pretty smart brain so if you don't want to, that's okay too. Number one is to look at
the person so let's practice. Should we practice looking at the person? Do you know when you look
at somebody in the eyes that actually says I'm ready to listen to you or I'm ready to connect to
you and have a conversation. When a person does not want to connect with another person then sometimes
they look away. They're like no, no. Have you seen people do that before? And so that's how you know
a person isn't ready to have any teaching happen at the time. Step number two is to keep a calm face,
voice and body. So what does it look like if our face is not calm? What do you think?
I think it looks like this. Yeah, oh and what does it look like if your body's not calm too?
I don't know. You don't know? So what if a person is like tapping their fingers. Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap,
that's not very calm, is it? Or if a person's like like clenching their fist, that's not very calm, huh?
Or if they're throwing themselves on the ground, that's not calm but you look pretty calm right now
so you have- this is a good calm body, isn't it? A calm face and we heard you say some words
a calm voice and a calm body so that's really awesome. You're good at step number two. I can see
you're good at step two. Okay so step three we say something, we say okay. Can you say okay? Okay. Good
job, I like that. Okay you can also say something else. Now we're not learning this skill right
now but you also could say okay. May I disagree appropriately? Try that one. Okay, may I disagree
appropriately? Yeah sure. So then I would always say yes sure if you ask to disagree appropriately
so you're going to want to make sure that you use that skill a lot because it helps you get your way
but for today we'll probably just stick to saying okay. All right then step number four
is sometimes the trickiest step. This is the step where we choose not to be angry, we choose not to
be frustrated and so we choose to drop the subject. Do you know what it means to drop the subject?
No, no not really? Okay so when a person drops the subject that means they don't talk about
it anymore. So they don't cry about it and pout about it, they don't get angry and hit things,
they don't go and try to ask dad to say something different than mom said. They just decide to be
okay. They don't think about it anymore and they don't talk about it anymore so that can be hard
sometimes, huh? Especially when something really difficult happens so sometimes you have to tell
yourself in your head, drop the subject. Drop the subject Nicholeen, don't think about it
anymore. Just think about being calm and being okay, right? And when you can do all four of those things,
then you will get praised because they should praise you six to ten times for every one
time they correct you. So what is praise? Do you know what praise is? Praising is to...
I don't remember. You don't remember what praise is? Has somebody ever told you good job,
that's a kind of a praise or oh, you did that so fast. Those are all kinds of praises or somebody
says wow high five, Avonlea, that's a praise, right? Okay, so those are all praises and those are gonna
be things that your parents do when you do all four steps of accepting "no" answers. So, these four
steps for accepting a "no" answer also work for criticism. Bad news can be no, you can't do that,
bad news can be you lost that right. Those are all bad news things, those are "no" answers that come
that are just part of life but sometimes we tell a child something like oh that's not appropriate
behavior so no, you can't do that or no, you can't wear that to this event or something like that.
Those are all criticisms and basically the skill set is the same so you'd use those
same four skills so children just need to know that when someone gives them criticism or a "no"
answer or a "no" answer comes to them in some way, they do these four steps. Look at the person, keep
a calm face, voice and body, say okay or ask to disagree appropriately and then drop the subject.
So, now let's see Avonlea and how well she does at practicing this skill. Okay Avonlea, let's pretend
I'm your mommy. I know I don't look a thing like her but we're just gonna pretend in our heads, okay?
So we're gonna do what's called a role play which means it's just a practice of a skill. Okay we're
gonna practice the skill accepting a "no" answer and criticism and you just need to ask me a question,
any kind of question that you think that maybe your mommy or some other mommy might say no to
and then I'm going to remind you to do the steps for accepting a "no" answer
and then you can say okay about it, okay? All right you can do all four steps. Do ask me a question.
Can I clean up a mess? Wow, that's a great question. I would think most mommies would normally
say yes to that but just for our role play I'm going to have to give you a "no" answer so do you
remember how to accept a "no" answer? Okay, that's right we say okay. There's four steps that we do,
I'm going to remind you of them. You look at the person just like you did. You kept a calm
face, voice and body just like you did then you say okay just like you did, drop the subject just
like you did. You already did it that fast. Let's do another practice. Okay let's do one more so
ask me another question. Can I go play with my friend? Oh, that's a good question. I'm going to
have to give you a "no" answer. Remember to accept to "no" answer you look at the person, keep a calm
face, voice and body, say okay you're asked to disagree appropriately and then drop the subject.
No, Avonlea you can't play with your friend because it's dinner time. Okay. Okay. Ah, you did so good.
You looked right at me, you kept a calm face, voice body, you said okay and I could tell your body was
totally fine and okay and then you dropped to the subject. High five, Avonlea. Awesome.. Did it feel good
to do that, to accept a "no" answer? Yeah, do you think accepting "no" answers is gonna be useful to you?
How do you think it will be helpful? It would be helpful to help my baby sister because she
actually follows me. Ah, good one. So you would set the example for her because sometimes... because
she's more of a toddler age right and so sometimes toddlers have a harder time with "no" answers don't
they but if she sees you accept the "no" answer then that means you've set the example for her
so that she can learn that it's okay to do that, right? Wow, that's good. Do you think that your day
might even be a little bit better and you might even have a little bit more play time in your day
if you don't have problems with "no" answers because you can just accept them really fast?
Yeah, you really could because it takes time when you have to be corrected, right?
Yeah, it does. So if you wanted to give a piece of advice to somebody about
"no" answers, do you have any advice that you would want to share with anybody about that?
Like maybe that they should do it- What would you tell if you could tell other children that were
seven years old or maybe even older, maybe 15, maybe even moms and dads because they need to learn to
accept "no" answers too, what would you tell them? I would tell them if they were acting really
rude to someone, I would say you should act nice to someone. Ah, so that's like giving them a "no",
huh? And then what should they do if they get that "no" answer they should act not to act nice to the
person. Yeah, they should they should say okay and change their behavior. You know what that's called?
It's called self-government. This one skill gets everybody closer to self-government. You know what
I would like to do? I would like to give all the people that are watching us have this conversation
some more help with their self-government. Do you think that would be a good idea?
Yeah, just like Avonlea is learning these skills, your family can learn the skills too. In fact we
all can and there is a starter course that I would like to share with you, it's called the teaching
self-government toolkit and I would like to give it to you completely for free. In fact below this
video, there is a link it says teachselfgov.com/toolkit. Click on that link and then you can have
the calm parenting toolkit for free, that's my gift to you. Hopefully you will have much
better days at your house now that you know the skill accepting "no" answers and hopefully you will
learn more self-government skills so that your family will be on the road to self-government.