Hi, I'm Nicholeen Peck, and I teach parenting and good communication all over the world
through the lens of the principle self government. And in this video,
I'm talking about eight lessons, you should avoid teaching children.
In this video, we're going to talk about the importance of deliberate teaching to children,
and then eight lessons that we should avoid teaching children at all costs. Children are
learning all the time, no matter what you do, they're going to be learning, which means that
they're going to look at people and learn, they're going to observe things and learn themselves. So
making sure that you create an environment where the best learning happens means that we need to be
a little bit deliberate, so that they don't learn the wrong lessons, especially at the wrong time.
So are there are some lessons that can be learned later in life because they already have enough
of a foundation before they learn other things. So for instance, in our family, before, I'm going to
let my child read a book, say, like Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler, I'm going to make sure that
they've read other things like the Old Testament of the Bible, and the New Testament of the Bible,
and maybe the Constitution of the United States or something, right. We're gonna lay a foundation
of what should be before we bring in something that could potentially be confusing. The thing is
is that we're parents might do that when it comes to educational subjects, or teachers do that with
educational subjects, sometimes with social things and behavioral things, we don't think
about that. So it's important for us to also be deliberate in the social and behavioral things
that we're teaching our children as well. So with my children, I want to make sure that they aren't
learning attitude problem all the way along, that's something that they get exposed to a little
bit later and then go oh, yeah, that's not the right thing. So I wasn't going to be showing my
children movies, even if they were movies intended for children that were full of attitude problems
while they were young. Later on when they're a little bit older and they know that's
not the way that you should communicate with your parents or with other people,
then sure, they can see those attitude problems and it's probably going to be okay,
so long as they're not watching them all the time. Because then it can become new programming,
they can start thinking in those terms, and even starting to do some of the mannerisms
that the characters in the program do. So deliberate training of children does
involve some understanding about how a person learns, and where they're at developmentally.
One key thing that we want to always remember about children is that their prefrontal cortex,
which is the front part of the brain, that does all of the logical processing,
is constantly growing and expanding. We can help it along a little bit, if we need to,
also the synapses in the brain. So the connections that they're making with the information that
they're bringing in do different things at different times of development. So that's another
thing to remember. When a child's around the ages of four and five, and six, this is when they have
the most synapses in their brain that are firing and making connections, which is all the more
reason you want to teach everything morally at that time. This is right, this is wrong, good,
bad, true, false. So if there's stuff that's just political stuff, or just subjective, you know,
information that someone might feel, you want to leave that for later, let's not hook that into the
core information that a person has. So during that core time, you keep things very, you know, kind of
black and white, because they think in terms of opposites, and black and white anyway, that's
just developmentally where a child is at. We want to make sure that that child gets the greatest
opportunity to not be morally corrupted by making sure the moral footing is sound before we bring in
any other moral exceptions or other stories that could be confusing. So now let's talk about things
that we should avoid teaching our children because when we may not realize that we could be teaching
something that we didn't want to. Lesson number one, don't teach your children to interrupt or
to backtalk. So how would you teach your children to interrupt or to back talk? Well, if you're
interrupting them every time they're talking to you, they are going to learn to interrupt they're
going to assume that that's the way to get the control of a situation. And with back talking,
if you allow them to talk back to you when you are instructing them or correcting them,
then they will learn that that is a skill that is useful. If they can throw you off course by
back talking to you because you allow it and you talk back to them when they talk back to you
then they will develop that habit. That's a very negative behavior is something that makes
them very hard to talk to. I got seven more things that you should avoid. But before we get to those,
click the subscribe button now. This channel is full of great videos that are supposed
to help you be self governing, to improve your bonds and connection with your family members,
and you're not going to want to miss those, so click the subscribe button now. And don't forget
that notification bell that will inform you, when new videos come out. Lesson number two,
don't teach your children to emotionally react. What is the way that children learn to emotionally
react? By seeing a parent emotionally react to everything. When the parent sees something on
the news, and they're like, Oh, my word, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and then
they start just going on a rant about it, then the child thinks that's what you do
when you don't like something. When they see two parents bickering and fighting with each other,
they think that's what they should do. When they see something not go right and the parent melt and
go to pieces or seclude themselves from other people, because they can't handle a situation.
They're emotionally reacting, and you're teaching the child how to solve their problems.
And they will do it in the very same way. This happens at any age, not just at young ages.
So do keep that in mind, what you do and what you allow them to do to becomes their go to.
So if you allow them to emotionally react to you, and you call that healthy, then they are going to
keep doing it again and again. And I don't know about you. But if someone feels like they have
to do something again and again and again, that they can't stop themselves from doing that thing
again and again, that's not healthy. That's not freedom. That's called bondage. And I don't want
my children to be in emotional bondage. So I'm going to help them understand their emotions,
and choose pathways that lead to emotional health instead of emotional bondage. So creating a habit
of reacting and getting emotional is just going to lead to emotional bondage. Lesson number three,
distancing and ignoring. Avoid these things, don't teach your child that one way to handle
their problem is to distance themselves from the problem, or to ignore the problem altogether. It's
one thing to learn how to drop a subject, that's a very deliberate, intentional thing to do. Say,
this is what's happening and I'm going to drop the subject about it, I'm not going to think about
it anymore. But it's another thing to be afraid of something or to not want to address something
and so to constantly maintain a position of anxiety and avoidance. If you have avoidance for
problems that you are facing, you will not develop the skill for how to solve your problems.
Children need to learn how to solve their problems instead,
that's empowering. Teaching a person to drop a subject can be part of solving a problem. But
teaching them never to talk about the problem, or to avoid a problem altogether is teaching them
a skill that will make them passive and we don't want our children to be that. Lesson
number four that you should avoid is creating a habit of stimulation or distraction. So what is
a stimulating thing? TV. TV is a stimulating thing. Movies are a stimulating thing. A food is
a stimulating thing, you know, chocolate, that's one of my favorites. There are many things that
are stimulating. Sometimes music is a stimulating thing. Touch can be a stimulating thing. If you
are constantly enforcing the same stimulation, you could create distraction for your child.
When a person is hyper focused on being stimulated all the time, they can't think about anything
else. We've all seen the child who's like Mom, can I watch a show? Can I watch a show and the
mom's like no and 10 minutes, they're like, Mom, can I watch a show now, or they get all emotional
because they can't watch a show because their parents have said no. And finally, the parent
just gives it because they can't hold out anymore because the constant asking for the stimulation
is just getting to be too much. The child has created a habit for themselves, or maybe even
the parent created for the child a habit of being stimulated or distracted. If your child has a
habit of being stimulated or distracted, they will have a hard time focusing. We have an increase of
add in our society or at least diagnoses of add in our society. That does not necessarily
mean that every single one of those diagnoses is accurate. There are other societies that are not
American societies that do not have as much of a diagnosis for ADHD. That's gonna make you scratch
your head and wonder it can't just be a genetic thing because we're a melting pot. So why do we
have more people with ADHD or diagnosed with ADHD? It could be because we are feeding more
into it. Maybe we're distracting more instead of working as much. We're not doing as many productive
things. So think of the things that get in the way or distract and see if you can help your children
learn to accept a "no" answer. In my teaching self government parenting program, I teach a
skill called accepting a "no" answer. In fact, this book teaches that skill. This book Porter Earns A
Quarter teaches four steps to children. They learn to look at the person or the situation,
keep a calm face, voice and body, say okay, or disagree appropriately and then drop the subject.
So if your child feels a craving, if they can learn to keep a calm face, voice and body,
say okay and drop the subject, they're going to do much better. Lesson five, avoid teaching your
children to have stress and anxiety. We do have a problem with anxiety and stress, really creating
issues for our children. Now, I know there's certain temperaments, there's personalities,
there's hardwiring, and chemicals, there's all kinds of things that can lead to increased stress,
and increase anxiety and they're real things. I get that but also some of them are nurtured in the
children. Sometimes parents rationalize everything as stress and anxiety. And so the child never
sees that they can actually develop skills to overcome stressful situations or to conquer some
of their anxiety. Parents need to be empowering their children with strategies and skills that
they need to regulate their stress and anxiety so that they don't feel entitled
to have stress and anxiety, which then keeps them in a victim position forever. Lesson number six,
avoid teaching your children to judge other people. So we do want to teach our children
to have good judgment, and to have good what I call discernment, knowing what's right and wrong,
good and bad, true and false. But we don't want them to be judging other people, right? Even if
they know they should stay away from a certain person, because they're doing something that
they maybe shouldn't be doing. We shouldn't be teaching the child that they should be thinking
bad about a person, or even villainizing a person. How do we teach children to judge other people?
I'm sure none of us want to. Well, by judging other people, if we're gossiping back talking
about other people on a regular basis, our children will learn that as well. And if we overly
judge them for certain behaviors or decisions that they make, they will assume that that's
how you go through life, by judging other people by comparing people and putting people in boxes.
So the way that you handle interactions with them can make a big difference.
Lesson number seven that we want to avoid teaching is perfectionism. If you are a perfectionist,
try to recover. Try to accept "no" answers when things aren't perfect. Try to not beat yourself
up and try to do the same thing for your children, they need that kind of grace. When they don't do
something perfect, that's okay, we can have a tone of acceptance and do a correction to help them fix
it. It doesn't have to be something that we take personally, if we take everything personally,
and we want everything to be perfect, our children will have low self confidence. It will be us that
will be creating it and we don't even recognize it. People who have perfectionism don't want to
try something because they're afraid of not being perfect. People who are comparing themselves
to others, all of the time have lower social skills, and less social interactions because
they don't allow themselves to branch out to other people. Of course, this falls into the
anxiety category again, but perfectionism is kind of its own beast, and really needs to be
undermined in another way. People don't have to be perfect, they can be normal, they can be learning,
they can make mistakes, and we can be okay with that. Sometimes I wonder if parents don't
want their children to ever make a mistake just because the parent is too lazy to talk about it,
or to handle it or to do a correction. We need to welcome those corrections and teaching moments,
and let our children know that it's okay that they made a mistake and that we can move forward
from here. Lesson number eight, and this is the big one. In fact, I even have a gift I'm gonna
give you because of this lesson. So lesson number eight is avoid teaching your children emotional
entitlement. There's a lot of talk nowadays about emotions. And we all want everyone to feel safe,
right? So that they feel like life's okay and I don't need to worry all the time. But here's
the thing, if we overanalyze emotions, we actually create a non safe environment.
We start getting people worried about the emotions that they could be experiencing. So one thing that
we need to do to make sure that the emotions don't take over everything is be objective
about those emotions. Do you know there are productive emotions and non productive emotions?
We need to understand what all of them are. That's a big part of being a human and understanding
how to be happiest and make good decisions and have the best outcomes emotionally.
There is a difference between feeling something and emoting something, and we can experience a
feeling, know what it is, but then that thought that we had before the feeling that leads to
the emotion, we have complete control over. Our children need to know that. We need to make sure
that we look at emotions and what lead to those emotions in a very objective way, not taking them
personal, not making them so incredibly important that a person feels like they can't break
out of them. That's super important. As we are trying to help our children be emotionally secure
and strong and decrease anxiety and all of those things that we're worried about with our children,
it is vital that we give them the emotional strength that they need, which usually involves
some understanding and some skill development. This leaves me to the gift that I'm going to
give you. So because you've stayed to the end of this video, I'm going to give you free access
to my calm parenting toolkit. In the description below this video, there is a link that says teach
selfgov.com/toolkit. And if you click on that link now, it will take you to my calm parenting
toolkit and you will get it for free. This is a great starter kit in self government.
You will have a lot more to learn after that but it will get you going on calmness
and hopefully help you on your own emotional regulation, as well as helping your children
understand and regulate their emotions to. Everyone needs a calm plan. Let's start with that.
Click on the link now. I'll see you there.