Hi, I'm Nicholeen Peck and I teach all over the world about parenting and family and
good communication all through the lens of the principal self government. And in this
video, we're talking about teaching children to cherish home and family.
In this video, we're going to be talking about what is going on with the dialogue
about family and culture nowadays, and why it's so controversial. And then we're going to be talking
about how that impacts our children, and what we should be doing to help our children learn
to cherish their homes and their families, because after all, it is better for them. home and family
are the most healing, foundational, nurturing environments, they create identity, they create
a feeling of belonging, inclusion, love, all the things, those come the very most out of the
home and the family. So why in the world would our society create a movement that is designed
to push children away from their families, to actually make them think that having a family or
being part of a family is not a good thing? What a weird concept, but it's not just children that
are perpetuating this. It's adults. So I consulted the United Nations. And as part of that post to
consult there, I hear some crazy things sometimes. Well, a good friend of mine was in a meeting a
number of years ago. And so this was a while ago, okay, at the United Nations in New York,
she was in a meeting. And someone said the word family. And when they mentioned the word family,
everyone was so offended, that was in that room, they felt like that was a swear word, to say the
word family. Well, I thought surely she must be making this up. But then I was at the United
Nations a few years after that. And sure enough, you mentioned family and people look at you, like
you just called them some four letter derogatory word. It's that offensive to them. Why? Well,
because they don't want one, I guess. Because maybe they had one that was not functional.
Didn't give them that sense of belonging wasn't healing, wasn't good for them. Maybe there was
someone in their family that didn't agree with one thing about their life or maybe they didn't
like their family loved God, and they didn't want to love God or, you know, I don't know,
you never know exactly what everyone's backstory is. But what I do know is that there is a whole
generation of people that are being trained to not trust and love their families. The media right now
gives family a really bad rap. It's very rare to see a program in the media that presents family
in a positive light. Usually family is presented in the media as getting in the way of the child,
or being out of touch with society, or not being supportive of what the child wants. Because maybe
they're telling the child no for something, or maybe they seem like they're clueless,
or buffoons, even, or that they're trying to push these archaic values that really have no meaning,
or that nobody cares about in society nowadays, like honesty, and, you know, love and caring,
but instead, they want to care about other things that just relate to the self and what the self
gets out of something. So it's interesting, this selfishness, this focus on self, self, self self
has turned the focus away from family, which is then turned the focus of the children away from
duty, away from loyalty, away from belonging. Now they're islands unto themselves. This is
very concerning, doesn't it concern you? Recently, I was just talking with a friend of mine. And she
said that it's concerning to her as a young person who's just getting ready to graduate high school,
that many of her peers have a negative view of family. In fact, they feel like that if
you look at something through the family lens, that somehow this is non friendly conversation,
that this is conversation that is somehow pushing against their morals, which are all
about the self. So what do we do about it? How do we create an environment and a society where our
children will cherish home and family again, and is it even possible? The answer is yes. But the
how to, you're going to have to wait just a couple of seconds for, because I need to tell you to hit
that subscribe button now. So click Subscribe so you could see more videos just like this. So yes,
it is possible for children to cherish home and family. My baby just last year graduated from
high school. And he is out serving a mission for our church. He's in Arkansas right now
in the United States, and doing a lot of great service work for people there. And you know what,
he loves us. And he misses us so much. And he's told me multiple times, mom, when I meet people
who have sad home lives, and sad families, and families that don't really support them,
or they've gotten into drugs, or all these other things, that he's helping people through their
hardships. He says, Mom, I'm just so happy about our family. I'm so grateful for what family is
for me. In fact, I'm trying to tell people about the importance of family and building good strong
families, but they don't necessarily care. Because they don't even think it's possible. That's wisdom
from an 18 year old boy. Well, actually, he told me that when he was 18, he's 19. Now, love you,
Porter. Love you, from mom. Anyway, so how do we create this environment? What did I
do? Well, it started out by loving family. Did you know that the tone that a parent has related to
family will spill over into the tone that a child adopts. I love family, it was everything for me,
for my husband to our happiest times our greatest moments were spent with our children,
not by ourselves, not going on trips by ourselves. We always wanted to take the children with us.
Life was fun and engaging and exciting. We had deliberate conversations, we didn't feel burdened
by correcting our children's little problems. In fact, they can tell that we enjoyed correcting the
problems, and we didn't take them personally. We knew that home was a safe place to make mistakes.
And we taught them how we would correct them every single time so that they didn't have to have
anxiety about us feeling emotional or taking their mistakes personally, no, we embraced it all. The
tone of embracing family life instead of pushing against it, or wishing it were something else is
actually a powerful move that a parent can make to teach their children that they want what they
have being parents of a family. Have you noticed that children don't want to have children now,
they are not wanting to get married and have families, this is becoming more and more common.
It's so sad, because they will be missing out on all of those relationships, connections, they'll
be missing out on training other people on having the love from a child that you cannot get anywhere
else. Why would they think that that is a pathway to success. It could be because their parents had
a bad attitude. It could be because their parents told them how much they hated what they did all
the time. Or they told their friends how much they hated it and the children overheard heard,
or it could be that somebody else got in the door with the child and started convincing them. That
family was not good. I remember one time when I was at a play in Virginia, sitting there at this
play. I was very pregnant. I'm talking very pregnant with my fourth child, this one that
I've been talking about, my sweet Porter, who I wouldn't trade for anything. And there were some
college co-eds sitting behind me who obviously noticed how pregnant I was. And you know what
they did? They started commenting to each other on their philosophies about having children,
and how horrible it is, how irresponsible it is. And then one of them said, anyone who chooses
to have a child is mentally disturbed. I thought to myself, what was her childhood like, that poor
girl? Did she feel that she wasn't cared about that her mother didn't like being her mother?
How sad that she didn't feel belonging or if she did feel belonging and support from her mother,
then who was it that told her that having a child is equated to being mentally disturbed?
How sad, how concerning. So we can love it, can't we? That's an easy thing that we can do to teach
them to cherish and love their home and family. So what else can we do? We can make it so that a
lot of teaching happens, a lot of discussion happens, but not a lot of emotional dumping
happens. Home is wonderful if it heals you. The other day I was watching a program it was called
family matters. And on this program, there was a family and they had teenage children and these
teenage children absolutely loved being with their family. In fact, they said you know, we don't
really go spend a lot of time with other teenage kids, because we just love being with family so
much. We love being with our siblings. They're our very best friends. We love doing things with our
parents. We do activities, we talk with them. And there were these little vignettes about their
lives. And you can see them communicating with their parents. Now this show is not on one of our
main network programs, right? You have to get the BYU TV app to see it. It's a free app. I highly
recommend it some awesome programming on BYU TV. These children in this family were very atypical,
but I think the parents, in fact, it sounded like the parents deliberately created an environment
where their children felt felt understood, loved, where it was a fun environment, an environment of
belonging and caring. Why would the children want anything else especially when they go with other
people and and their friends or other people around them? Maybe even people at church are
negative, pessimistic? Why would they even want it? If you want your children to love family,
it's got to be a place where everybody loves each other all the time, and where they solve
their problems in good ways. Now that's a whole other thing that I could help you with. In fact,
I would love to help you with that. If you have enjoyed this video, then you will probably love
my next video which is a full class all about the skills and principles of learning self government
and how to solve some of those problems in column connective ways. That video is called the not so
known secret for parenting success. So click on the link to that video now. I'll see you there.