Do you want to know how to help your child mature emotionally? Well, in our family, we
always have talked about emotional strength. I decided that one of my goals as a parent
was to raise emotionally strong children. Which means they have to have an amount of
maturity too. My name is Nicholeen Peck. I'm a previous foster parent of troubled teens
as well as the mother of 4. And the author of 11 books about parenting and owner of teachingselfgovernment.com.
Needless to say I love the topic of parenting and I'm excited today to talk with you about
how to help your child mature emotionally. We all know what it looks like when a person
is emotionally weak, right? They... The littlest thing will get to them. They get overwhelmed
easily. They have hard time regulating. Sometimes they have a hard time connecting with other
people because they become very consumed with how they're feeling all the time. There's
almost a distant feeling with a person who has emotional trauma or something that they're
going through that's an emotional weakness at the time. We also know people emotional
weakness when there's set off that fast. Something happens and they cannot accept that things
didn't go their way and so they get sad immediately or angry immediately or they sometimes even
jump to bond to somebody in a way that's too familiar immediately. And so sometimes they're
social boundaries even that are out of place when a person is not fully emotionally strong.
Which does include an amount of self-restraint. So what does it look like a person is emotionally
strong. That was the goal I had for my children. Well what it looked like in my mind was that
if my child was told "no" , they couldn't do something, that they could be okay with
that. That they could discuss it with me. And that they would be fine. That if my child
had a moment where they failed, that they would know how to accept failure graciously.
And not seek attention for and whine and complain and have a hardship over it. That doesn't
mean there's never been tears and we haven't been normal people because sometimes disappointment
happens. But it also means that they can rally. If a person does have a moment that is sad
or hard, they can tell them self, "That's enough. I can move forward now." So, as there's
this feeling of empowerment that the person has that they have the confidence and the
skill to handle their problems. Now, did children start out that way? Not usually. No, you have
to teach it to them. And it requires skills training. A lot of patience and practice.
Because the front part of a child's brain is very small at first and grows more and
more and more overtime. But they don't reach full maturity in their brain until they're
between the ages of 18 and 26 years old. The emotional part of their brain is actually
the oldest part of their brain. And that's their go-to for a really long time. So, when
we say how do you help a person reach emotional maturity or mature emotionally, we don't really
want to feed the emotional part of the brain. We actually want to mature the pre-frontal
cortex. The logical part. This will help them be able to analyze their emotions. And that's
probably the maturity that we're usually going toward. There are seven things that we can
do to create emotionally strong children and then future emotionally strong adults. Number
1 is self-government. They need to know that they have all the ability that they need to
control themselves. That they can choose to become if they want to. That they can choose
to be okay and drop the subject when something is frustrating to them. They can choose to
give somebody else a chance and not have to be the center of attention. There's a lot
of thing that they can choose and those are wrapped up the idea of self-government. Self-government
is analyzing yourself and planning for your success and then regularly watching what you
do and putting yourself back on track. That's what it means to self-govern. Number 2 is
the right kind of tone. Tone is the feeling that you have within your relationship. What
is it feel like when you talk to each other? Does it feel safe? Does it feel loving? Does
it feel like everything is going to be okay? Hopefully, when you're teaching your children
and talking to them and your helping them reason out some of their problems and handle
and analyze some of their emotions, everything feels safe and okay. No judgmental, no anger,
no frustration. The tone is huge. For a person to learn self-government, they have to have
the right kind of tone. Number 3 is structure. You need to have the right kind of structure
as well. So, it's one thing to say, "I know what self-government is and I want it." But
it's another thing to be able to actually plan for your success and track your progress
as you're going along. So, what you need to do is you need to have skills in place, you
need to have certain times where you communicate with the child and you asses how they're doing.
These would be certain meetings potentially. You would have as a family and individual,
one on one. You would have this system put together that allows for the family to make
plans and check up on those plans. That's the structure you need. And if you've got
your structure in place including skills that you need to control yourself, then the tone
can come through it all. But if you don't have a structure in place and you're just
guessing minute by minute, you're going to lose your tone almost immediately. This bring
us to number 4 which is skills. There are 4 skills that every person needs to know if
they are going to be self-governing and be able to control themselves when they're emotions
start to flare up. Those 4 skills are how to follow instructions, accept "no" answer
and criticism, accept consequences and disagreeing appropriately. In everyone of these skills,
it talks about calmness and getting yourself to a place of calmness. So, the person plans
for that, they plan their tone and then it tells them the next steps that they need.
The structural steps --what to do next, who to check back with and how to do that self-evaluation.
These skills are vital for success. We all know people who don't disagree appropriately
with each other. We all know people who cannot accept a "no" answer. Think of those people
who rant and rave as they're driving down the road because somebody in traffic did something
they didn't like. They complain, complain, complain. Well, that's not keeping a calm
voice. And that's also not dropping the subject which means that they are not accepting "no"
answers. Those are 2 of the steps to accepting a no answer. So, we need to teach our children
the exact skills that they need, that they can hold on to so that they can choose not
to give in to the emotional craving that is being fostered and nurtured since they were
a baby and instead say, "Nope. I'm not going to do that. What skill do I need? Okay, this
is an emotion I'm having. But what do I do with it? Who do I talk to about it? Do I disagree
appropriately with somebody? What is it that I do with this?" They need to get to that
place. But they can't if they don't have exact steps that they can identify that they need
to do or that they possibly have missed. Now, this brings us to number 5 which is self-assessment.
A person who has to be in that habit of finding self-assessment productive and even comfortable.
We need to be able to look at our selves again and again and no that it's okay to correct
ourselves and to improve. They learn this by you correcting them. So, we have to regularly
correct our children so that they get the opportunity to look at themselves in the mirror
in figurative way of speaking and self-asses. What do they find there? And how does that
compare to the direction they'd really like to be going? We help them make those assessments
so that in the future, they can learn to do them all on their own. That's what it really
means to become mature emotionally. Number 6, consistency. When we're correcting our
children, we've got to be consistent. If you're not consistent, the lessons just don't stick.
Did you know that? So, when you're child does something, they have to learn cause and effect
in order to be able to really learn to self-govern themselves. The definition of 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. So, we just talked about self-assessment.
But what about that cause and effect? We don't learn cause and effect well if someone doesn't
correct us or praise us. Both correction and praise teach cause and effect. There are good
things that happen when you make good decisions. And there are bad things that happen when
you make bad decisions. Children need to know that and they need to be open to discussing
them anytime. Even in front of a group. Not that we want to make a spectical out of our
children. But consistency means that even if we're a grocery store or sitting on a bus
that we correct our children no matter what. Number 7, calmness. Now, calmness is a tone
element. I could've mention it before. But I saved it until now because it truly is vital.
If a person is going to become emotionally strong, they have to decide calmness is their
goal, that they want it. That calmness has power. There's a class I give actually called
The Power Of Calm. It's been people's favorite class for years and years because it really
focuses on that power that comes from being able to be calm when you normally wouldn't.
Or when you have a craving not to. How do you get calm? Do you know how to be calm when
somebody else isn't? And how to help them get calm without losing your calmness at the
same time? This is a skill that requires tools and practice. In fact, I would love for you
to get better at calmness. So, I'm going to give you a gift. Anybody who watches this
video, you can click the link down in the description of the video for the Calm Parenting
Toolkit and you can have it for free. The world needs more calmness. Have you noticed?
Have you watched the news? Have you listened to the people argue on social media? We need
that. If your children become emotionally strong, if they develop calmness, they will
literally be people who transform the world right now. Because everyone is just giving
into their feelings and their emotions. And they're dumping them all over everybody else.
Emotions can either help us be in bondage or when they're used properly, they can lead
to more freedom. But we've got to teach our children how to handle their emotions, how
to self-govern themselves. And calmness is key. So, go ahead and click the link below
for the Calm Parenting Toolkit. I think you'll love it, it's free. And I hope it will bless
your family.