Hi, I'm Nicholeen Peck and I am a parenting expert and I teach something called Self-Government.
Which means self-mastery for yourself and for your children. A lot of people wonder
with my self-government program if I'm really taking into account the emotional needs that
children have. I absolutely am. Emotions are part of who we are. And they do need to be
addressed in a way that helps a person feel empowered and free. So, in this video, we're
going to talk all about why is it important to respond to children's emotional needs.
Not only do I want to discuss why we need to really think about how to handle the emotional
needs of children but I want to discuss the What, the Why, the How and the When so that
we can come up with a plan for how to help our children succeed emotionally, intellectually
and physically. So, what emotions do children actually have? I mean they have the same emotions.
Everyone has. They have fear, sadness, stress, anger. They could feel insecure or worried.
Physically they could feel sleepy. There's a lot of things they can feel. And those feelings
sometimes physical feelings. Sometimes emotional feelings can affect their overall sense of
well-being and can even affect their general health. In fact, one thing that a lot of young
people are feeling right now is anxiety. That's a really big one. And there are many theories
out there for why this anxiety is becoming such a problem. I've got a few of my own.
I'm not going to go in to all of that. But I will say I think part of that is because
there is a lack of skill development that is happening overall throughout society. So,
people are becoming much more passive and relying more on things like supply chains
and stuff like that. Instead of learning adult skills for how to take care of themselves,
how to do things, how to build things. Life is just becoming a almost too easy, right?
And sometimes when life becomes too easy, people don't have confidence. When they don't
have confidence to solve their own problems, whether it's relationship problems or physical
problems, they get overwhelmed and then there's more anxiety. They start to feel smaller and
smaller instead of bigger and bigger. Like people feel that handle problems all the time
because they're working hard and solving things on a regular basis. So, that's just one idea.
There are others. Some of them related to digital devices as well. And I'm sure you've
heard many different ideas about why anxiety is out there. But it's a real thing. And I
think that's a thing that we've got to remember is no matter what contributors there are.
Because maybe a person would have a tendency to have that anyway. But then there's contributors
that make it maybe even worse, right? We could look at family dynamics and just some of the
general struggles that happening in families and they're not staying as intact. That also
takes as toll on children and can increase their sense of anxiety and feeling insecure.
So, there's a lot of things that are happening socially and the result is a ton of anxiety
on the population. Not with the children only but also with adults. So, that's what they're
dealing with. So, what emotional needs do they actually have? They have a basic need
to know what's going on inside. I think sometimes we just try to band aid emotions. Try to make
them feel better, try to make them go away so it's not a problem anymore. They need to
know what's really happening. If they feel insecure about something, don't just talk
to them about their insecurity. Tell them what insecurity is. Possibly where it comes
from. Help them understand that they can also change their own mind on it and they don't
have to feel trapped by it. Tell them that they always have someone to talk to. That
you'll always be there for them to lend an ear and to offer suggestions for how to move
on. We don't want them ever to get the feeling that they are stuck. Because many of the emotional
situations that children are in nowadays (adults included) makes them feel stuck like there's
no hope. So, that's what they're dealing with. Now, let's talk about why we need to handle
things and how we need to handle things in a certain way. So our original question is
why is it important to respond to children's emotional needs. Well, because when a person
is in an emotional bondage situation, they need support. They need a leader, they need
somebody to lean on. And we've got to be there for them. It so important because if they
don't have that is there for them, then things get pretty dire pretty fast. When I took foster
children into my home, they often would come to my home with cuts all over, with depression,
with a lot of issues that they're dealing with. And part of the reason that they got
themselves to such a dark place was because they felt like they were alone. They didn't
have anybody to confide in or get from. Maybe their parents were dealing drugs or abusing
or things like that. And so, they didn't have that strong person to lean on. You know that's
what parents are for, right? You're suppose to be that strong person that they always
have there to discuss things with. So, don't push them away because they have an emotional
need. Be a true help. So, how are we going to help them? Let's talk about that. Here's
6 ways for us to help our children with their emotional needs. Number 1, open communication.
You know what? Sometimes we shut them down. We don't want to take the time. We don't make
the time. In our family, we decide a long time ago that we would have deliberate times
where we spoke together with the family as a group and as a couple and in one on one
meetings with our children. We call these meetings mentor meetings. And then the full
group meetings we call family meetings. Well, in these meetings, we establish a culture
of open communication where nobody needs to feel ashamed about something that get corrected
or a topic that comes up that may seem sensitive or personal. We just talk about anything.
And everything feels okay. Thae things that makes open communication really good is if
there is a tone of acceptance in that time of communication. Do you really accept your
children even when they have done something terrible? Maybe they've heard another person.
Maybe they've gotten into addiction or something like that. Do you still care about them? Of
course you do. But if you allow it to go into your head and fester and you allow yourself
to take it personally, emotionally yourself, then you're not actually prepared to talk
to them about it. So, our tone of accepting --"that happened, now what can we do about
it?" is really important. This goes for anything when one child hits another, when one person
says a mean word to somebody else, anything. That happened, now what are we going to do
about it? That's a tone of acceptance. There's other tone elements. But the important thing
is that there is this feeling like it's okay. Like no matter what we talk about, it's going
to be just fine. There is something liberating about that. I remember having a conversation
with the young man one time and we were just talking nonchalantly about things. And he
said, "You know, I've never told anybody that before." Because I just ask him a very pointed
question. He wasn't prepared that someone would just ask him something like that. so
personally but in away that was not emotionally affected. And he said, "I never told anybody
that before. But it actually feels really good. I never even told my parents that."
And it's because I carried this feeling with me that was like it's okay. And I even told
him, "You know what? It's fine. Everybody does stuff. Don't worry about it." And I decided
not to take it personally before I even ever asked the question. And he smile at me and
had this feeling of relief that it was okay. That somebody knew something about him that
they never known before. Beautiful. That's what open communication is --beautiful. Number
2, pre-planning and analysis. So, if a person is going to really conquer what's going on
with their emotional outburst and if they are going to feel empowered that they don't
have to stay stuck in that place of bondage, they need to have a plan. And they need to
feel like it's perfectly safe to evaluate themselves over and over again. And maybe
even change their plan. So, in our family, we make plans. We talk to the children about
what they want to accomplish, what skill they may need to learn a little bit better such
as maybe accepting no answers or accepting consequences or following instructions or
disagreeing appropriately. When a person emotionally struggles, it's usually because their not
dropping the subject in their brain. And step number 4 of the skill accepting no answer
is to drop the subject. Sometimes things don't go like you like. That's essentially the world
giving you a no-answer. So, you've got to do the 4 steps to accepting a no-answer. And
that final step is drop the subject. If you can truly tell yourself "Drop the subject,
let it go", then you can actually become more emotionally free. You don't have to think
about that thing again and again. Usually that's a big problem with people is they over
focus on the same thing and they get stuck in a rut in their brain. They keep going to
the same spot, the same spot . And because they haven't been able to conquer it, they
keep going back to it. But there's a catch 22 there. When you're in an emotional place,
you cannot fully think. So, you are going to keep going back to the same problem and
you won't be able to solve the problem because tou can't think. So, it's better to just say,
"I'm going to stop thinking about this. I'm going to just drop the subject. And then later,
if I want to comeback to it and try to work on it and my brain is better, then fine."
So, teach your children how their brains work. Teach them that self-assesment is good. Prepare
them with skills they need like how to accept a no-answer, following instructions, all of
those self government skills that are so valuable. Number 3, self-government. So, all these skills
and things that I've been talking about and pre-planning and analyzing, they all relate
to a principle called self-government. It used to be that all people understood the
freest among them were people who had self-control over themselves and who could solve their
own problems. That's what it means to self-govern. So, we have to teach our children how to self-govern,
how to solve their own problems. Now, that doesn't mean we turn them loose. So, don't
get me wrong. We don't say, "You've got a problem, go figure it out." No, because that
increases anxiety and worry and that puts them in a bad emotional place. Instead what
we do is we say, "Here's some skills. This is when to use the skills. This is how to
use the skills. And this is how to get help." And they work on that for a long, long while.
And by the time they get to be adults, then they can do that for themselves and handle
their own problems. In fact, usually long before they get adults, to become adults.
But don't lose heart if you have adolescence because I'm a foster parent for a lot of years
for youth between ages of 12 and 18 years old. And these youth would come to my home
and within months they would learn the skills of self-government. The older they are the
quicker they can learn it. But the younger they are, the more experience they have learning
it. So, each age group has its benefit when it comes to learning these skills of self-government.
So, self-government is number 3. When a person learns self-government they don't get stuck
in emotional bondage. Number 4 is soothe. Soothe them. The word sooth comes from the
old English word sōþ which means truth. So to soothe someone is to bring someone to
the truth. What our children need in order to conquer themselves emotionally, in order
to be emotionally strong people is they need to focus on the truth. When you're going again
and again and again and again to that emotional place and you're over processing something,
you oftentimes are stuck in a position where you can only see the lie. The lie is "I can't
do this. I can't do this. I can't do this. I can't do this." Or "This is too much. This
is too much. It's too overwhelming." This is a lie that they feed again and again when
they get stuck in that rut. The truth is you can do this. The truth is you can even drop
the subject and let it go if you want to. The truth is you have complete control over
how you feel in the next second. So, let's choose how that is and let's take steps to
do it. We have to soothe them. Bring them to the truth of their own power that they
have to conquer the emotional bondage and find instead emotional freedom and strength.
Which is what they're looking for. Number 6, we follow up and we track our progress.
So, when a person is truly on this road to self-mastery and conquering those thoughts
that get stuck in their head, they have to tell themselves when they've done well. When
they're doing good. And they say, "Okay, well when does this happen..." Here's the when.
Remember, I said I'd talk about the when. "When does it happen that I have this emotional
problems. Well, it's when I get stuck in my head. It's when my brain goes to this same
place and it won't leave and come to the front and start thinking again." That's when. We
got to teach them about that. "Well, when that happens what am I going to do and then
how did I do?" We check up on that. And when we see we did well sometimes, that gives us
courage to do it better the next time. So, how do we do this check up time? Well, my
children often keep journals which is a powerful thing for them so that they can track their
progress with all kinds of things. But we also keep journals for our family. In the
teaching self-government parenting program, we have journals. Journals for the different
meetings. Couples meetings journals, family meeting journals and individual mentor meeting
journals. And with those journals, we track we're doing in accomplishing our goals at
self-mastery as a family and as individuals and as couples. So, keeping track of it motivates
you to keep moving forward and shows you you're actually doing a good job. It is so important
to respond to children's emotional needs in a way that empowers them. That helps them
find freedom and emotional strength instead of emotional bondage which feels like you
can't ever break out of it. Let's not be afraid of emotional problems or emotional struggles
that a person might have. Instead, let's prepare ourselves to be the people who can lead them
to skill development and strength instead. If you like this video, I'm pretty sure you're
going to love the next video which is How To Deal With Temper Tantrums? Where you'll
learn even more about helping somebody through an emotional difficult time.