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 going to be talking about how to know the condition of your child's heart.
When a person learns self-government that means that they have a change of heart
and many parents are concerned about helping their children have a change of heart. In this video, I'm
going to be talking about having a change of heart and how you can discern or determine
where your child's heart is at. 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, that means you choose to change your behavior which also means you choose to
change your thoughts. Which ultimately means you've chosen to have a change of heart.
Many parents hope for their children to have a change of heart and they worry about the
condition of their child's heart when they're seeing bad behavior or when they're feeling a
disconnection from that child. I would say that disconnection from parents is kind of a pandemic
that many parents are facing right now. It's a social disease and I think they think that it's
normal. It should not be normal for children to disconnect from their parents. Really, it's like
the student disconnecting from the teacher and it makes it so that the student is very lost and
feels alone and doesn't know what to do. So, they do need to have a good connection there we're going
to talk about how to create that good connection. But first, it's just important for us to understand
that when a person is choosing to connect to other people they are actually choosing on purpose to
have a softer heart, to have a more humble heart, to value other people and not just themselves as well.
And this is some of the foundation behind having a self-government principle that you live by.
If you're going to determine what's going on with your child you've got to start somewhere.
You've got to start at a place where you can unify. So, what most people find very helpful
is coming up with a plan of who you want to be in your relationship. So, oftentimes, I'll sit down
with my children and say, "You know, what type of a relationship do we want to have five years from
now or maybe it's even 20 years from now. What do you want it to feel like and be like when you're
an adult and you come to visit me?", and then what do I want it to feel like and we talk about that.
That type of deliberate conversation about your future relationships is actually shown in
this book Roles, the secret to family business and social success. So, in this book, you see parents of
older children have relationship conversations like that and get their relationships repaired
so that the parents and children can both live the roles that they are supposed to have.
If your children understand where you're headed this is going to help you in the minute see where
they're at. Another thing that we've done in our family as we've raised our four children and
raised other people's children doing therapeutic foster care is we have found that it's very
helpful to deliberately teach them the skills that they need for success. So, we teach our children
four basic skills that they need. Those four basic skills are following instructions, accepting no
answers and criticism, accepting consequences, and disagreeing appropriately. We also teach them the
parent skills that we are going to use. So, in my teaching self-government parenting course. I teach
five different parenting skills that we use to help the children learn self-government and so
that we can have self-government too. Well, we teach those skills to the children so that they
are completely aware of how they will be corrected when things need correcting. It keeps the parenting
completely predictable. Now, you might be thinking, how in the world does this help a parent discern
the condition of their child's heart? Well, if you teach your child the skills they need for success
and all of those skills have steps in them related to calmness and you teach them your parents skills
that you're going to be using as well. Then when it's time to use those skills you can very
easily see where a person is at. You can break it down. You can say, "Well, that person's looking at me
and they're not having a calm face voice and body", or you could say, "They won't even look at me".
Eye contact is a huge gauge for understanding where a person is at in their connection in
your relationship. We definitely want to have ways where we can establish more eye contact.
I'm going to spend more time talking about eye contact. But before we do
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When you look at a person's eyes be thinking this is the windows to their soul.
The eyes are the windows to the soul. You can learn a lot about a person by just taking the time to
calmly look in their eyes. Think about what happens when you calmly look in their eyes and they don't
want to be calm. They immediately roll their eyes don't they? Because they don't want to make that
contact. If they won't make that contact with you then you know they are disconnected from you.
That is a gauge right there. But if they will look at you and they'll talk to you too and be open then
you know their condition of heart is pretty good. Many parents wonder if they've gotten through to
their child when they've done a correction or had a teaching moment. If the child will look at you
even if they're not saying a lot then probably you've gotten through, probably you've touched
their heart. But if the child won't look at you then probably they're still thinking about it or
maybe they're trying not to take personal responsibility and have a connection.
There's two different types of not looking at you. So, there's the not looking at you where you
can tell they're thinking and that's a good thing or there's the not looking at you where they're
just not wanting to look at you and they're wanting to detach somehow so that they can keep
things your fault. Many times they'll walk away even during those times. At that point, you can be
pretty sure that their heart is not connected to yours and the whole goal is to have their heart
connected to yours and to connect it to goodness too and hopefully, you are the means to do that.
So, eye contact is one of the most important things that you can gauge to see where their
hearts are at. Additionally, having regular talk times in family meetings gives you an idea of
where the child is at. Can they openly talk with you? Do you need to teach them how to openly talk
with you first? You might need to. But hopefully, after some teaching and practice has occurred
your child can have regular open communications with you. They'll even maybe want to touch you and
hug you on a regular basis. If you're getting these types of touch points and contacts with your child
then probably their heart is pretty close to you. Even if they may not see eye to eye about
everything. So, sometimes Porter who's my youngest son he's just about ready to leave the home.
He will say something like, "Oh, you know, I don't think I want to do that way
because or whatever", and I might say something to him back like, "Oh Porter, you know, we really
need to do that and he'll come up to me and he'll say, "Oh mom, you know you're probably right",
and he'll give me a touch like he'll put his arm around me even though I might have just corrected
him about something and he shows me I'm okay, I'm okay being corrected. You know, he lets me know with
his body language that he's okay and sometimes I'll reach out to him and give him a touch
or give him a hug when he is being corrected so that he knows I'm okay with whatever happened to.
We don't have to take the things that happen so personally in our family. If we can learn not
to take them personally then we can learn to connect even in the moments of correction which
can be very powerful for them and for us. In every one of the four basic skills that I teach in my
teaching self-government parenting course. There is a step called keep a calm face, voice, and body.
So, learn what is their calm face, voice, and body look like and what does it not look like
or feel like. That way, when they are not being calm you can very easily identify it.
So, take a little bit of time ahead of time to recognize what their calmness is and isn't and
then you'll be able to say, "Oh, it looks like we're not having a calm face, voice, and body right now",
and you'll be able to go right into a correction. We can't do corrections very well if we cannot
discern where their hearts are at. We can see behavior but where are they really at on the
inside we need to know that. So that we make sure we hit the mark with our teaching and correcting.
Now, let's say you've done all of this. You've looked at the body language. You've looked in
the eyes. You've decided they might be kind of calm but somehow they're still not opening up to you,
that can happen. Sometimes children want to hide things from their parents. Even though they want
to be close to their parents they don't feel like they can tell their parents the full truth about
something. Because they're not sure they can trust their parents reaction. This is a time
when you need to put your child at ease. So, how do you put them at ease? When you meet with your child
tell them what you know, tell them what you already know. Even sometimes stating your assumption as a
full knowledge puts them at ease. So, you might say to a child, something like, "I know that you have a
hard time with your relationship with your brother", or, "I know that you've been seeing things online
that have created an addiction", just say it. Say what you think might be the case because they will
actually correct you if it's not the case. But I would just put them at ease by stating it and then
say and that's okay. It's okay, that could happen to anyone or we all have times when we don't feel
close to other people. Let's talk about why it's happening and what we can do about it so that
it doesn't need to be a problem anymore. We need to let the children know they don't have to stay
in that place where they don't feel good or you might even say something like, "I know you think
I don't understand you. You might even think I don't want to understand you but I want you to know
that I am here to understand and there is nothing you could tell me that would shock me. I am ready
to know anything and everything and to not get upset." Sometimes we have to put them at ease.
It makes the whole conversation better and then we'll be able to see where they're really at.
Let them see into your heart that you're okay with them not being okay sometimes
and then they will show you that they're not okay and you can then discuss it. Bonding is important
in our relationships and one of the key things that you can do after you've put them at ease
or opened a conversation with them is really listen, really pay attention to what they're
saying and bond with them during that time. Show them how important that they are to you.
If you've enjoyed this video I'm quite sure you will like my next video
which is the not-so-known secret for parenting success. Click on the link to that video now and
you will learn key skills and principles that you can use to teach yourself and your children more
self-government. It will add on to what we've talked about here and give you key strategies
for calmness that you might need. So, click on the not so known secret for parenting success now.