I'll be sharing 5 ways with you in this video
that parents can enhance their positive parenting
and improve their family relationships.
Everyone has goodness in them. A wise parent
focuses on the goodness in their child and in their spouse and in their family
members even when some bad behaviors need
correcting. This is the essence of positive parenting. So, how does a parent
correct their child and still have that interaction be
positive? No matter how we interact with our
children, whether we're praising them teaching them or correcting them or
helping them through a tantrum, we should have a feeling of unity and
bonding with our child. We should be envisioning
the goodness that they have on the inside. In fact,
when i teach people in my courses about correcting
out of control behaviors, I always tell them how i look in the eyes of the child
and i think "I love you." "I love you." I think that in my mind even as i'm
saying, it seems like you might be out of
instructional control. And I start doing a teaching interaction
that will help them find their way to calmness. Even when children are out
of control they can still feel your love and feel
close to you. That's what the positive parenting
movement is trying to accomplish. I think we can add some things, some
information, some skills some ideas to that movement
that will make positive parenting even easier for you. Here are 5 key
ways that parents can increase
their effectiveness of their parenting and
enhance and improve their family relationships
during interactions. Number 1, roles. I know that doesn't seem like a
likely thing to start with. But if the family doesn't know who each
other is in the family relationship, then they're
going to struggle with communicating and correcting problems and have them
come across as positive. They'll become more reactive instead of
proactive. So, there's a book I've written called
Roles: The secret to family business and social success.
That actually goes through the life of a family who has some role dysfunction.
They struggle communicating because each of them is just worrying about what they
want. What will make them feel better. Instead
of identifying who they really are in the family. If you want to learn
more about roles, there's another video that I've done
about roles and relationships in the family called
"How Do Roles And Relationships Influence Family
Success And Happiness?" What does reactive
parenting look like? Reactive parenting is not a positive
type of parenting. It's the type of parenting where the
parent sees something happen then there's an emotion that's triggered
in their brain. And that emotion causes them to yell or
to lash out or to get angry or to lay hands upon their children
in aggressive ways. Or to pout or seclude or ignore.
Those are all power struggles that parents will use with their children
and they do not go with the role of teacher. Every parent is a teacher.
So, if the parents understand what it means to be a teacher
of their children. And if the children understand what it means to be a learner
and what their role is and they properly get that, then
they're ready to have better more positive
communications with each other. Otherwise everyone's out for themselves
and they lose their identity in the process.
The second way that parents can enhance their positive communications with their
family members is to have open goal-setting time as a
family. The family has to come together and to
discuss issues that are relating to the family
on a regular basis. So, have meetings. In our family, we have
multiple meetings. But one of those meetings
is called a family meeting. And we have this meeting at least one time a week.
We get together and everyone has a voice in solving family problems.
We discuss things openly. We set goals for our family
for how we are going to become a better version of ourselves
and then we hold ourselves accountable. Without any accountability
or proactive deliberate communication, the family is just going to go with the
tide. Whatever they feel like at any given minute. And then they
lose focus. They become selfish. Things become
negative and poof! There goes that positive
parenting environment that you were hoping to create for your
family. The third way that a family can have a positive
environment at home to create strong relationships
is by having a tradition of calmness. I know that
sounds almost impossible for some people but it is possible. i'm probably one of
the most fiery people there is, to be honest. And
all of my children are strong-willed. I'm strong-willed,
my husband is strong-willed. But when it comes to our communications with each
other, we don't just fly by the seat of our
pants. We plan. We prepare. We tame the beast.
And we communicate effectively and deliberately with each other
with calmness. Many people come to our home and they comment
"This home feels so calm." In fact, when we were filmed by the BBC, for the
world's strictest parents episode that aired in 2009 which you can
watch by clicking that in the corner. That was
what the camera crew told us. In fact, multiple members of the
camera crew said, "i wish i could just stay here. I want to
come back and visit. There's something about your house. I
love the feeling that's here." That feeling was a feeling of love, unity
and calmness. No matter what another person said or did,
even if it was in the heat of passion or selfishness, we know how to stay calm
at our house. Calmness is key. In fact, when my children go completely out of
control, that's where I point them to calmness
calmness, calmness. We have certain ways and certain skills
that we direct each other toward calmness if we happen to be forgetting
that we can indeed communicate calmly with each other.
People who communicate calmly are better understood.
The fourth way that parents can enhance their family relationships
and have the environment become more positive is by being
predictable. So, I know it seems funny to follow cue cards and a chart. But how
else was a person like me going to tame the beast inside? I'm the
type of person that can shoot darts out of my mouth. I could be so
hurtful because my brain doesn't stop working. I could be very
witty and very cruel. So, to tame that,
i had to sit down and write every single word out
at first. And then write cues for what i had planned to say
originally. I thought with my foster children
because especially these ones were older, smarter all
in their teenage years ages. 12 to 18. I thought my foster children would think,
"What is this person that the state brought us to? This lady has to read off
of a card to do the parenting for us." And I
thought they wouldn't take me seriously. But in the end, when I said, "These are the
words I will say when I correct you and how i will tame
myself and be in control of me. And this is when i will say and do
certain things", it validated me in their eyes. They were
able to see that i was truly self-governing myself
just like I told them I was going to teach them to self-govern
themselves with the 4 basic skills and other teaching styles
that we were going to be using with them when they were in our home.
Writing down what you want to say and knowing when you'll do what skill you
have in your quiver next is not fake
parenting. It's real parenting. It's planned
parenting. That's what parents do when they truly
care about having the greatest impact and effect on their family
relationships and their children's hearts. They don't
go with the flow and get creative and fly off the handle
and then say, "Oh, well. Something had to be done." And make excuses.
No. They don't do that. They train themselves so that they can show
their children how to also train themselves.
Predictability decreases anxiety. So, if you tell your children
this is exactly what i will say, "Every single time i correct you,
and if you go completely out of control, here's another skill that i will use
and this is exactly what i will say then." They don't have to worry.
That you're going to make up something just to hurt them which might have
happened in the past. Now, it's all going to be about
self-government and freedom for each person and cause
and effect and keeping the roles in the right place.
The fifth way that parents can have more effective communication more
positive interactions and stronger relationships with their family
is to be consistent. And I know for some people that is their
nemesis ---consistency, consistency, consistency.
When i'm speaking at conferences all over the world,
people will come to me and they'll say, "Nicholeen, I struggle with consistency.
What can I do to increase my consistency? Because I know that that is ruining my
effectiveness with my children. Please help me."
Consistency is possible if you've made a plan ahead of time.
And if you are holding yourself accountable by checking up on your work,
which means you have to be willing to stop yourself after an interaction and
say, "Did i do what i told myself that I was
going to do? Did i plan properly and execute?
And if not, do I need to redo that?" Redoing an interaction is
liberating. There have been many times when I've said to my children,
"You know, right now you have an attitude problem."
And then my daughter would say to me, "Mom, may i disagree appropriately."
And that's one of the 4 basic skills that I've taught her. And i would say,
"Yes." Because i told her every time she asked that question i would always say
"Yes, you may disagree appropriately." Then she would
say, "Mom, I understand you're frustrated right now and that you think that i have
an attitude problem. But you have one too." Ooh! Ouch. So true.
So true, I will never forget that day. That interaction
standing at the top of my stairs and her over the banister
and me trying to call her out with attitude in my voice
not using my calmness skills or anything predictable that we'd used.
And her going to what we had planned and some of our predictable skills
and pulling me back to consistency by telling me i hadn't done correct.
And what I'd planned. And I said, "You're right.
I am so sorry. Let me take a second and get calm and we are going to redo this."
And it literally only took me a second because at that point,
that bit of honesty brought me from the emotional part of my brain
straight to the front to the logical part of my brain
which is where we need to be when we're correcting our children."
Consistency means following through. And i think a lot of people
recognize that association with the term. But it also means teaching the family
what will happen so that everybody helps with follow-through not
just the parent. Everything if it's predictable
can more easily be consistent. We have to correct what needs correcting.
And praise what needs praising. Otherwise, we can't teach our children to
self-govern themselves. Learning cause and effect is one of the
2 components to self-government that is essential.
The other one is knowing that it's okay to self-analyze
and self-correcting all of the time.
Parenting is the hardest thing that we ever do. It requires the best of us.
When we're tempted to display the worst of us. And i know that you could be
beating yourself up a little bit for maybe past mistakes.
Don't spend time doing that. It's not productive.
Instead, learn the calm parenting skills that you don't
know. It's not your fault that things haven't gone right.
You don't know what you don't know. I have a free gift for you
that's gonna help you know what you've been missing.
This gift is called the Calm Parenting Toolkit.
And if you click the link below, you'll be able to access that.
This Calm Parenting Toolkit is going to empower you
so that you'll have the words to say. It's going to help you find the freedom
that comes on the other side of calmness. And it
truly is one of the key things that ties all 5
of those ways that we create that positive parenting environment together.
together