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 we're talking about how to teach your child life skills.
In this video, we're going to be talking about what adult skills do for children.
We're also going to be talking about some vital adult skills they need for life,
specifically focusing on four basic skills that every person who is going to live a productive,
emotionally healthy, connective life needs to do or needs to know. So what do adult skills
do for us? Really they build our confidence, they help us solve our problems. They increase
our abilities to do all other kinds of things. So many parents are wrong actually in sheltering
their children from work and from having skill development. So often we keep children in this
child world of play and friends and school, and we don't let them launch into adulthood soon
enough. I remember one time I was making a meal at my home. I invited my daughter and her friend
to join in making the meal. The two girls were 12, okay? When I asked them to help, they were excited
about the concept of helping me and then I said, okay, so how about I have you stir this and you
chop these things? And my daughter's friend who I asked if she would chop some of the vegetables,
looked at me and she said, I can't do that because I'm not allowed to use knives and I said,
okay, but I mean, it's just food. Like we're not using the knife for anything else. We're just
chopping up the food like you help your mom cook, right? She gave me this blank look. She's like,
I am not allowed to use knives. This same 12 year old was still sitting in a booster seat in her car
when she would go to school. So the mother I know was very protective of the safety of her child,
but this child could not do even a 10th of what my child could do. My child could prep dirt,
plant a garden, grow the food, harvest the food chop and prepare the food, cook the meal, make
the bread to go with it, could do all of these things. By age 12, she could run my entire house,
not that I was having her run my entire house, but I had taught her to do all of those things
and she was happy about it. She was confident she was secure in herself. And this other child,
interestingly enough, was not very secure and even to this day, struggles a little bit with her own
security. And it makes me wonder if the parent saw that and so made her have to do less things or if
because the adult skills were not nurtured, the child ended up coming into adulthood not feeling
capable and was nervous and worried about it, and so didn't thrive well in adulthood. Very
interesting. I don't know for sure because it's not my child and I didn't see her all of the time,
but I was interested that she wasn't given that opportunity When my children were eight years old,
we would give them axes and teach them how to chop wood. I mean, if they could heft it, right? And of
course we took safety precautions. We didn't just leave them alone out there chopping wood, but we
also knew, okay, if they get hurt doing something, we'll teach them how to handle it and we're going
to keep 'em safe and we're going to stay close by if something is super dangerous. But we're going
to teach them. We live in the American West, we taught our children how to shoot bows and arrows
and guns and throw hatchets and all that kind of stuff because these are going to be things that
help them see they can do more than they think they can. We're going to teach them how to climb
stuff. All these types of things are really good for the tactile and problem solving development
for the child. So when we teach a child adult skills, what we're doing is we're nurturing that
cognitive development in the brain, and at the same time, we're preparing them with increased
confidence because they've handled problems and sometimes even teaching them how to handle
failure, because that's a really common thing that people don't know how to do is handle when
they fail. Learning how to fail is an adult skill as well, which means you have to be corrected a
lot too. So we're going to talk about that next. So we're going to talk about how to correct your
children so they learn how to fail, and we're going to talk about the four basic skills that
a person needs to help prepare the way for all of the other adults skills. So children do need
to learn how to be corrected. You have to help them know that this is a completely normal part
of life. Failure happens to everybody. You don't expect them to be perfect, you just will correct
them every time they need help with a correction. Super normal, right? Parents have always corrected
and guided children, but nowadays we have all these people getting uptight if they ever hear
they've done anything wrong. And you know what that says to me? They have not learned how to
accept a correction from another person. They have not gained that skill yet. They haven't
learned that it's safe because maybe it's not safe when a lot of correction happens.
Maybe that's why they think that being corrected or course correcting or acknowledging a problem
within themselves is not safe. So instead, they have worry and anxiety that they will get found
out for doing something the wrong way or that they will have to take responsibility for doing
something the wrong way. Well, what's wrong with that? What's wrong with taking responsibility and
being talked to about something absolutely nothing? As an adult, if somebody comes to
me and says, Hey, actually, actually you were wrong on this. I'm going to say, whoa, really?
I would like to hear about that. Tell me why. And I have no problem saying, I think I was wrong. I
think that person was right. It's called humility. It's called being teachable, and that is a mature
quality. If somebody can't ever be corrected, we're keeping them in an immature state. Now,
I know you and I both know adults who will not take correction, right? They need these adult
skills too. We all do. So correcting your children can be done in a calm and effective manner so that
they can learn that corrections are safe, and you can learn how to do all of those corrections on
some of my other videos. In fact, I'll take you to a really good video at the end of this one that
will help you with that. So what are those four basic skills for success? Four, basic skills that
are adult skills. Lay the foundation for all of the other adult skills mastery that we are going
to want to bring in for our children. Now, I've mentioned a lot of adult skills so far, something
like how to go to bed on time, how to wake up on time, how to make food, how to handle weapons,
how to drive a car, how to do your own laundry, how to clean a room, how to organize a drawer,
how to disagree appropriately with somebody that you don't agree with. These are all life skills,
but there are four of them that lay the foundation to learn all of these others better. The four
basic skills are following instructions, accepting "no" answers and criticism, accepting consequences
and disagreeing appropriately. These four children's books each teach one of the four
basic skills to children. And just so you know, the skills are applicable to children of all ages,
not just children 12 and under who might read a book like this. In fact, in my TSG parenting
course and in my other parenting books, I also teach these four basic skills. These books just
make it really fun to teach and reinforce the skills with younger children. So let's talk about
these four basic skills. Each one of these four basic skills has a skill set attached to it. So
to follow instructions, you do five things. You look at the person, keep a calm face, voice and
body. Say, okay, or ask to disagree appropriately. Do the task immediately and then check back. Think
about that. When a person is learning how to take responsibility, they have to have an
accountability person, right, that they check back with or some way to hold themselves accountable to
measure their success. When you are learning to check back with another person, you're learning
to take responsibility. This will encourage you to give yourself instructions. So first we teach them
how to follow instructions, and then they learn to give themselves instructions as well. Keeping
a calm face, voice and body can be very difficult for a strong-willed child or an opinionated child
or one that's used to talking back. So making sure that they understand calm, face, voice and
body really look like and feel like is going to be super important. Now, what about that child that
likes to talk back? They want to solve their problem. They want to have some words to say,
what skill do they need? They need that skill. Disagreeing appropriately. There are seven steps
to the skill, disagreeing appropriately, and when a person goes through that whole process,
what they do is they seek to understand that other person. They share what they have to say. They
learn also how to drop the subject when they don't get their way, and they learn how to keep calm as
well, so they can learn to listen to other people and learn how to present themselves in a way that
is going to be calm and understanding so that they have an opportunity of maybe changing somebody
else's mind. Maybe even your mind. Accepting "no" answers and accepting criticism are also vital
skills for learning self-government and preparing for adulthood. How many disappointments do you
have in adulthood? Wow, so many. Somebody cuts you off in traffic, you didn't get the job promotion,
you woke up late again, whatever it is, we have disappointments that happen every day. Maybe we
burn the dinner. That's a "no" answer, or maybe a consequence because we forgot to set the timer
right? So there are skillsets that you can learn how to handle these disappointing moments in life.
This increases maturity and helps a person end up becoming a leader with the other people around
them because they're not afraid of recognizing that they've made a mistake. Learning how to fail,
learning how to make a mistake, learning how to direct yourself forward and learning how to talk
out your problems in a calm and effective way with another person. These are going to be the skills
that will lay the foundation for all of the other adult skills that a person has. I would like to
help you get, learn more about these skills and others that you might find helpful for learning
self-government in your family. In my next video, which is a full-length class called The Not So
None Secret for Parenting Success, click on the link to that video now. I'll see you there.