Do you want to know how to build a trusting relationship with a child?
I'm Nicholeen Peck and I teach parenting, good communications
and how to build strong relationships all over the world through the lens of
self-government and in this video we're talking about building trusting relationships with a child.
In this video I'm going to be sharing a true story from my life and then give you some key
principles that you can use to establish a more trusting relationship with your child. I have
four children of my own but for years, I also did treatment foster care for troubled teens. They were
all between the ages of 12 and 18 and many of them had honesty issues. Many of them had honesty
issues, meaning they lied habitually. Some of them had been abused and so they had learned how to lie
for everything, some of them just were trying to find ways to not take responsibility for their
own behaviors and their own actions and so they would lie. Well luckily, I actually had been a young
person who had overcome lying myself and so I willingly took in these children who had problems
with lying because I knew that they could improve. I knew that I could teach them something that they
could use in order to establish more trust in their relationships and I know I've shared that
story on other videos so you can find that story on other videos related to lying and honesty
about what I actually did and how I developed my own skill set for controlling the impulse to lie.
But what did I do about those relationships, how did I help them have trust in me and how did I
develop trust in them, that's what I'd like to talk about. So, there was one foster daughter in
particular who literally lied about everything. The first day in my house, she was unpacking and
she had a bottle of shampoo. The shampoo clearly had had two different types of shampoo dumped
into it. Okay so there was like the base shampoo and then something that had been dumped on top and
she's like oh this is a very fancy shampoo, a very special shampoo because it's all swirly like this
and I went oh dear. We're talking about everything, literally everything. She was a kleptomaniac and
she was a compulsive liar. She couldn't stop, she showed me a bar of baking chocolate and told me
that that baking chocolate was something that was very special that was given to her from her mother
and this whole big story you know about it and so it really was a situation that I felt like I could
not trust one thing that was said. I mean we found out she stole the baking chocolate from the group
home she'd been at and she stole somebody else's shampoo and dumped it into her jar, her bottle too.
I mean it was everything. One thing that I knew could not happen is I couldn't have our
relationship be completely about detecting all the lies even though I had to detect everyone but
there had to be more to our relationship than that and so I worked very hard at communicating openly,
making eye contact with her to make sure that she could see through my eyes that I loved her
and I cared about her. I would look at her and I would think I love you. I love you even at the time
where I was having to tell her that i knew that she was not communicating honestly at that time.
So I did have to work on trusting her. So what did I do? How did I increase trust in her when
she actually was not trustworthy? See that's the thing. Sometimes we think we we have to wait
for a person to be trustworthy in order to trust the direction they're headed or trust
who they really are as a person but we don't have to. I know that it seems counterintuitive
because we feel like well if they're lying to us. How can we trust them? Well
we're not going to trust every word they say but we can trust in the relationship.
We can trust that we were meant to be together in the relationship, we can trust that they can learn,
that is something that we can trust in and that was something I had to trust in in order to live
with her. So, I was a liar but I lied strictly for advantage or to get out of trouble. She just lied
just habitually all the time and so it did make it difficult to want to be with her. In fact I
found myself at one point not really wanting to be with her, not wanting to find out one more lie
because they just kept coming again and again. So, she would go to school every day and I felt this
amazing relief because I didn't have to find one more lie out and then I realized
I don't think i want to be with her. I don't think I'm feeling very much love for her and
how can I have a good relationship with her if I don't feel loved for her but then I thought but
how can I love someone who's just lying to me all the time? Doesn't she know that's a natural
consequence that people won't love her, won't want to be with her if all she ever does is lie and
even though that is a natural consequence, that's not what I was supposed to teach her. In fact I was
the person that was supposed to show her she could do it, she could overcome this, she could learn
a skill. I had to be in her corner, not against her and so I decided I had to have love for her.
So i made this little plan. My plan was that every day at 3:45, I was going to go to my
room and I was going to pray to love her. I was going to ask God for some of his love for her
so that I could have increased love so that when she walked in the door and we immediately had to
go through her backpack and her pockets and everything because she was a kleptomaniac and
decide where everything came from and then filter through all the lies and find all the truths that
I would be able to be okay with it, that I would be able to love her despite having to do that every
single day that I was with her and you know what? It worked. I prayed for love for her and I felt
love. Now I know not everybody's a praying person, I am but another thing you could do if you're not
a praying person is you could try gratitude. Making a gratitude list about a person, what
you're grateful for, what potential that person has, trying to see them for who they really are. See, I
tried to see her for who I thought God saw her as but you could also just say who is she really?
What good can she do to this world and for this world? What good does she do sometimes and focus on
those things instead of all the negative things so that you can continue to open communication with
the person who maybe you have a hard time trusting. The opposite of trust is force. So, I could not
force her to be honest and you know what? Sometimes it's the parent that's not been honest to the
child and the child doesn't trust the child and the child can't force the parent to be honest with
them either. Have you been honest with your child? I hope so but if not, be honest about that now
and decide that that has got to change. So we're going to talk about what you can do to change
whether you've been the one with the dishonesty problem or whether the child's done something that
has been dishonest and how you can increase the trust no matter which direction you're coming from
but first click that subscribe button now. There are so many great videos here on this channel all
about self-government and on how you can improve your communication with yourself and with others.
They all lead to liberation and freedom for your relationship so click on the subscribe button now.
They can't force you to be honest with them and they may not know if they can trust you based
on some of your past actions, whether they were dishonest or just mean and unkind. You know when
you're not kind to someone, they don't know if they can trust you. When someone doesn't follow
your instructions or honor your authority as a parent, you're not sure if you can trust them.
This is just natural cause and effect in relationships. So sometimes it's not even just
lying or being deliberately dishonest that ruins trust in relationships but it's not living your
role and bringing dysfunction into the family, which decreases your trust in relationships. So
how do you increase the trust? Well one of the key things that you can do to increase trust in your
relationships is by bringing in predictability. When a person is predictable in their
relationships and in their communication that actually makes it so that everybody understands
where they stand with that person. They understand how to solve problems with that person and how to
communicate more effectively with that person. What do you say to solve problems, what do you
say when you correct your children? Is it something that you could do in a predictable manner,
in a way that's calm? So your tone is predictable but also so that the words are the same every time
so that the people don't decide you're playing a new game with them and have to go into strategy
mode, that would mean that your structure or your wording is also predictable. Years ago
when I took in treatment foster children and I was focusing on bringing in people with honesty issues.
I decided to be completely predictable all the time. Number one, that would decrease their anxiety,
number two that would decrease my anxiety. So I was going to have predictable words or structure
and a predictable tone so that predictable tone was going to help them know that home would be
the safest place to make mistakes, that I would never overreact and I would say the same things
every single time. You can have that predictable tone and structure too. I would like to share with
you some of those tone and structure elements that will make a huge difference in your family
relationships. They will create trust you for them and them for you. The next video that I
suggest watching is a video called the not so known secret for parenting success.
That video will go into vital tone elements and structural elements that you can utilize
to create a home environment where everyone can trust each other, solve their problems together
and have their hearts united together as a family. We don't have to deal with dysfunction.
If we are not trusting each other in our relationships, that is dysfunctional. Click on
the link to the not so known secret for parenting success now and find the function that you need
to create better more trusting relationships for the future. I'll see you there.