Hi, I'm Nicholeen Peck and I teach parenting, communications,, relationships, and self-goverment
training all over the world and in this video, I'm gonna be talking about how to help an
angry child calm down? As a previous parent and mother of four, I have seen children get
angry before. But I will tell you that my own children got angry far less than my foster
children did and there is a reason for that. My own children were raised with the skills
and principles of self-government. The foster children that came to my home had to overcome
their angry habits and learn the skills and principles of self-government to replace those
angry habits before they could find that calmness and that peace and understanding that they
were really looking for. In this video, I'm gonna be sharing with you some key things
that you can do to help your child calm down when they're angry and find more power that
comes in self-government. So, what is self-government? Self-government is being able to determine
the cause and effect of any given situation and possessing knowledge of your own behavior
so that you can control them. That means, that the person plans ahead of time how they
plan to behave, and then if it doesn't quite go right they get themselves back on track
by correcting themselves again and again and how they decide to correct themselves? By
knowing by being corrected by a parent was not a painful process when they are growing
up. That's right, we teach our children self-government by correcting them. But what happens when
we correct them and they get angry? Because that does happen sometimes. There are some
skills and principles of self-government that I teach in my 3-day training called, The Parenting
Mastery Training. In the parenting mastery training we talk about how to correct a child
in a calm way that's optimistic, that feels safe and understood and even connective, and
during this time of corrective interaction, it's really hard for the child to want to
argue against the parent. So, I hope you're understanding just a little bit here that
your tone that you carry with each correction that you give to your child or each no answer
that you need to give to your child actually makes a difference on whether they feel like
they wanna power struggle with you or not. Angry children are engaged in a power struggle
that's important to know. So, how do we help an angry child not to power struggle by choosing
not to power struggle with them. Now, that doesn't mean that we just sit there and be
stand of, "I'm not talking about it...", because that stills is passive-aggressive power struggling.
So, we have to be calm by pointing them towards calmness, and then have really productive
conversations. So, correcting children is important, and deciding yourself to have the
right tone and not engage in those power struggles is a vital part of making a really solid correction
to your child. there's some other thing that we can teach our children too. Important skills
that they can learn so that they know they can always be heard and understood. In the
teaching self-government parenting course, we teach 4 basic skills for children. The
4 basic skills are following instructions, accepting no answers and criticism, accepting
consequences, and disagreeing appropriately. That disagreeing appropriately is really important
to them. In fact, when I talk to most children about which skills of the 4 basic skills is
their favorite. They almost always say disagreeing appropriately and I say, why? and they say,
"Well, because I can get my way", or they say, "Because I don't have to get angry anymore."
Did you know that they feel relieved when they don't have to get angry anymore? Sure,
at first when you present new skills to them you are not going to get angry and fight with
them. They feel like they wanna try to engage with you because they have a habit of engaging
you in those types of power struggles and anger. But in the end, they feel great relief
for not having to power struggle all the time. Being understood, getting their way, and knowing
that they have the power to be calm if they want to. Those other 3 skills of 4 basic skills
all include an option of disagreeing appropriately. So, in all 3 of the other skills to following
instructions, accepting no answers and criticism, or accepting consequences. In the steps to
those skills, one step in all 3 of those skills is, say "okay" or ask to disagree appropriately.
So, that disagree appropriately skill is actually present in all of the self-government skills
and when a person learns those 4 skillsets for those basic skills that take care of 99%
of their behavioral problem. It empowers them, it teaches them that they can solve their
own problems by just getting calm and talking about it. Before I get to my next point, I
like to know what types of angry things you're dealing with in your house. What types of
behaviors are they displaying when they're getting angry? Put some comments in the chat
below and I'll take a look at those and get back to you shortly. I'd like to share to
you some steps that you can use if the child is getting angry. Step number one, do not
talk back to them and power struggle with them. We've already covered that. Step number
two is to be calm. We've already covered that. Step number three, you've got to know what
to say. So, what are you gonna say? If you're going to be calm and you're not going to talk
back to them and react. What are you going to say? Well, I have trained myself to describe.
So, the first step to my corrections always is a description. After I've checked myself
for calmness so I say to them, "Just now I gave you an instruction and you didn't look
at me and you did not keep a calm face voice, and body. You did not say okay or ask to disagree
appropriately. But you did walk off to go do it ut you are not doing all the steps to
following instruction because there are five. What you should do is you should 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. Since you choose not to do all five steps
of following instructions then you have chosen to earn an extra chore", and we always use
an extra chore because work is the antidote for s sick character and it's quick repentance
too. So, they don't have to have a negative consequence followed them around the whole
day long just because they did one thing wrong. They're children, they make mistakes. They
need to be able to get over quickly but also do something that they get to do. They have
to accept their consequence if we just take the stuff away from them that doesn't teach
them that much. Then we move on with the practice session. So, we usually do a practice of what
they shouldn't do multiple times with some role plays as part of the corrective teaching.
These are the words that I say. This is what I use when I'm correcting the problems. Now,
if the child still continues to go completely out of control then you need to have another
skill set. What's that other skill set? Well, depending on their age. When they're young
we have a calm down place and then corrective teaching that follows. But when they're older
we use something called, the rule of three. The rule of three is a process of saying 3
things, 3 times. It appeals to the pre-frontal cortex and helps them solve their problems.
But it also this process where they know that they have to go to calmness otherwise, we
cant talk. So, if they go out of control after a regular correction chance are that you just
need to get them to calmness first and then talk about what they've earned because of
that. I don't have tons of time to go into the entire rule of three with you today, that
would take me quite a bit. But I would like to share with you a very special video. There
is a video I know you're going to enjoy that will teach you more about the skills of self-government
and how to create that proper tone in your home. So that your children will choose not
to be angry and frustrated anymore. In fact, I share an expectation trap and a cycle for
success. In the trap, we see how a person gets trap in anger. That type of information
for your child could be very eye-opening and it could be eye-opening for you too. So, click
on the link to the expectation trap vs the cycle for success and we will see you there.