Hi, I'm Nicholeen Peck. I teach all over the world about parenting, good communication
and how to build strong family bonds through the lens of the principle self-government.
And in this video we're talking about predictable parenting for autistic children.
In this video, we're going to be talking about what helps autistic children thrive and
key components that you can incorporate into your parenting strategies so that things are
more predictable. Everybody loves predictability. Seriously, everybody loves predictability. It just
brings us all peace. But if you are an autistic person, you like really love predictability,
usually that is one of the characteristics of most, most autistic people. Obviously, autistic
people, autistic children, they're all different. They're all unique. The spectrum is broad,
but usually predictability matters because of the level of anxiety that they are experiencing. The
predictability can make a big, big difference. When I was a treatment foster parent and I took
troubled teens into my home, I had multiple autistic youth come to stay with our family.
I helped them, I did treatment for them, and they were very successful in what we did in our home,
and that's what I want to talk about today. What can we do to increase that predictability
for autistic youth? Key components to good, predictable parenting that apply to all families.
Whether you have autistic children or not, are the same. The first component that I would like
to talk about is the component of planning. Who are you? Where are you going? What are the roles
in your family and how do you want to communicate? That is a lot of things to plan, but they do need
to be planned. Let's start with who are you? Who are in your family? What does it mean to be part
of your family? What is your family's identity and purpose? In my book, Parenting A House United,
I talk about creating a family vision, which is a picture in the future of what type of a family you
want to have. In fact, we attach it to a specific event that we do regularly. Now, for a family with
an autistic child, that is important. As you're creating the family vision, what you might want
to do is actually have an event that is similar to what you want to have happen in the future, and
then talk about what you liked about that event, and then plan for that event for the future. In
this book, there are other suggestions for how to create a really great lasting family vision. Not
all autistic people have an easy time with big picture planning, because many times autistic
people are very good at details. That's oftentimes a strength that autistic people possess is being
able to focus on a detail or seeing when something is not in alignment with something else. We're
going to keep talking about these key components, but before we do, how about you leave me a comment
about how you think self-government is helping you? Try some of the things that I'm talking
about and then leave me a comment, or if you have any questions, I'm happy to answer them for you.
So who are you? Goes back to your family dynamic. This book here: Roles: The Secret to Family,
Business, and Social Success is a story about a family who doesn't really understand their roles
in their family and the dysfunction that they experience because of it. You could read this
book as a family and discuss what your roles are in the family so that the family functions
properly. Another important part on planning is understanding the skills that you want to
utilize as a family. So in the book, Parenting A House United, I talk about four basic skills and
five teaching styles that the family is going to want to be familiar with. Also, in this series of
children's books, I talk about four basic skills that take care of 99% of behavioral problems and
help families communicate more effectively. These four basic skills are following instructions,
accepting "no" answers and criticism, accepting consequences and disagreeing appropriately. So
let's talk about the next key component that you're going to want to keep in mind, and that
is the tone of consistency. When you are working with children, doesn't matter if their autistic
children are not, consistency is key. When you are consistent, a child feels more safe.
It maintains the predictability. If you change up your consequences or the way that you are going to
be teaching the child or correcting the child every single time just to try to be creative,
it actually is very unsettling for them. They want to know things will be the same every time. This
decreases anxiety because it is a higher level of predictability. One of my favorite components
to creating great predictability is the tone of calmness. When you are calm in your family and
your children know you understand calmness, they understand calmness, and you are pointing everyone
toward calmness in all of your interactions. That also helps them feel like they will be able to be
understood and that everything is safe and okay, even if they have to get corrected sometimes. This
brings me to another key component. Corrections. Corrections need to happen consistently. Also,
praises should happen consistently as well as pre-teaching. So there should be a component
or a tone of teaching that happens in the home. Praising pre-teaching and correcting are all part
of good teaching. Instead of reacting or giving consequences, we need to be thinking in terms
of teaching our autistic child. This helps open the door to communication instead of increasing
anxiety and shutting things down. Seeking to understand is another really important key
component. In my video, how to help an autistic child handle anxiety, I share a real story of an
autistic girl who had a struggle with anxiety and ways that I suggested that the parents could help
the child know that they wanted to understand her, but also help her learn to wait for just a moment
before she got to say something. So I highly recommend going and listening to that story
in that video, it's going to be beneficial to you. Many times when an autistic child is going out of
control, it's because they don't feel completely understood at the time, or they are afraid that
they will forget to tell you something. So it's important that you recognize they need to be
understood. So say less words, get to that place of understanding quicker. Speaking of saying less
words, it is not effective ever to lecture, but especially if you have an autistic child, they
will start shutting down and stop listening to you if you start lecturing. So make sure that you
choose your words carefully, get to the point and keep all of the language very, very predictable. I
mentioned calmness before. I cannot overstate the importance of calmness in your communications for
predictable parenting in your home. In fact, it's so important that I would like to give
you my calm parenting toolkit for free. You are teaching autistic children in your home. That's
higher level parenting. Just that, your calmness is vital. Whether you had autistic children or not,
this is vital, but I know that you might need even an extra dose of calmness. So my Calm Parenting
toolkit is 10 lessons with 10 different tools of calmness that you can use to help maintain your
calmness and help your child get calm all at the same time. In the description below this video,
there is a link to my Calm Parenting toolkit. The link says Teachselfgov.com/toolkit. If
you click on that link right now, it will take you to the Calm Parenting Toolkit for free. It's the
perfect first step for learning self-government. After that toolkit, you'll probably want to find
yourself on the TSG Parenting course or at one of the three day trainings or maybe reading some
of the books because you will need more help probably with some of the skills. But that
calmness skill is the beginning. Start there. I'll see you on the Calm Parenting Toolkit.