Hi, I'm Nicholeen Peck and I teach all about parenting, good communications and building
good relationships all over the world through the lens of self-government and
in this video I'm going to be talking about how to repair a relationship with a child.
In this video I'm going to share a true story from my life working with one of the troubled
children that used to live with me and I'm going to share some of the key things that I
did to repair the relationship with them. For years, I took in treatment children.
They were all between the ages of 12 and 18 and I did therapeutic treatment care in my home for them.
They were foster children, they had a myriad of different things that they were dealing with
from sexual issues, substance abuse issues. They oftentimes been abused. They had things like ADHD,
OCD, ODD, RAD, kleptomania, compulsive lying, anger control issues. There were a lot of things
going on there with these young people in my home and I was supposed to do treatment for them. Now
one thing that I knew because it's a principle is you're not going to help a person have a change of
heart or even a change of mind unless you can feel close to that person. Well there was one foster
daughter that came to my home who did not want to allow anyone to feel close to her. She really
struggled, she kept a distance. She stayed aloof all the time and I thought how am I going to reach
her? So the relationship needed help. It was not going in the right direction and I would
correct her and then she would just get mad, kind of spiteful about anything that happened. She was
using every moment of correction as another reason for her not to like me even though on my side of
it, I didn't feel any bad feelings toward her. I was just doing my job and then it occurred to me, I was
just doing my job, that's all I was doing. How many times can you just do your job in a relationship?
A lot. How many times can you just do your job as a parent? Can you just do your job as a husband
or a wife, that could happen to anybody. I was just doing my job and technically, I did get paid to do
treatment foster care. It was my job. In fact I had told myself I can't. I can't get too emotionally
invested because if I get too emotionally invested then I might not be able to do my job
properly and that's actually true. I didn't want to be taking their behavior personally, I wanted
to be able to help them through it and know that there was never a problem with their behavior to
me, that I could always see that they were going in a forward direction and I would keep them pointed
in that direction without being offended by anything that they did. I was going to give that to
them as a gift but I noticed with this particular child that I was also really annoyed by her. I was
bothered that she wasn't connecting in with the family like everybody else and that she seemed
to be so aloof. And then one day she came to me and she said Nicholeen, are you for real and I said of
course I'm for real and she said yeah but I mean you're not just doing this to try to change
me and I thought huh, that's interesting that she would think that I'm living my whole life with my
children, with everybody else that's here just to change her. She said that her dad had told her- now
her dad was a drug dealer who had been locked up a lot of times, stuff like that. Her dad had
told her that we were not for real, that we were just trying to manipulate her and control her and
change her and I realized right then that I would never be able to help her have a change of heart
about her behavior about her relationships, about where she was going in her life unless somehow
our hearts were connected and so that became my number one priority. Now I'm just gonna speed up
the story for you a little bit but, I was able to connect with her personally, deeply actually,
very deeply and this particular foster daughter that I had ended up becoming
the foster daughter that was the very closest to me of all of the foster children I ever had.
She was the one who I ended up feeling like I wish she could just be mine. Sadly she couldn't
and she had to move on to another placement after a while but she was special and she ended
up getting in contact with me later in life and asking if she could be part of our life
as a family because she recognized that she needed that bond, that relationship connection with us too.
So that's what happened when we repaired the relationship and really a lot of the repair had to
happen on her side of the relationship but I had to be more deliberate about some things on my side
too. So let's talk about what I did to repair the relationship so that she would choose to repair
it too. Before we get to the nuts and bolts of what I did to help improve our relationship, click that
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The very first thing that I had to do was recognize that I had a role to play in the way she
thought of me. She was thinking of me in a certain way and I needed to make sure that she knew how
I really felt about her, that was important. I needed to tell the stuff that was in my heart.
It's like there's this elephant in the room or in my heart that is not understood or not seen and I
need to make sure that it's seen because there's always what is seen and then there's what is not
seen and what is seen sometimes is the physical or the temporal but what is not seen is the spiritual
or eternal and I felt a very deep connection to her on my side of things, I was working very hard,
at least that and I wanted to make sure that she knew that. So, I decided to have what I call
a parent counseling session with her. I pulled her aside one day and we went outside to
talk. We had a popsicle on the porch and as we were sitting there eating a popsicle together
on the porch on a hot summer day, I told her what I thought of her. All the good things. I told her
how grateful I was that she was at my house and how fun it was to have her be part of the family.
I told her that I hoped that we would be able to create a bond that would be able to last through
time so that one day when she was older, she could think back to our home and our family and know
that she was loved here, that we cared about her and I asked her if she felt that she was loved
for real, that kind of took her back a little bit. She said well
I think so. She wasn't sure. She wasn't sure how to interpret love. So at that point we talked about
love, what it feels like and what I recognized is she didn't have a very good understanding of what
feeling love actually felt like because she'd been disconnected from so many of her family members
that normally show people what love feels like. So we talked about it, we described it and then we
described how we could improve our relationship so that we could show more love to each other. We made
a deliberate plan. So what was our deliberate plan? Well we decided that we would definitely focus on
the positive, that we would assume that each person wanted the best for each other and not the worst,
that was our plan. I told her I was gonna praise her six to ten times for every one time that I
corrected her so that she would remember every time I praised her that even though I have to
correct her sometimes, I see all the good stuff too and I'm really just teaching her and helping her.
It's not anything I take personally, I don't feel any bad thoughts or get mad at her in any way. I
had to tell her that deliberately so that she would know so then every time I praised her, she
smiled sometimes even kind of quietly and said oh okay, praising me. Yep, I'm praising you because I
noticed something is good and then she started telling other foster children who would come to
our home. It doesn't matter if Nicholeen and Spencer correct you, they're just trying to help you.
They're just teaching you, that's what they're supposed to do. She understood our role.
We were teachers, we were helping her. We were there for her. Suddenly she started telling
everybody else that that was our role too and to not worry about it that it was just a good part
of life and it was normal and it could feel safe and okay. She was telling them that because I told
her that ahead of time. Talk about the things you will do in your communications, talk about how you
will praise, talk about how you will correct, what those corrections will look like and sound like.
Talk about the tone of calmness that you want to have and I hope you are wanting to have a tone of
calmness because if you have a tone of calmness in your communication, your children will trust
the message more. It's just true. When someone communicates with you in a calm and trusting
way then they know that you trust in the goodness of them too. Consistency is also really important.
Consistently praise, consistently correct. Make sure that you don't let things slide by, that opens the
door to manipulation and most relationship problems start because people start assuming
and then strategizing and then manipulating and suddenly you have a reaction chip instead of a
relationship. So be consistent. That means correct every time but you don't have to do it with any
kind of a mean spirit or anger. You can be calm, you can be okay. Accept that stuff happens, accept who
you are in the relationship, that goes back to roles. I actually wrote a book years ago called
Roles: The Secret To Family Business and Social Success because I recognized that many parents
and children didn't understand who they were to each other. Meaning what their roles actually were.
So what is your role in the family? Who are you to that person? Are you their guide, are you a leader,
are you an exemplar, are you a learner, are you a teacher, are you a nurturer, are you a protector?
What is your role? Is it multiple of those things? It might be you need to identify that so that you
can live up to it. If you are teacher, nurturer, protector then you're probably a parent and
you need to embrace it. Embrace the moments when they're not doing the right thing and embrace the
moments where they're doing all the right things. Love it all because that's what you were meant for.
You wanted it, you signed up for it. How funny that we would want something and then talk bad about
it later? Instead own it, love it, let them know you love it too and then it won't seem like a
bad thing when they get a correction from you. That tone that you carry does a whole lot so
deliberate communication is big, having the right tone of calmness, being consistent and deliberate
in your plan of how you will communicate together, these are all super important things. You can have
meetings together on a regular basis to also check up on how you are doing and improving this
communication in your relationship. One thing that you can do that might take the most time is that
calmness. So since you've stayed to the end of this video, I have a free gift for you. It is my calm
parenting toolkit. In the description below this video, there is a link that says teachselfgov.com/toolkit
If you click on that link, it will take you to my calm parenting toolkit
and you will get it for free. The calm parenting toolkit has 10 lessons and 10 tools that you
can use to communicate more calmly. Just communicating calmly and understanding
how to help another person be calm when they are starting to go out of control can make all
the difference for you. It will be the perfect beginning for your self-government journey
and the improvement of your relationships. Click on the link to that toolkit now.