Hi, I'm Nicholeen Peck and I teach parenting, relationships and family communication and
in this video, we're gonna talk about how to discipline your kid with 3 easy steps.
I have 4 children that I have raised, in fact, my baby right now is 17 so they're all getting
a little bit older but for years, I also took in treatment foster children and they were
all between the ages of 12 and 18 and I was supposed to help them lots of challenges.
Well some of those challenges included things like having dishonesty problems, anger control
issues, they had some contention, there were some habits that they had to break and I had
to properly correct them so that they could overcome these problems. I had to help them
pave a new path so in this video, I'm gonna be talking about 3 things that I did repeatedly.
I'm talking about again and again, and as a bonus if you stay with me until the end,
I'm also gonna share for you some additional tips that you can use if a child happens to
go out of control and how to prepare them for success so that you don't have to use
these correction steps as often. Step number 1 is to describe. Now, this is the opposite
of reacting. So oftentimes when a child does something that is disobedient or rude, frustrating,
parents will react with statements like what are you doing? Why did you do that? Don't
you know better than this, and things like that. But those types of reactions immediately
get people on the defensive, they put up walls and people start to retreat instead of bond.
When you correct your children, it should a bonding experience. In fact, I always tell
people when I do my speaking and my seminars that you should feel closer to your child
during and after a correction, then you did before. Does that make you go hmm, like is
that even possible? The answer is yes. It is possible. In fact, throughout all of my
years of working with troubled children as well as youth groups at my church and in my
community, I can tell you that correcting a child can be a positive, uniting experience.
It does not have to be something that creates distance in your relationship and it starts
with a good description. So what does that description sound like? It basically sounds
like a brief story, almost bullet point like of what just happened. Now in teaching self-government
parenting program, I teach 4 basic skills for children. They're following instructions,
accepting "no" answers and criticism, accepting consequences and disagreeing appropriately.
They each have steps attached to them so they are skill sets. So, possibly I would be pointing
out one of the steps of these skills in my description of something that needs to be
corrected. So a description would sound like this. Just now I gave you an instruction.
Now, remember they know the 5 steps for how to follow an instruction. So I'm gonna describe
what they did or what happened. So you looked at me, which is great, that's the first step,
but then you did not keep a calm face, voice and body which is the 2nd step. Now when you
choose not to keep a calm face, voice and body, then you are showing me that our relationship
needs some help and we've got to get ourselves back to calmness. So step number 1 is to describe.
So that brings us to step number 2. Before I get to my next steps and my bonus, click
that subscribe button. You are going to want to see other videos on this channel. I talk
about calming children and calming ourselves. So many things that you might find useful
as you're working on improving your correction skill. Step number 2 is to explain what the
child should have done. Now, again you see there is no emotional reaction in any of this.
It's all very logical. In fact, there's a reason for that. If I stay in the logical
pre-frontal context of my brain, then guess where my child start to go? To the logical
pre-frontal context of their brain. Then we can have a good productive discussion and
even pave a way for future good behaviors, but if we go to the emotional parts of our
brain, then all of a sudden we shut down and we don't learn, that's just what happens with
our brains. So what you explain is what you should've done and it sounds very simple.
What you should've done is you should've kept a calm face, voice and body, then said okay
or asked to disagree appropriately, done the task immediately and then check back. So just
explaining exactly what they should've done gives them the next steps in their brain about
what they've got to do to fix this problem. Step number 3 is to explain what they've earned.
Now I know that term may seem unusual for you but when I talk about what a child has
earned or chosen to earn or maybe just chosen, I'm talking about the negative consequence.
So in our family, we keep the negative consequences very simple and non-emotional, also non-punitive
and non-reactive. So we don't want to be vindictive. If our child has done something that was wrong,
we don't need to make them hurt, we just need to teach them cause and effect. So remember,
I teach everything through the lens of self-government. Self-government is being able to determine
the cause and effect of any given situation and possessing a knowledge of your own behaviors
so that you can control them. So this means a person understands cause and effect and
self-motivates themself based on what they are observing about their own behaviors. So
when we talk about what a person has earned, we're talking about what did you choose? What
effect happened because of the cause or the action that you created, and they take full
ownership. They have to or they can't learn self-government. Now in order to go through
this whole process of these 3 steps plus the bonuses that I'm gonna be sharing with you,
a person has to have a skill set called how to accept a consequence. They need to know
that skill set. This is one of the 4 basic skills that we teach. So, you would tell them
because you chose not to follow instruction or whatever it is that you're correcting them
for, you have chosen to earn an extra chore. We always use an extra chore for something
very basic like this that we would be correcting multiple times a day because work is the antidote
for a sick character and we know that when a person chooses to work, then they are choosing
to take action to solve their problem instead of just having something done to them. If
we just take things away or hurt them or yell at them, they do not get the opportunity to
accept their consequence which means they can't learn self-government. It will just
be about trying to please you or not having you fall off the emotional cliff and they
will turn to manipulation and working the system instead of turning toward self-mastery
and controlling and regulating themselves which is much more powerful. Now do you want
a bonus? So here's some bonus content for you. Normally when I do a correction for my
children, it's actually 7 steps, not 3. So, a basic, basic correction meaning not including
any teaching really includes those 3 steps that we've just covered which is describe
what happened, describe what should've happened and then give them the opportunity to accept
what they've earned, right? But there's more, so when you do a proper correction, it leads
to a productive teaching moment. So after I tell them what they've earned, they say
okay because that's one of the steps to accepting a consequence. I praise them for that, that's
right, I praise them. In fact, during the latter part of this correction, I'm gonna
be praising them probably about 5 times because remember a person should feel closer to their
child during and after a correction then they even did before. This should be a great bonding
experience. This should be role as a parent and then living their role as the child which
is learner, right, and you are teacher. So what I do is I say now we're gonna do some
practices. Let's practice doing that same situation that just occurred again and after
that, we will do other 2 role play practices and make sure that we get that calm face,
voice and body down and do all of the other steps, those 5 steps to following an instruction.
So then we do role play practice together. It's absolutely beautiful and every time they
look at me, they keep a calm face, voice and body, anytime they do those steps, I am praising
them and say you're looking right at me, you're keeping a calm face, voice and body. You did
all 5 steps to following an Instruction, great job. High five! So we are praising throughout
the entire thing and then we do 3 other role plays where there's more opportunity for praise.
Well right there we've got 4 praises so then when my child gets the opportunity to go and
do the extra chore that they happened to earn for their negative consequence and they come
check back because that's the last step of accepting a consequence, then I get to praise
them again. Now this practice of doing it the right way is gonna prepare them for future
success so that they don't have increased problems. Now I know there's somebody out
there watching this who's thinking yeah, my child? No way are they gonna do that process.
They go out of control like this fast. Well, I've got additional help for you right there
too. I have an entire course. It's called the Teaching Self-Government Parenting course.
It's on my website teachingselfgovernment.com and in that course, I talk about the rule
of 3, I talk about helping children get through their intensive teaching moments so I teach
you the skills that you need to get them in a place of calmness. Now, below this video,
there is a link to the Calm Parenting toolkit. And if you click that link, it will take you
to the Calm Parenting toolkit on my website and you can have that for free. That is like
a first course before you get to the main course. It will help you nail down some of
that calmness and it'll teach you a little bit more about some of the steps that we've
been talking about and others. So, be sure to click on that link below and I will see
you at the Calm Parenting toolkit that you get completely for free.