House Rules For Kids ｜ Creating A Family Rules Chart

Hi, I'm Nicoleen Peck, and I teach parenting all over the world. In fact, I'm known for teaching parents and children how to govern themselves with the principles of self-government. In this video, I'm going to be talking about house rules for kids and creating a rules chart. In this video, I'm going to be talking about the simplest way that you can encompass everything you might create a family rule for and do it according to principle too. There is a difference between rules and principles. We're going to talk about that in this video and the key principles that you can incorporate into your family rules so that those rules will stick no matter the circumstance, even if it's the first time it happened. There are so many things that we tell our children not to do, right? Don't touch that. Be sure to brush your teeth. Don't say mean words. Don't do that. Don't do that. We're always giving them these commands of what to do and what not to do. In fact, all of these little commands turn into what we think in our mind are the rules of our family environment. However, it gets really overwhelming. In fact, it's a lot of things to keep track of because it seems like every one of those don't do's or do do's ends up becoming its own separate area that a person has to remember in their mind. It's a unique rule that they have to memorize. What if a person only needed to memorize four rules? And what if those rules were based on principle so they made sense no matter when they were applied? Well, that's what I'm going to be giving you today. But first, let's be clear about the difference between a rule and a principle. Principles are eternal. They're everlasting. They go on forever and ever. In fact, if there is a principle of honesty, it sticks. Even if for some reason some people decide that they don't want to live according to it, everybody is still rubbed just a little bit wrong if they don't. Why? Well, because it's a principle. There are so many different principles that we live by no matter our religious persuasion or even where we are brought up. There's just ways that we conduct ourselves that seem to be in harmony with integrity and truth. Those ways that we conduct ourselves are by principle. So, I want you to think of the principles that matter the most to you. What are they? Are they principles like family unity and bonding? Are they principles like calmness and that a person can choose to be calm if they want to? Or what about good open communication? Is that a principle? Well, those are a few of the principles that I have used in our family and with all of the foster children I've raised over the years in order to make for us four special rules that we use for every situation. Now, I know every family has different principles that they think are the most important. Now, the thing with principle is if it's true to you, it's going to resonate true with everyone. So, what are key principles that you want your family to live by? Things that you hold dear? Ponder that. In fact, how about you share them with everybody else? Put your favorite principle in the comments below. The principles that you think other people might need to consider as they're trying to decide what principles they want to use to raise a happy family. So, what are rules then? What is the difference between a rule and a principle? Well, usually rules are the application of principle if you are a principled person. But they're also just ways to control an environment or to keep people going in a certain direction. In fact, rules don't have to be based on principle at all. There are many parents who are bullies to their children. I know that none of us like to think of ourselves that way, but this is a popular type of parenting. And some parents who are more bully fear-based, they will start creating rules out of everything just because little behaviors bother them. So, parents who micromanage their children, maybe every single thing they wear and every single thing they do, every movement, every mannerism that the child displays, they end up creating a rule for it. So, is there a reason to have proper etiquette? Yes. Is there a principle behind it? Yes. It helps people feel comfortable. It shows refinement and so that people end up taking a person more seriously and they listen to them. But do we need to micromanage every single etiquette point? No. If we do, then we're getting into overreach and it's too many rules and we lose the foundation of principle. So, we have to remember that as parents. In fact, I think sometimes as parents, we focus so much on trying to make life easy for ourselves that we start creating rules out of everything just because we don't want to deal with the teaching that quite frankly is the part of being a parent that we need to embrace the most. So, what about those four principles slash rules that you can use for absolutely everything? Let's talk about those. In fact, I have books that teach what I call the four basic skills to children. These four skills are based in principle and they are rules that the family can use to take care of 99.9% of all behavioral problems. In fact, these four rules or principles because they are rules based on principle are the types of things that not just children need but adults need too. In fact, as I say these four basic skills to you, you will recognize that you probably know many adults who do not know how to do these skills. So, in this book London LeRae Says Okay, it teaches the skill following instructions. To follow instructions, you do five things. You 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. Now, think when you have a child that doesn't want to do a chore or doesn't want to brush their teeth or doesn't want to go to bed on time or doesn't keep their curfew or doesn't eat their vegetables. These are all instructions that you're giving them that they are not doing. So, what are they doing when they don't follow this instruction? Are they having a whiny attitude and not keeping a calm face, voice, or body? Are they talking back to you, which means they're not saying okay or disagreeing appropriately? Or are they just not doing it? That means they're not doing the task immediately and they're not checking back. So, you see that follow instruction rule is basic. In fact, it's so basic that it is the baseline skill. If a child will not follow instructions doing those five things from their parents, it actually eliminates the parent's ability to teach the child and parent the child. It is a baseline skill. It solidifies the roles in the family, keeps the parent as teacher and the child as learner, which is so important. It also helps the child feel confident knowing that they have good leadership because someone is going to be teaching them what instructions they need to follow. The next one of the four basic skills is accepting no answers and criticism. This book, Porter Earns a Quarter, teaches that skill to children. So, what types of no answers happen in a child's life or in our lives? Well, there are many things. Think of getting cut off in traffic. Guess what? That's a no answer. Think of missing your flight or not winning a race that you hoped to win or a game that you hoped to win. Those are all no answers that we have to accept. We have to decide if we can be calm and self-regulate ourselves, if we can self-govern even at a time when things don't go our way. Well, maybe you say to a child, you can't play computer games today or for the week or however you're using screens in your house. Well, that would be giving the child a no answer. There are four steps to accepting a no answer. You look at the person, keep a calm face, voice, and body, say okay or ask to disagree appropriately, and then drop the subject. That means no attitude problems, no anger, no pouting or isolating themselves, no going to the other parent to try to change the other parent's mind, nothing like that. They just decide it's okay. It's okay that my parent has authority and that they've given me a no answer. I can be okay when life doesn't go my way. Think of so many people that you know, even adults who complain all the time because they can't accept no answers. They can't accept when the little moments of life don't go their way. The third of the four basic skills is accepting consequences. We can't deny that there are consequences in everything that we do. There's natural consequences and artificial consequences. So for instance, if I speed down the road and I get a ticket, that's an artificial consequence. But if I speed down the road and then I can't stop fast enough when something runs out in front of my car and I hit it like a pet or something I didn't want to run over, well guess what? That's a natural consequence because I wasn't obeying the law in that particular area. Well the same thing goes for our children. How are they going to learn to accept the natural consequences and artificial consequences that are part of everyday life if we don't teach them the skill for accepting consequences? Now this does mean that parents also need to have the skill for how to correct a child properly and calmly. In fact, I have five skills that I teach in my Teaching Self-Government course for parents for how to correct children in a calm way and how to get things going in a good direction if they're going off course. So parents will need their skills, but then children need to know the skills for accepting the consequences that they have earned. That's right, that's how we talk about it in our house. They have earned the consequences because it's their own self-government that they're trying to master. So the steps to accepting a consequence are you look at the person, keep a calm face, voice, and body, say okay or ask to disagree appropriately, do the consequence that you've earned, and then check back from that consequence and drop the subject. This helps a child recognize that it's okay, it's even healthy to be corrected. In fact, I always tell parents that you should feel closer to your children during and after a correction than you even did before. These aren't moments that are bad moments for the child. The fourth of the four basic skills is oftentimes the child's favorite skill. This skill opens the door to open communication and allows everybody to be heard, but within the bounds of principle. What is the principle? Calm communication and seeking to understand other people before you get understood yourself. The skill that is taught in this book, Page Takes the Stage, is the skill disagreeing appropriately. When a person disagrees appropriately, they look at the person, keep a calm face, voice, and body, say that they understand the other person's point of view, share their point of view, listen to what they have to say, and then say okay and drop the subject. So this skill is the seed of diplomacy. Do you want your child to learn how to talk to other people who may want something different than them or see things differently than them their entire lives? Well then they need to learn how to disagree appropriately. They need to learn to not take the differences in other people personally, not get emotional. They need to be able to see and appreciate that other person's point of view and share their point of view in a way that's going to be helpful to both people in the conversation. Those are the four basic skills that I teach my children and that I've taught all of my foster children over the years. These four basic skills make a huge difference in the way the whole family sees their interactions. Then it's not about power struggling, it's about oh I didn't keep a calm face, voice, and body. Let me redo that, right? Or oh I'm not seeking to understand here your point of view so I'm obviously talking back and I'm not disagreeing appropriately. I need to work on that. Let's redo that. Let's practice it the right way. And then when negative consequences need to occur because corrections need to occur, the child's ready to accept those too. You can't learn self-government without being willing to accept when you've made a mistake and need to fix something because you have to acknowledge cause and effect. But beyond these four principles, these four basic skills that we teach, there is a list that our family has that we call the family standard. This list of things is like the do's and don'ts. Things like we don't gossip about other people, we don't take these types of substances into our body, we don't dress in this way, we do dress in this way. Things that talk about certain behaviors. But basically this family standard that we created for our family is actually just a list of the instructions and the no answers that our family wants to always live by and remember. So oftentimes people get caught up in making this huge standard of all of these things that they don't want to do as a family or that they do want to do as a family. But it becomes so voluminous and overwhelming that the children can't follow all of it. So what we've done is we've kept it simple. Four basic skills and those four basic skills give you all the steps you need in order to keep all of the family standards that we have as a family. It's really beautiful and it brings a lot of security to the children, decreases anxiety and promotes unity. So let's talk about creating a family rules chart. So as I was pondering how I wanted to display our family rules for children, we ended up creating a chart that had all of the four basic skills. Now this is a very small version of it. This is a cue card that actually I kept in my pocket for years but also provided it in chart form to the children so that they would know all of the steps that I listed to you about those four basic skills. Also I have other cards in my cue card set that I use to help remind me of some of the other parenting skills that I'm going to need to have to be a self-governed and calm parent. Additionally we created a chart that showed our children there's the light side and the dark side. Okay good and bad choices and on the good side it lists the skills. Following instructions, accepting no answers and criticism, accepting consequences, disagreeing appropriately. So this chart shows them, this is what we actually call a choices map, shows them when they could make these choices and stay away from going down the path that leads to negative consequences. So it starts up here with a decision making moment and then leads to either correction, a negative consequence or to the skill that they need. I'm not going to talk through the whole chart but you can see that it handles even the most out of control behaviors. So this type of a chart shows the child when the skills can be used and when the parents are going to be using the parent skills as well. So this helps them know this is how interactions are going to go. When they know the words to the interactions, so they know your skills and their skills and they know when those skills are going to be used, they are confident in their communication and they will seek to understand you and to be understood instead of fighting. They will go to that disagree appropriately skill much more often. There is so much more information that I could share with you about house rules and about the principles of self-government. In fact, for watching this video today, I'd like to give you a free gift. In the description below this video, there is a link to the Calm Parenting Toolkit. If you click that link, you can get my Calm Parenting Toolkit for free. This is a mini course that will help you understand how to parent your children and correct your children more calmly and how to help them get calm at the same time. So click on that link now and I'll see you there.