TSG Principles

YellowUmbrellaInRain

A Lesson Learned

We came to DC thinking we could get mugged. We left our hotel this morning, with our money hidden, and pinned in our pockets, and no bags visible to steal. We were ready to battle the muggers of DC. In the afternoon, it rained. To be exact, it poured buckets on our heads. We only had shopping bags to put over our heads. A woman saw our pitiful family, and stopped her car in front of us. She put two black umbrellas out the window of her car. One of them still had tags on it. I ran over to the car, and took the umbrellas from her.

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Happy Older Family

Have A Mission Book

In order to teach our children how to govern themselves in a family setting, we have to give them a vision, or picture of what the family is workingtoward. This vision, or goal, begins the family’s mission. The vision, goal, or dream is the first thing the family starts with to acheive mission. The concept of personal mission and family mission is both inspiring and overwhelming. Will it be hard to do? Why were we picked for this mission? Why don’t I have my personal mission yet? The list of questions could continue. I have found a book that tells a parable about mission.

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Blue flax flower

A Parable

Sometimes when parents start teaching their children how to govern themselves, the children start to fight against the new system. Many people don’t cope with change well, and children are often more anxious during times of change than adults. People look at whatever they have become as normal and comfortable.We don’t like to step out of our comfort zones and start fresh in a whole new environment, especially when we knowthat we will never get the old environment back in this case.

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Child with hand to ear

Don’t …

A lot of children have selective hearing; have you noticed? Some of this selective hearing is planned and some isn’t. They really don’t hear us correctly sometimes. We can do something to make sure this doesn’t happen as often. Have you ever said don’t run down the hall, and the first thing your child does is run down the hall? My mom used to say to me, “Don’t talk back to me.” The first thing I did after this instruction was talk back to her. Strange. It is never a good idea to start an instruction with the word don’t, because whatever you say after don’t might be

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Are You Assertive?

If you are going to effectively learn how to govern yourself, you have to be assertive. Teaching Self Government is essentially teaching how to act assertively as oppose to agressively or passively. Are you assertive? Take this test. You are in line at a grocery store and someone steps in front of you in line. Do you think bad thoughts about the person but choose not to say anything because it would feel uncomfortable? Do you say, “Excuse me sir, but I am in line. The back of the line is over there. Could you move to the back of th

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Tell Them What to Say

Even after we teach our children how to follow an instruction or how to accept a NO answer, our children will sometimes forget that they can choose to say, “OK”. The other day I told my son that he needed to clean his room. I could tell that he didn’t want to do the task. His face started to pout. The second I saw this, I said, “Porter, say OK.” He looked right at me and said, “OK!” Then I praised him. It is alright to tell them exactly what to say. This helps them problem solve the very situation they are in. The child then gets the opportunity to see how easy it is to make the rig

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A Great Start

I want to share “The Haroldsen Family Song” that I wrote the night after the seminar. Our family talked about creating a mission statement, but since that is going to take some time, I wanted something ‘right now!’ to pull us into the right frame of mind. I penned these words to be sung to the tune of “America the Beautiful.” We sing it together often and it has even stopped a couple of sibling fights.

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How Did I Learn Self-Government?

In the year 1998, my husband decided to make a career change which involved lower pay and additional schooling. We had already decided that I needed to stay home to raise our two children, so we didn’t exactly know how we were going to meet the needs of our growing family. I appealed to a higher power for direction and, by providence, was led to the Utah Youth Village in Salt Lake City, Utah.I had never thought of doing foster care before, but knew that at this time I wa

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Purpose of the blog

I would like to thank Kaisie Alba for helping me get this blog up and running. The purpose of this blog is to have a place for families who are trying to teach their children how govern themselves to ask questions to Nicholeen and find solutions to their struggles with parenthood. Teaching Self Government is a huge paradigm shift and often times questions come up along the way. This is the place to find a power source if you need one and ask questions. Nicholeen will check the blog as often as possible to try to answer all the many questions out there. She does do lots of things in life,

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