I have a six-year-old daughter who will not accept a yes answer at all. I can say yes we can do this or we can do that when we’re done with this or at a different time and sometimes even at that moment, she wants to have the complete control and authority of all things she will not accept a yes it literally comes to her beating herself in the head to get what she wants. She never get what she wants by the way when you go into a fit like that, I don’t continue to let you have what you want, that’s foolish and I don’t give into that type of behavior ever so just throw that out there that doesn’t happen in my home what does happen is yes I would love to watch your favorite show with you once we’re finished with Oliver schoolwork homeschool, and some chores before dinner maybe with afternoon snack possibly we’re gonna watch that together and literally I just had another complete breakdown from her because she wanted it with lunch While I made lunch and I said no, we’re not gonna do that but we will watch it in the afternoon and she wants to have. This is an every thing occurrence over everything I am at my utter breaking point.

She will not accept a correction I cannot go through any type of correction with her at all. It turns into a power struggle. Yes, a power struggle I know, right I should know better but I’m trying to plead with her, and then it turns into me manipulating to get her to stop and I tell her hey I’m gonna have to manipulate because you’re unwilling to control yourself or unwilling to listen or unwilling to do the good thing whatever it is, but I do let her know it’s manipulation, and I do let her know there is no other mother and if I was to leave, she has no other mother. She is not the mother there is no one to teach her. She is unteachable.

She does not need to be this way. In fact there have been many times she isn’t this way. I have an older teen daughter who is almost 16 she’s 15 right now who we are finding out is 80 HD and on the spectrum and higher emotional systems whatever all of that, and I’ve never been able to discipline her or correct her at all her entire life without her having a meltdown and screaming that she wants to die so this is what my younger one has has witnessed it is the worst and it affects my younger one greatly
I “we” are in a terrible crisis situation to say the least I’m not over exaggerating there’s so much that’s awful here
I love my family and seek desperately for God’s help. We are Christian.

Hi Nicholeen –
Since I came across your program as a grandparent, I haven't had the opportunity to work the program day in and day out with my own children. However, I am receiving a lot of questions from my daughter and daughter-in-law, as well as from several young mothers in my community to whom I have lent your book or who know about your program. I've been through your online course once and am reviewing it again now, and of course I listen to the support calls. I would like to feel more confident when people ask me TSG questions and am considering taking the mentoring course. I do understand that, ideally, these moms would take your course, but my community is low-income and none of the women I speak to have the money to invest in it. I would like to offer my services free of charge. I had a couple of questions about the mentoring program. First, do you accept mentors into the program who live abroad (which is my situation)? Second, you mention that you can refuse any candidate for any reason. I feel like I would benefit from taking the course whether I got "mentor status" or not – but I did want to know if you could say what might make a candidate not a good fit to be a mentor. And any other feedback or input you could offer would be appreciated. Thank you!

What happens when a child earns all three consequences, but continues to and scream and be disrespectful. We are in a hotel room. My son refused to go to bed. He earned a major maintenance. He then lost all control and told me to take back his major maintenance or he would scream, and not stop screaming. My husband, if he were here would’ve given him a spanking which would’ve stopped the disrespectful behavior right away. At this point once I finished the rule of three he said that there was nothing that I could do to him. My eight-year-old almost 9-year-old was screaming from 10 PM to midnight and we share a room with the four of us with three little ones. There are so many people in this hotel that every room is packed. He screamed for two hours. I finally told him that we were going to return his birthday present which finally made him stop.

Things have improved since we implemented the five minute calm down and stop stacking chores. This type of meltdown used to happen every day and it is occurring maybe once a month. We talked about it a couple months ago, and you asked if he has ever accepted the consequences and the the answer is no. Once he earns any part of the role of three he does not accept consequences for days. He can generally avoid it if he is given time to calm down, but sometimes he doesn’t take that time. I like the rule of three because it keeps him listening on a regular basis, years ago before TSG, when I would give an instruction it would take 14 to 15 times for him to listen and now I just have to threaten the role of three, get him to calm down, and he’ll listen. However, it feels like it has some limitations because once he earns any part of the role of three, it creates drama for days.

When he woke up this morning, he proceeded to tell me because I homeschool my kids , I am a leech and I contribute nothing to the home and since I did not buy the birthday presents, I am not entitled to return it. He also proceeded to tell me that if I don’t give it to him, he will find his grandmother who will buy it for him. He then went on and said that I do nothing worthwhile for him. I feel so disheartened and hurt. I feel like we are raising an entitled Child. We have literally eaten beans and rice for the past month so that we can pay for this trip because he made Nationals and we are trying to support him. After what he said, I do not want to give him the water backpack. I got him anymore. What would you do?

Good morning, I'm just clarifying. Would this be considering Oppositional defiance. This morning my daughter was fine all morning until she had to circle a form of what she wanted to do after school. For a program she goes to. She chose not to circle. She wanted to put an x by because it would run into the Other choices. She got very angry with me when I said she needed to circle it. I explained if she was in school doing stuff and she didn't follow the instructions. She could get a 0 or F on the paper because she didn't follow instructions. Then I continued in the car to tell her that. As an adult, we have to make choices when our boss says or we could lose our jobs. We didn't always like it, but we have to do it because there's always another person that could take our job.. How should I handle it? It's much easier looking on the outside than being in the inside and figuring it out.

Hi,

How can I introduce and teach this new family system to a teen that is oppositional and will not sit down and listen to me teach a whole new system with different skill sets? He will usually respond to a request with shutup, piss off, talk again and this will happen etc..

Nicholeen,

Thank you so much for all your resources for teaching self-government. I have a 14-year-old and have been praying for years for more guidance to being a better parent, realizing that most of the problems my son has is from my parenting. I haven’t known how to change my parenting for the better (aside from prayer which has helped a lot!) and struggle much because of how I was raised (with minimal communication.) I am excited to fully implement self-government in our household but am feeling a bit overwhelmed. My parents rarely had conversations with me (a counselor has told me before that I was “emotionally orphaned”) and I struggle knowing what to pre-teach. It would be such a help to have a resource of suggestions for what to pre-teach.

I also have two small children and have used your bedtime pre-teach with success which gave me the idea to use the “stop” “go” game (red light, green light) to pre-teach my daughter to listen to me when I tell her to stop since we live on a busy street and have had to chase her to catch her from going into the road on several occasions!

Thank you so much for all that you do to help families!

In Christ,
Joanne Eamsaard

Recently, I sat down with our oldest son, who is 16 years old and has struggled with ADHD and (ODD) tendencies. He had just gone through a 24-hour period of consequences for going out of instructional control, and he brought up some points he felt were unclear or unfair about the 'Rule of Three' the 24-hour consequence period. We had a long discussion—well, to be honest, more of a lecture.

I decided to rewrite the information from the Teaching Self-Government (TSG) printout, which outlines the two sides of his choices: what he’s choosing if he practices self-government versus what he’s choosing if he does not. We clarified several points I realized I had not been handling consistently or correctly. For example, somehow it became understood that he could skip the first two of the instructions given during the rule of three, without any consequences. I thought, wait that doesn’t seem right. So I went back and realized there were specific earned consequences to each instruction not followed during the rule of three.I also pointed out that he was, at times, pushing the limits by escalating his behavior—getting verbally aggressive, insulting, and even challenging physical boundaries—before accepting the start of his 24-hour consequence period.

I explained that I might need to modify the system to help him see that choosing explosive behavior before accepting the consequences is not truly self governing. I also clarified that during a 24 hour period of loss of consequences, if he chose to power struggle and not use his skills, we would restart the clock and he would lose credit for any time earned. We also clarified that certain actions would lead directly to a 24-hour consequence period, skipping the rule of three. For example, choosing to be verbally aggressive, incessant knocking or demanding things when given a no answer, preventing people from closing doors or forcibly opening them, possessing inappropriate content on his devices, or consuming alcohol or other substances like vaping.

I haven’t been able to think of a specific modification to help him accept the start of his 24-hour consequence period more readily without engaging in explosive, ego-driven behavior and indulging himself. If you have any thoughts on this, I would greatly appreciate it. Thank you!

I have a son, 13 yrs old, who has some behavioral issues. Within the last year, and especially the last few months, he has used sarcasm in most of his communication with family. He has no reason to say mean, disrespectful, undermining things but he does it all in the name of joking and in 90% of all his interactions. It’s exhausting to listen to him day in and day out. I’ve tried giving his jobs for each offense or tally marks and at the end of the day that is how many laps around the neighborhood he has to walk. I cannot keep up on all of it and jobs or negative consequences don’t seem to nip it in the bud. I need your expertise on getting this type of behavior to stop. It’s such a negative vibe all day.

I guess this question is 2 fold. One is about couples meetings and the other is about mentor meetings with the children.
I hate all of them and yet I feel such connection the few times they have been successful. It feels so heavy to try to make these meetings happen when everyone is digging their feet into the ground about it.
I know that the feeling in our home would be different if my husband and I were United in gathering together to talk and the children would feel heard and understood and a part of something great if we each met together for a mentor meeting.
How can I get myself to consistently gather my husband and children for these vital meetings? I feel so frustrated about this so I do nothing.

Hi Nicholeen! A while ago I submitted a question regarding your TSG program for schools, and you had said that it was almost ready, and to check back again in a couple of weeks. Well, it's been longer than that, haha, but I would love to know where things are with that right now. 😊 I volunteer at my daughter's school once a week, and it's a wonderful school, but I see how the children/adults would be so richly blessed if TSG was in the program too. Also, do you happen to give lectures at schools? Thanks!