Grandparents As Primary Caregivers with Nicholeen Peck

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Would you love to turn your chaotic home life into one where respect and dignity are at the forefront?

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Imagine a household where communication transforms even the most out of control teenagers, creating a calm and meaningful environment. Nicholeen has developed just that in her program teaching self government, a program designed specifically for families, offering tools and strategy needed to achieve harmony and mutual respect within the home. In this episode of grandparents raising grandchildren nurturing through adversity, Nicholeen Peck and I discuss the parenting issues that are particular for grandparents as primary caregivers. Nicholeen Peck is a worldwide parenting phenomenon and leader. Her proven system, based upon calmness, the the principles of self government, and good communication, transforms even the most out of control teenagers and homes from chaos to calm within days. She has appeared on various news shows and radio programs to discuss effective parenting. She is a popular public speaker, author of many books. She has also written magazine articles, publishes a blog, and has a podcast. So stay tuned for grandparents as primary caregivers with Nicholeen Peck.

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Welcome to grandparents raising grandchildren nurturing through adversity in this podcast, we will delve deep into the challenges and triumphs of grandparents raising grandchildren as we navigate the complexities of legal, financial, and emotional support. I invite you to join us on a journey of exploring thoughts, feelings, and beliefs surrounding this growing segment of our society. Drawing from real stories and expert advice, we will explore the nuances of child. Rearing for children who have experienced trauma. And offer valuable resources to guide you through the intricate journey of kinship care.

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Well discuss how we can change the course of history by rewriting our grandchildren's future, all within a supportive community that understands the unique joys and struggles. This podcast was made especially for you.

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Welcome to a community where your voice is heard, your experiences are valued, and your journey is honored.

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Navigating parenting was difficult enough when I was a young mother, but I'm not as young now as I used to be.

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Take that and the fact that these children were completely traumatized by their past. And add on top of that a move to another state and boundaries they'd never dealt with before.

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Well, I was a mess six months in and didn't know where to turn. Self care had gone out the window.

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I tried everything to bring our household back into some sense of order with no success. These kids needed something else other than the modern day parenting techniques that other young parents around me were using.

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And then I found Nicholeen and the teaching self government program. I was introduced to you about six months into the now two years that I've had two grandchildren that we are now legal guardians of. And I was desperate. I was struggling with what to do. I never had experienced trauma in a young child and what the effects of that were, even though I'd raised three children of my own and two stepchildren.

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Another grandmother who raised her grandson introduced me to you and the teaching self government program. The children love the fact that the consequences are the same for parents as they are for themselves when they don't stick with their agreements. There's consistency.

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Yes. For grandparents raising grandchildren, many of the issues are the same. They are as parents face. But it's different when you're a grandparent.

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Too, along with the stress of becoming parents again. At our age, we're dealing with children who have been traumatized.

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And you're experienced with that. Having raised foster children for many years now, since 1999, about. Yes. Yeah, it's been a long time. I don't currently do foster care anymore. I'm so busy speaking and with other things that I have to do, advising different heads of state and religious leaders and different things like that, that I am not doing that anymore. But I did for a lot of a long time, for a lot of years, troubled youth. It was therapeutic treatment. Care is what I did. I had no idea that things like this happened to children before I had these two.

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These children were a whole nother ballgame for me.

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So I needed the skills and I needed a system that worked well. Yours came highly recommended and it has worked well for us. The foster programs in our area were the only ones that were available to give us community. You know, what you're talking about, I think, is really important because when you're a grandparent and you're raising your child's children now, even though you love them so much like you, you know, beyond their parents, maybe even sometimes more than their parents, you love them so much because they're your flesh and blood. But there still is this very close similarity to it being like foster care because you didn't birth them, because you were living a different way, and then you're bringing them into the mix of what you're doing. It is like foster care. And for some grandparents, they don't actually know if they're going to have the child long term either. They don't know if they're going to have them all the way. It might be, well, we're going to have them until, who knows, somebody might pull it together or something. And so that's another thing. Or maybe the, even the grandparent might be concerned. Well, I don't know if my health is going to hold out. If my health doesn't hold out, then what do I do after that? And how do I prepare these children if they might have to transition from my home? And what would we do in those? And so that's an additional stress, really, that grandparents take on, especially with that deeply seated love that they have for their grandchildren. It all goes back to the family when I mean, and then that's the thing is the family is that unit that holds the whole of society together. And I know that it's very simple sometimes to think, well, there's already issues there, so they're just going to have to make it through. And there's just the resilience and stuff. But it is nice to at least give some verbal support to the grandparents who are stepping in and keep the families as intact as possible. When there is a situation where there's a circumstance where it can't be intact in the usual way, you know that it would be because children do fare better when they come from intact households. There's a ton of data for that. Not only do they have a tendency to get involved in less risky behaviors, but they do better in school, they do better in their relationships in the future, they do better in their social behavior, in getting jobs, all those types of things. If they have a good, solid, intact family, they already have this big scar from things not working out right with the parents for whatever reason, or from losing a parent, which can be a real struggle for a person to go through. So if they have this really strong, stable culture with the grandparents, that's the next best thing that they could have to bring them up to, hopefully a little bit higher bar so that they don't fall into some of those same traps that for some of those children, their parents might have fallen into as well. And then also there's the issue that the grandparent is no longer a grandparent to them. So they don't have the grandparent to go to on Saturday night, to spend the night and just be spoiled. We're playing two roles. We're playing grandparent and we're playing parent. And that's got to be challenging for kids. It was a beautiful part of the original intention of a whole family to have other supportive family members in the mix, and, and that's changing with our culture, with our society.

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Well, there's something with that because actually the grandparents, one of their big roles in the lives of those children that are being raised is to be a second witness of the parents. Or maybe the parents are saying something. And the children are like, I don't know if I want to listen to my parents, but then grandma and grandpa are able to have this impact and this influence because they're outside of that nuclear family. So now they can bring in this different perspective that can nurture the children in a good, positive direction sometimes. I mean, I know it can also go negatively. I mean, that can happen, but usually because they're older and wiser, they're going to nurture them in a productive, good direction. And so when you're playing parent and grandparent, who's going to be your second witness, what does the child have for that other voice that's going to come in? So hopefully you're surrounding yourself with some other people that can be a second witness for you, too, whether it's good friends or it's the grandparents on the other side of the family, hopefully or something.

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Our whole family have been really supportive. It's a little bit difficult for us because we're more isolated where we live and we don't have a lot of extended family around us.

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We have my three children, but they're busy also raising their own children. And it's complicated. And all these situations are complicated. And that's why having love and community through at least this, when they can listen to a podcast for 20 minutes, can give them more hope and more encouragement. And that's the reason that we've created this podcast. So I think it's great.

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I'm not raising my grandchildren. I am a grandma, though, and so my grandma heart is like, yes, this is great. Because I do know there are so many grandparents who are in your same boat. They contact me all the time. They comment on my YouTube channel, they listen to my podcast, they come to my trainings, and they say, okay, please help. And, and hopefully, as we get going here, I'll be able to share with you some of those exciting success stories that some of those grandparents are having as they are learning how to being from a different generation. Take this now new generation with its new problems, because it's different now. You know, for a lot of the grandparents, when they were raising their children, their children weren't getting phones and stuff like that. Or if so, it was very rare. And now suddenly that's in everything, the technology, culture in all of this and just the detachment of the adult bond with the children. This is huge.

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This is something that grandparents are facing and they're like, wow, in my generation where the parents said, no, don't do that, the children said, okay.

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And now they don't necessarily say that, because there's this kind of social disrespect for authority. And how do we manage that?

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I mean, I'm thinking to myself of grandparents that are taking in teens, perhaps, and what's that going to be looking like for them? I'm consulting with people all the time about those types of things and how to help them keep the roles in the right place as well. So, yeah, it's a struggle. My husband came from a very traditional farming family where things were done a certain way. If you talk back to your parent, that was disrespectful with trauma children, we have to cope with it a little bit differently. You're right. It's a whole new framework from when I raised my children.

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And all these changes are not something we as people at 50 and 60 years of age, biologically were created to do.

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You're not as agile in the brain as you used to be. I mean, that just happens, you know? And that's something you face as you get older. You go, wait, how come my brain's not doing the gymnastics like it used to do? You know? And so you fall into habit, and those habits keep us steady and holding fast, but sometimes those habits can end up not fitting your circumstance. Now, there is one thing about trauma that I think I need to bring up, and that is that if you look in the DSM five, which is the therapeutic manual for psychologists and therapies, it talks about all the different disorders and stuff. If someone has actually experienced trauma, it's really important to understand that that means they've had an abuse, like a sexual abuse or a severe. A severe abuse, or maybe they found their parent dead, or, I mean, that would. It would be, you know, something like that. That would be way outside the normal bounds of what happens to a person, you know, in regular life. But then there's things that are just adversity, okay? Moving from Texas to Utah or Texas to Montana or California to Florida, that's just adversity.

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That's not trauma. Or. Or having a friend say, I don't like you anymore. That's just adversity. It's not trauma. And I think in our modern society, we're having a hard time keeping those two things separated from each other. It's important for us to recognize we may have children who have trauma, and then we may have children who have adversity. Okay?

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And anyone can get through adversity. Anyone can get through trauma, too. Those are actually some of our most inspiring stories that we have. When those are the things that people make movies of, you know?

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So that's important for us to recognize. There's things that we can do. But you are right that if we had time, I mean, we don't have time on this podcast, but if we had time to talk about the history of parenting, there was the more militant, maybe kind of bully, fear based type, I'm gonna spank and hit the children, parenting. And then came, here's the. I'm gonna be their friend. And the more passive parenting. And like, hey, we're just buddies, buddy, buddy. Which ruins the role and then creates a dysfunction for everybody. Both are dysfunctional, but that makes it so that the child goes looking for their structure elsewhere to other militant groups or something like that. Okay, then you have now people going, what about if we just get even more gentle? So the passive is getting even more gentle. More gentle. And that sounds good because people are worried about the wildness. But it's all of this more gentle, more affirming, more all this that's actually leading to more and more wildness. And so we don't need to go back to beating someone with a belt. But what we do need to do is we need to say, but what are the assertive? Or maybe we should say the more traditional, strict principles that made exist so you don't have to hit anybody, you don't have to get aggressive with anybody, but you can help them solve their problems. And that's where the teaching self government is. And I know that that's what one of the things you probably like about it is. It's like, okay, we can handle the trauma. We can handle the adversity. We can do it with calmness. But there's also a firmness there that should speak to the grandparents. More modern parents are really straying away from principle in their parenting a lot. And so when they find teaching self government, they're like, whoa, this is so revolutionary. And it doesn't work very well with these children because we tried to put Tommy into a daycare, and he did not fit in with the other children. And they just said, well, he's a bad child. He's unruly. We can't have him here with the other children, which they couldn't. And it wasn't a good place for him. But was what did work well was more one on one. A lot of love, a lot of role modeling, but a format, a structure. He needed the structure, and it's working very well. So, yes, you're right. I think with this community of parents, that that is very important to this group before we run out of time, because we're going to have several conversations with Nicholeen Peck. And we are also going to be planning in the spring to offer you, through teaching self government, an online course, parenting mastery for grandparents raising grandchildren.

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I'm very excited about that because these conversations do enter into the conversation about educating and working with parents that have some other issues that are a bit different than parents who are parenting for the first time. Yeah, it's good. I'm actually really excited about it, Laura, because I've always had these grandparents to show up at my parenting mastery trainings and they'll say, okay, I see how that applies to a parent. But now here I am and my role kind of looks like this. So do I still apply it this way? And so there's this little bit of a hang up where they go, how do I do? But how do I do that with this circumstance? And their parents come to visit sometimes, or they get to see them sometimes, and then we have this, you know, this trigger that happens. What do we do with that? Right? And so there's some of these little things that are unique to the circumstance that if we have a whole group of grandparents doing a parenting mastery training, how beautiful is that going to be? Because we're going to be able to then just say, okay, these are the things that happen with grandparents.

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And what I've noticed is that when I have gotten together with other grandparents, we feel like we have family. We feel like we can talk about the taboo issues that are going on in our families. That's not something that most people want to hear. So it's really great when we all get together because we feel like we've got a social group again. And that's a great part of life, right? To socialize and find your community. So, yes, I'm excited about too, and I'm so excited to have you a part of it. Tell me, how do you address some of these challenges, like promoting equality within the family hierarchy or discussing feelings if we don't have partners or if our spouses are not 100% on board with a new program changing their words? Yeah, changing words is a hard thing. You know, like, we're all scripted. First we were programmed by our parents, then we got programmed by teachers in society and other people, and then we programmed ourselves and said, well, that didn't quite work, so I'm going to try this. Ooh, I got better results with that. So we. We programmed ourselves. There's certain things that if somebody talks back to us, we immediately think the same thing every time. So what do you do for that? How do you help them?

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I want to encourage our listeners to, to get excited about a program. You gotta learn new words. You gotta learn new words. You have to be not afraid of that once. At first, it's like learning a little bit of a new language to communicate this way.

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But the predictability will actually decrease the anxiety in your grandchildren. That's going to be huge. And it will make it so that they are much more receptive to all of the instructions and the no answers and all the teaching moments that you're having with them. You do need to. I mean, if the husband and wife both came to the parenting mastery training that we're going to be doing in the spring, that would be fantastic. You could even just start by listening to my book, maybe on audible or parenting a house united. There's also a book called roles. Like you said, there's books for children. There's a lot of resources@teachingselfgovernment.com. they could start there, but probably I would actually say one of the biggest books to read first, if you have a hard time being on the same page with your spouse, is actually the book called popular Parenting methods. It's a small book. You can probably read it in an hour.

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And it's a great first step for people because that book talks about the different types of parenting. It talks about the results you get from those types of parenting. So you'll be able to see, oh, whoa, I do that.

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Oh, I think I do that, too. And it helps you analyze that. You go, you know what? I think we do need to go this direction and be on this page together. It opens up conversation in a really fact based way that helps people decide to get on the same page with each other, which is really nice. There are meetings in the teaching self government system that help to preserve that husband wife bond and working together with each other, which is nice because you want to make sure that you've determined ahead of time how you are going to correct and nurture each other along. Of course, there's always patience because not everybody learns as quickly as everybody else.

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Right? And each person should be focusing on themselves and meaning their own self government. That's it. Not just focusing on themselves, because that can lead to selfishness. This whole program is actually action focused as opposed to self focused. So the self focused person keeps thinking about how hard it is and ruminating on what they feel and all that. That's self focused. We want to be action focused. But when you're self governed, you say, but wait a minute, what do, what action do I need to take on myself? What changes do I need to take on myself? So that also is helpful. I think I answered your questions. I hope I did. If not, let me know.

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No, no, I think very well. The other thing that came to my mind when you were saying that is that I find with our family, when we make it fun, when we make a game out of it somehow, like rewards, you know, automatically my husband is enrolled, automatically my five year old is enrolled. Maybe we can talk about that more. Yeah, positive consequences. That would be good. Thanks so much for joining us. I hope you enjoyed this session as much as I did, and I just can't wait to open up the whole package.

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Thanks so much for joining us today for another episode of grandparents raising grandchildren. Nurturing through adversity. I encourage you to share your challenges and your successes with us. Your story is undoubtedly one someone else needs to hear.

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You can submit your stories to the links provided in the podcast information. Your contributions will enrich upcoming conversations, creating a more supportive community in which we can learn and grow together. If you enjoyed this show, please share it with a friend that needs to hear. And if you love the show and you're listening on a broadcasting platform like Apple or Spotify, just scroll down in your app and please leave us a review. We've taken on the primary caregiving for grandchildren that have suffered much trauma.

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Many of us sacrifice lifelong plans for retirement not knowing whether or not our grandchildren will ever recover from the experiences that they have seen, live fulfilling lives, and become functioning, contributing members of society. Our next episode focuses on the life of one such man whose grandparents became his primary caregiver after 13 years of neglect and abuse that no child should ever have to experience.

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He shares with us his tragic story, how he overcame severe abuse and what his secrets are to living a meaningful and successful life. Thank you for tuning in to grandparents raising grandchildren nurturing through adversity. Remember, you are not alone. Together we can find strength and hope in the face of adversity.

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Peace be with you and I pray that you find some time this week to listen to your inner wisdom amongst the noise and the pandemonium of this world.