Facebook Parenting: For the troubled teen.
All Behavior Is an Attempt to Meet a Human Need
When you make that one effort to feel compassion instead of blame or self-blame, the heart opens again and continues opening.
-Sara Paddison
Just imagine how you might interact with your child and with everyone in your life, if at each moment you saw that all of their actions were their best attempts to meet their needs. Human beings share basic survival needs that include air, water, food, rest, and safety. In addition to these basics, we also need love learning, friends, play, some degree of autonomy, and more. Since people everywhere have these needs in common, it is possible to understand what motivates other people’s behavior even when lifestyles, beliefs, languages, and age are different. This understanding increases compassion for others even, and especially, when we disagree with their actions.
You will also find a list of needs at the Center for Nonviolent Communication website (www.cnvc.org). There is no definitive list of human needs; the criteria for any list of needs is that it includes life essentials that are common to every human being, separate from the various strategies people use to meet their needs. Probably the main reason parents are afraid of listening to what children want is because parents don’t understand the difference between a need and a strategy for meeting a need.
They are afraid that if they listen to a child’s desire for a video game, or a new toy, or to stay up all night, they are setting themselves up either for a fight or for giving in and providing the child with whatever is wanted. So let’s get clear that a new video game is not a need; it is a strategy for meeting needs, which might include the need for relaxation, competency, or fun.
Since the main criterion for universal needs is that they are shared by everyone on the planet, and clearly there are people who get along quite well without video games, you can easily determine that video games are not a need. Likewise, talking on the telephone for hours every night or watching cartoons in the morning before school are not needs. Having friends over every day after school is not a need. Everyday language obscures the distinction between needs and strategies. We say I need you to eat your broccoli or I need you to take a bath right now. Or we say I need an iPod. However, having a child eat broccoli is not a need and neither is buying an iPod. Eating broccoli is a strategy a parent has for meeting the body’s needs for nutrition; buying an iPod is a strategy for meeting needs also, for fun, entertainment, relaxation, or belonging. The things that children ask for daily with great urgency and drama are most often strategies for meeting a need.
The reason this distinction between needs and strategies is so important is that practically all conflicts, arguments, fights, and power struggles-with children and everyone else-are fights over strategies and can be resolved, if not prevented, when a parent respectfully focuses on the needs behind the strategy.
A typical strategy-based argument:
Child: I don’t want to go to bed now.
Parent: But you have to go to bed now. It’s your bedtime.
Child: But I’m not tired.
Parent: But you will be in the morning if you don’t go to bed now.
Child: No I won’t.
Parent: Yes you will.
Child: No I won’t.
Arguments like this leave the child frustrated and unheard. The parent is also not being heard for the needs that would be met by having the child go to bed at a particular time. Without understanding and respect for everyone’s needs, conflict will likely persist.
If parents first listen respectfully for their child’s needs before expressing their own needs, as in the following example, the result is often more connection, understanding, and opportunities to co-operate.
Child: I don’t want to go to bed now.
Parent: (guessing the child’s feelings and needs) you’re having fun playing and want to continue?
Child: Yes, and I’m not tired.
Parent: So you’d like to go to bed when you’re tired?
Child: Yes.
Parent: Is there anything else?
Child: No.
Parent: Can I tell you why I’d like you to go to bed now?
Child: Okay.
Parent: I’d like you to be rested and ready to wake up in the morning for school. I’ve noticed that when you stay up after nine on school nights, you’re tired the next morning. Do you hear the need I have?
Child: That I’m rested and want to get up in the morning.
Parent: Yes. Thank you for hearing that.
When both parents and children are heard in this way, there is frequently a shift in energy, an openness to move towards the other, a willingness to find a way to satisfy both of them. The child in this example may be more willing to go to bed soon. Or the parent might be willing to let the child play quietly for a set amount of time before lights go out. A parent’s respectful listening does not mean agreement with the child, and it certainly does not mean giving children (or anyone) everything they ask for. If you would like to save yourself endless arguments, battles, and power struggles, learn to differentiate a need from a strategy.
Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood.
-Marie Curie
Explore for Yourself
Wherever you look, you can see people attempting to meet one or more of their needs. We invite you to look at your own life with this respectful perspective and see if it brings new insight.
When you call a friend to talk about something that is troubling you, you usually want to meet needs for understanding and empathy.
When your partner says, at the end of a long day, I don’t want to talk about it or deal with one more things today! You can guess they have a need for rest.
When you see your child working on a puzzle with rapt attention, you might guess she is meeting needs for learning, perhaps also for competency, and maybe, too, for relaxation.
When your child tells you a joke, he is probably meeting a need for humor and play, and also, perhaps, for connection with you.
When you ask your two-year-old to put away his toys and he says, No! What need do you guess he is trying to meet?
When your twelve-year-old daughter says she has to have the latest style of clothes, what need is she trying to meet?
Children Are Always Doing Their Best to Meet Their Needs
Every moment of every day, your children are doing their best to meet their needs-the same needs that you have. With this understanding of behavior, habits of judging kids’ actions will naturally give way to respectful understanding and compassion. You are also, at each moment, doing the best you can to meet your needs. With this understanding of your behavior, self-judgment can give way to self-respect and compassion. When you focus your attention on your needs, you are able to communicate about what is at the heart of your concerns. You will connect more easily with others, since needs are the same for everyone at any age. Human beings are wired for well-being through a system of continual needs-messaging. At times needs will announce themselves loudly: I need food! At other times they whisper in the background, I feel confused: I don’t even know what I need. I guess that means I need more clarity. Life delivers these messages so you can be alert to what you need and find skillful ways to fulfill your needs.
You Are Responsible for Meeting Your Own Needs
While you can ask others if they are willing to help you, you are the only one responsible for meeting your needs. This can be sobering news. It is also empowering, because it means you are never dependent upon any one person to meet your needs. It is helpful to be clear about this because thinking that another person or a group of people are responsible for your needs has at least two unfortunate outcomes. The first is that you can waste a lot of time waiting for certain others to do things for you when you could be busy finding your own solutions.
The other unfortunate outcome of expecting others to fulfill your needs is that whenever you think in these terms-that others should, have to, or must do something for you-people will most often hear a demand, which makes giving to you less likely. Demands provoke power struggles and are a major obstacle to joyful giving and willing co-operation.
Explore Together: What Do People Need?
What do people need? Why do you do the things you do?
During a family meeting, ask your family if they will explore these questions with you. There is no definitive list of universal needs, and yours may vary from another person’s to some degree. However, these lists will have more similarities than differences if everyone applies the litmus test of needs: Is it a need that everyone has? If not, it’s likely to be one of many strategies for meeting a universal need. For example, play is a need; a video game is one strategy to meet that need. Learning is a need; reading is one strategy for learning. Rest is a need; forcing your child to be in bed at eight o’clock is a strategy for meeting his need for rest, or yours.
Explore Together: Universal Needs List
Make a list of universal needs and post it in the house where everyone can see it, refer to it, and add to it. This list provides a common vocabulary for respectful and compassionate communication, for understanding the motivations behind each of our actions, and for shared exploration of human needs.
