Parenting – Kids and Discipline Across Cultures
Connect with Feelings and Needs
Empathy is a respectful understanding of what others are experiencing.
Instead of offering empathy, we often have a strong urge to give advice or reassurance and to explain our own position or feeling.
Empathy, however, calls upon us to empty our mind and listen to others with our whole being.
-Marshall B. Rosenberg
After a clear observation, express your feelings and your needs. The consciousness of needs is at the heart of Giraffe Language. Remember that needs are what connect us because they are the same for everyone, regardless of age, custom, ethnicity, or whether you are a parent or a child. When your focus is on needs, whether expressing or listening, you facilitate greater understanding and connection.
Feelings are the helpful messengers pointing to your needs. When needs are being met you will experience feelings such as happy, excited, and satisfied. Feelings of sadness, worry, frustration, and irritability tell you that your needs are not being met. What a great system to help you attend to your needs! Feelings also point you in the direction of your child’s needs. In this regard, all feeling messages are helpful.
Your feelings, then, are rooted in your needs. Your child’s feelings have their roots in his or her needs. Your daughter feels scared when her need for safety is not being met. She is likely to feel lonely or sad when her need for friendship isn’t met. She can feel excited and proud when her need for accomplishment is met. Giraffe Language helps you express the truth about your feelings and what causes them. Note that feelings are never caused by other people, so phrases such as you make me happy or she makes me angry are not used in Giraffe Language.
The grammar of Giraffe Language makes this responsibility for feelings very clear: When expressing in Giraffe, you say I feel ________ because I need ________. And when listening to your children (or anyone else), you guess what they are feeling and needing: Do you feel ________ because you need ________?
I feel relieved because I needed understanding, and I got it.
I feel worried because I need trust that you’ll be okay.
I feel grateful because I needed support, and you are giving that to me right now.
Do you feel frustrated because you need to be listened to?
Are you feeling upset because you would like more choice in this matter?
Are you feeling delighted because you got to play all day?
Transforming Anger
Strong feelings of annoyance, intense irritation, and, especially, anger most often mean that there are thoughts mixed up with and adding fire to your feelings. These thoughts are about what you believe other people are doing to you or what you believe they should be doing. You and your children can learn to transform anger by shifting the energy of anger, recognizing the anger-producing thoughts, and hearing the needs serving message beneath the anger.
Make Do-able Requests
When you know what your needs are and can express them, you can then make clear requests about what people can do to help meet your needs.
Giraffe Language guides you in telling people what specific action they can do to help you now. A request, to be effective, must be do-able.
The following three examples are do-able requests, asking for specific actions within a specific time frame:
Would you be willing to take ten minutes and help me pick up the living room?
Right now, would you brainstorm with me some ways to help you remember to wash your hands before eating?
Would you be willing to lower your voice for the next ten minutes while I’m on the phone?
The following are examples of non do-able requests.
Would you help around the house?
Will you remember to wash your hands before eating from now on?
Would you be more considerate?
How to Tell a Feeling from a Thought
Feelings are expressed most simply and clearly using just three words. For example, I feel sad, I feel worried, I feel excited, I feel happy. While feelings are a vital component of Giraffe Language, they are nearly absent in Jackal Language. Jackal Language is head-talk and steers clear of the concerns and the vulnerability of the heart. Instead, it focuses almost exclusively on thoughts, opinions, and judgments. At times these are even couched in feeling language, which contributes to misunderstanding and confusion. An example of this is I feel that’s unfair. Unfair is not a word that describes a feeling; it is a thought that expresses an evaluation. In the following examples of Jackal Language, notice that though the word feels is used, we don’t know how the speaker is really feeling:
I feel that you’re inconsiderate.
I feel like I don’t matter.
I feel it’s not right.
In each of the above statements it would be more accurate to replace the phrase I feel with the phrase I think. When you identify your thoughts, you may notice you have feelings attached:
When I think that you’re inconsiderate, I feel angry.
When I think that I don’t matter, I feel sad and angry.
When I think that it’s not right, I feel angry.
Even though the following phrases have the word feel in them, notice that they are actually going to express thoughts, judgments, or evaluations:
I feel like . . .
I feel that . . .
I feel it . . .
I feel as if . . .
I feel you/he/she/they . . .
Thoughts Posing as Feelings Lead to Anger
Anger-producing thoughts often pose as feelings. For example people say, I feel manipulated, or I feel insulted. Manipulated and insulted, however, are not feelings. They are thoughts about what you think others are doing to you. It is more accurate to say, I think you are manipulating me and when I think that thought, I feel angry! I also feel sad and scared; I want to trust that you care about me.
These words are all anger-producing thoughts: abandoned, attacked, blamed, betrayed, cornered, criticized, dissed, dumped on, ignored, insulted, intimidated, invalidated, left out, let down, manipulated, misunderstood, neglected, patronized, pressured, put down, rejected, ripped off, smothered, threatened, tricked, unheard, unimportant, unseen, and used.
Requests vs. Demands
How do you know if you’ve made a request and not a demand? Expressing your needs and making requests for something that is do-able now increases the likelihood that your child will want to help you meet that need.
However, at the time you make your request there may be other needs your child wants to meet that will lead them to say No to your request.
What you feel and what you say next will demonstrate whether you have made a request or a demand. If you are upset on hearing No to your request, you have probably made a demand. If you have made a request, you can receive your child’s No as another possible point of connection.
Listen with Empathy
Empathy is a respectful understanding of what someone is experiencing. It requires giving full attention to the inner experience of feelings and needs and putting aside for the time being your own judgments, opinions, and fears. To listen with empathy takes practice, since automatic responses of advising, lecturing, and commiserating are common. While these no empathic responses are not considered bad, our experience confirms that what people want first and most, especially when they are in pain, is empathy.
That’s why Giraffe Language advises you to Give Empathy First. You can listen with empathy to others and you can listen with empathy to yourself. In many cases, in order to be able to listen with empathy to others, you will first need to empathize with yourself.
Listening to Yourself: Self-Empathy
Giraffe Language encourages you to develop the habit of frequently checking in with what is going on with you-noticing your ever-changing feelings and needs. When you do this, you meet your need for self-connection and self-respect and you will feel more alive and present. You will also find yourself engaged in productive, energizing, needs meeting actions more of the time.
