Feelings of worth can flourish only in an atmosphere where individual differences are appreciated, mistakes are tolerated, communication is open, and rules are flexible.
-Virginia Satir
Explore Together: Needs and Strategies
Choose one of the needs to explore together. List ways each person has found to meet that need. This can lead to a discussion of the effectiveness of these strategies. It can also lead to a discussion of new strategies to try. This activity often leads to increased awareness of the wealth of ways there are to meet needs.
If one way you try to meet a need doesn’t work, you can try another.
There are hundreds of opportunities each day to practice and refine your needs-meeting skills and to help your children refine theirs. With daily practice and plenty of patience-with yourself and with your children-you can continually create, invent, and intuit new ways to individually meet needs and to co-operate with others to meet needs together.
One mother we know had studied nutrition and valued providing healthy food for her family. She was a creative and skilled cook and enjoyed making meals for her husband and young son. Along with keeping healthy snacks in the house, she scheduled time each day to prepare a hot meal that would be served at six o’clock. She asked her husband
and son to plan around it so they could eat together. However, when six o’clock arrived and dinner was on the table, her son was frequently absorbed in his own activities and didn’t want to break his concentration for dinner. This was frustrating for a while. Then this mother realized that, as much as she enjoyed sitting down for dinner together, it wasn’t the only way to feed her family healthy foods. She came up with another strategy, which was to stock a kitchen drawer with healthy snacks and a refrigerator drawer with carrots, celery, and apples. Her son was free to forage when he was too involved to come to meals.
Rather than arguing and fighting, use this step-by-step procedure to learn together with your children as you go:
Steps for Learning Together As You Go
1. Identify the need or needs you or your child want to meet.
2. Choose a strategy for meeting the need.
3. Try out the strategy.
4. Evaluate the strategy: How well did it meet the needs that were identified?
5. Refine the strategy or try another one.
You Can Celebrate What Works
When your strategies work and needs are met, take a few moments to acknowledge the success. It seems to be a human trait to focus on the negative, so it is important to take time to notice when things are going the way you want them to go. Feel your happiness, satisfaction, or delight. Taking time to celebrate successes anchors learning in your long-term memory and is a powerful way to build self-confidence.
Celebrating what works for your kids is another opportunity for empathic connection. Take time to listen for (1) the feelings they are having as a result of their accomplishments and (2) the needs they have met by doing what they have done. Wow, you seem to be feeling very happy and proud of yourself for staying with that puzzle until you figured it out.
When you keep the spotlight on your child’s feelings and needs, you support her inner motivation to do things for her own reasons rather than to please others, gain rewards, or avoid punishment. You also teach her to evaluate for herself how well she is meeting her needs, rather than to look to others for evaluation. Explore for Yourself Think about a success you had today: something you did to meet a need that worked! What did you do?
What need did it meet?
Take a moment to celebrate. How do you feel knowing that it worked?
Explore Together: Celebrate Successes
Take turns sharing successes you’ve had this week.
True compassion is not just an emotional response but a firm commitment founded on reason.
-The Dalai Lama
You Can Learn from What Doesn’t Work
When a strategy to fulfill a need doesn’t work, it is tempting to say, I made a mistake, and spiral down into self-criticism, self-doubt, and self punishment. In fact, a mistake is simply a strategy for meeting a need that didn’t work out the way you hoped it would. Instead of playing a self-blame game and judging mistakes as bad, you can reconnect with your feelings and needs and tinker with, tweak, or otherwise adjust your
strategies for more satisfying results.
If you are afraid of making mistakes, you will miss opportunities to try new things. You won’t feel free to explore, experiment, and play. Rather than blame and judge yourself for making a mistake, learn from it and move on.
Steps for Learning from Mistakes
Observe: What did you do or say that you regret?
Notice: What are you telling yourself about what you did?
Are you judging yourself?
Ask: What needs were you trying to meet?
Ask: How could you have met those needs more effectively? Ask: Were there any needs you did meet?
Request: What do you want to do now to meet your needs?
No matter what you are faced with, you will be able to handle it if you are willing to be a learner along with your kids, co-investigating and co creating as you go. Remember that there are many ways to do things and if one way doesn’t work you can try another until you find a strategy that works for you. Celebrate what is working and learn from what isn’t.
Daily Practice
Notice when you feel anxious because you think something has to be done or something should be done in a particular way. Notice the judgment, breathe, and connect with the deeper need you want to meet. When you focus on the need, do other strategies come to mind that could meet that need?
Notice when you or your children are attached to a particular strategy. These phrases can give you a clue: I have to do it, I need to have it, You need to do it. See if you can sense the need or needs you or your kids want to meet through this strategy. See if there are other strategies that could also meet this need.
When something you do or your child does is successful in meeting a need, take a moment to celebrate.
When something you do or your child does is not successful, take time to feel the disappointment or sadness that may come up, then take yourself through the “Steps for Learning from Mistakes.”
