Needs of Children and Everyone Else

This week, I learned some great things about parenting. I learned some of the needs of children specifically and people in general. I learned how children are likely to act if these needs are not met, as well as how parents meet those needs.

Children do better if parents raise them with high levels of consistency and warmth. It turns out that the level of strictness in the home is not an indicator of success. Consistency includes a stable marriage, and a matching of words, tone, and actions. Warmth includes frequent physical contact and expressions of love.

I learned about five needs of children. I regret that I do not know who made this list originally. The five needs are as follows: contact/belonging, power, protection from harm, taking breaks/withdrawing, and challenge. All of these needs apply to everyone throughout their life.

The first is having contact and belonging. Contact includes physical touch, eye contact, and conversation. As a parent, to best help your child, you need to offer contact freely. Children who do not receive the necessary amount of contact suffer developmentally. When a child's need for contact is not met, they will seek it elsewhere through undue attention seeking. They may become unruly or violent to gain the contact that they need. When it comes to belonging, children need to be able to contribute to the family. Teach them to help out through chores and other tasks. When you join a team, you don't feel like you belong if you are unable to participate; the same happens in families. Help your child feel that they belong by allowing them to contribute-even if you could do any given task better and faster.

The next need is to have power, which means to have the ability to influence their own environment. Give your children responsibilities (response-ability). Give them age appropriate choices. When giving them choices, allow them to experience the natural consequences if it is safe to do so. Children who feel that they do not have power over their own life are likely to rebel and to try to control others.

The third need is protection from harm. The first step is to provide safety in your own home, but protection from harm also includes what can come from outside of the home. You need to teach your children to be assertive and to use "I feel" statements. But since you can't protect your children from every harm and hurt, you also need to teach them how to forgive. If children don't learn to forgive and let go, they may turn to getting revenge, which often turns into a painful cycle. When teaching forgiveness, it is important to model how to do it by doing it with them and with your spouse.

The fourth need is being able to take breaks from tasks and withdrawing as needed. This is something else you can model for them-taking breaks during a task, and then going back to it. Sometimes, children need time to reset and recharge. If children are not taught to take breaks, they may turn to what is called undue avoidance. This includes procrastination.

Last but not least, children have the need to be challenged. You can challenge them by having them learn new skills. You don't need to create meaningless challenges; there are plenty of challenging things to learn to do around the house and in daily life. Building skills will help your children through out life. If children are not challenged enough, they may turn to undue risk taking (including more than the normal amount of risk taking associated with adolescence).

I hope knowing these needs will help parents meet the needs of their children, and help people meet needs that they find lacking in their own life.