Human Need

      I may have mentioned this before on this blog, but I am a pretty religious person. I have been taught my whole life to believe in God and Jesus, and doing so has given me with an additional, divine lens through which to view the family unit. One quote from a religious leader has always impacted me deeply: 

“Jesus saw sin as wrong but also was able to see sin as springing from deep and unmet needs. … This permitted him to condemn the sin without condemning the individual.” --Spencer W. Kimball

        I love this idea. While this quote applies directly to sin and religious concepts of forgiveness, I think it can apply to any kind of maladaptive behavior. It could be said that most misbehavior arises from "deep and unmet needs". In terms of family and raising children, having this mindset really changes the way one approaches handling undesirable behavior.

        On one hand, a parent may choose to deal with a child's bad behavior by responding to the behavior. This might reduce the behavior, but it fails to treat the underlying cause. Another way was suggested by psychologist and author Michael Popkin.

The Needs Approach

        Similar to the quote mentioned above, Dr. Michael Popkin theorized that many of the common misbehaviors in children arise not from a damaged psyche but from fundamental unmet needs. This is obviously not always the case, and this blog post is not intended to lay the blame for misbehaving children solely at the feet of the parents. However, Dr. Popkin's "Needs Approach" does provide some very simple and doable ways that parents can improve their relationships and influence with their children, thereby reducing damaging behaviors.

Contact and Belonging:

    The first need that Popkin identifies is the human need for physical contact and belonging. 

    Humans are social creatures, and most every person is born with an inbred need to belong to a larger group, and to connect on a physical, emotional, and mental level with other humans. This connection is critical to human development, as evidenced by hundreds of heartbreaking cases in understaffed orphanages across the world. 

    Undue attention seeking is a child's way of establishing contact and connection when they feel it is not being given freely. Anyone who has a younger sibling can attest to the fact that they tend to be the most obnoxious, loud, and annoying sibling of the bunch. They are also the one that likely receives the least attention and contact from parents and older siblings.

    

     Children crave hugs, kisses, wrestling, and the like. If they feel as though they are not receiving those things, they most often act out in an attempt to get them. Parents can curb undue attention seeking by offering contact freely. High-fiving as you pass by them, wrapping them up in a hug as you say goodnight, or wrestling with them for a couple minutes won't take significant time or energy, but it can make a world of difference in meeting a child's need for contact. 

       In addition, parents can give their children an opportunity to "belong" by teaching them to contribute in the home. No kid will openly admit they like chores, but as I wrote about last week, inviting children to work with you provides them an opportunity to feel belonging within the family.

Power:

    Second, children have a need to feel like they have power to influence their own environment. All of us have a desire to feel in control of our own lives, and children are no exception. When a child, or frankly even most adults, feel that they are not being offered choices that allow them to direct their lives, they are likely to act in two ways: rebelling or controlling others. When someone engages in either of those behaviors, they stop their own progression because they're no longer working towards something...only against. 

 
  Parents can help their children feel power over their environment by offering age appropriate, situation appropriate choices. For young children, this might look like letting them decide whether to wear blue socks or red socks. For an older teenager, this may be helping them decide what kind of car to buy. At every phase of life, children benefit from being offered the chance to influence their environment.

    Providing children with choices also means you allow them to experience the consequences of their choices. As much as possible, it is beneficial to allow natural consequences to do the teaching rather than lecturing when choices don't work out. Exceptions to allowing children to choose freely include when the consequences are too dangerous, too far in the future to be useful, or when others may be hurt.

Protection

    Every child has a need for physical and emotional safety. In addition to this, older children often feel a need to protect their own individual identity. When people perceive that their safety has been violated or threatened, that's when they turn to poor alternatives to regain a sense of protection. 

Rather than expressing frustration and handling it in appropriate ways, children and young adults often seek revenge, creating a cycle of hurt and unresolved feelings of endangerment. For example, a young child whose older sibling takes their toys away may find temporary solace in destroying their block tower. To help combat this, parents can teach their children to be appropriately assertive with them. 

    Allowing children opportunities to express when something you've done has hurt their feelings, or impacted their feeling of safety, encourages them to seek protection through advocating rather than revenge. A crucial part of this is being patient with their attempts to be assertive. 

Withdrawal

    The next need that Popkin identifies is the need for withdrawal, or the ability to take a break when needed. This often accompanies development of self-identity, but children of any age need to feel that they are able to take their own space to sort through thoughts and emotions.

  If this is not provided, many children exhibit undue avoidance, or procrastination, in an effort to take it. They may go on "work binges", where they overly invest in an assignment or task, then take an extensive break after. This is not the fault of the parents usually: most kids just don't know how to pace themselves effectively. I know I definitely did this in high school. For some reason, I would almost always rather work for hours straight to finish a project right before the deadline than start earlier and work for shorter periods of time.

    Parents can help by teaching their kids what wise breaks look like. Rather than having us work out in the yard the whole day, my mom would always have us stop around noon to eat lunch. We would go inside, eat some food, grab some water, and have a chance to sit down for about an hour. After an hour, we would hit it again. We weren't procrastinating the task, but we weren't working ourselves sick either. 

Challenge

    The final need that children have is the need for challenge. Humans of any age have an internal drive to seek stimulation and difficulty. It is what drives us to progress. Kids are no different--they desire to experience new and challenging things.

    This can come in many forms. Children can be encouraged by parents to develop skills and interests. They can expose them to new and interesting experiences. Even reading out loud or singing to your children is a form of much needed challenge and stimulation. Those children who feel that they are not being challenged enough at home tend to seek undue risk taking.

All these suggestions are based off of Dr. Popkin's model of a Needs Based Approach. Every situation will be different, but this model provides a different lens through which to view misbehaving children. They, like so many of us, are simply trying to meet their deep and fundamental human needs. Hopefully this can help us see them, and so many like them, with more compassion and love. I know it certainly did for me!