Clear, honest, judgment free communication about our feelings and needs is a critical component of peaceful parenting. It is also a practice because it is impossible to do this perfectly, it is impossible to do this all the time.

Stick with me though because here is what IS possible:

• Sharing our feelings and our needs with our children kindly and honestly
• Helping our children to identify and share their own feelings and needs
• Seeing our children become skilled at naming their feelings and needs
• Creating an emotionally rich and rewarding environment within our families

Non Violent Communication (NVC) requires the practice of four steps:

1. Naming an observation (not an evaluation).
2. Naming a feeling or feelings
3. Naming the needs that are being met or not being met resulting in those feelings.
4. Making a request of what to do (versus what not to do) for yourself or communication partner

All four of these steps require practice, mistakes will be made, AND connections will grow. I will be creating a short course on how to incorporate these four steps into your home, in the interim let’s talk about steps 2 and 3: naming feelings and needs.

One premise of NVC is when needs are met or not met, feelings result. An easy example is, “I feel disappointed because I am longing for (need) cooperation. This is an example of a feeling (disappointed) that we might feel when we have the unmet need for cooperation. Perhaps we feel this way when we want our teen to unload the dishwasher. 

Another example is “I feel content because my needs for connection and play were met today.” These are real words my child said to me after we spent the afternoon exploring a new to us park. Perhaps we might feel this way after an afternoon spent lounging on the couch watching a silly show or after a coffee date with a friend. 

Sharing our feelings and needs is emotional intelligence that must be developed for most of us. Many adults were not given the tools or training to grow these muscles. However, it is never too late. We can practice with our children, our partners, our dearest friends and we should. 

I want to propose a few other safe practice spaces: 

• when talking about our pets
• when reading books aloud to our children
• when reading the same books as our children. 

Have you read Little Blue Truck by Alice Schertle? In the story a big dump truck is unfriendly and when he gets stuck in the mud, no one wants to help him except Little Blue Truck. We can talk about how the Big Dump Truck feels in that moment. Is he scared? Is he sad? Is he lonely? Is he anxious? Is he worried? Is he unsafe? Maybe he is all of those things, the beauty is we can discuss n a totally neutral manner how he is feeling with our children. Since no one listening to the story is deeply involved in the feelings, speaking about them is low risk, low fear, and (maybe) low discomfort. We can talk about how the animals feel when they finally do help. Are they proud? Are they hopeful? Are they happy? Are they curious? There are many feelings we label as positive and it is just as important to practice naming them.

In Finally Seen by Kelly Yang, younger sister Millie reminds her older sister Lina that she is in charge of product design for their family bath bomb business. Lina has just moved to the United States from China where she has lived with her grandma for the past five years while her mom, dad, and Millie moved to and worked on settling into the US. How does Millie feel as she asserts her role within the family? My kids thought she might feel scared, insecure, confused, anxious, inferior. We agreed Lina might share similar feelings. In another section Lina makes her first friend in the US who is kind and acknowledges the struggle of finding your footing in a new environment. We thought Lina might be feeling happy, surprised, excited, peaceful, joy, courageous. 

Needs go along with feelings, in fact our feelings are caused by our met or unmet needs. So going back to Little Blue Truck what needs was going unmet for Big Dump Truck when he was stuck? Perhaps he was longing for safety, acknowledgment, compassion, acceptance. The animals’ needs for collaboration, contribution, community, connection were likely what resulted in their feelings after rescuing Big Dump Truck. 

Let’s look at Millie and Lina. Millie is a young girl whose older sister has just moved into the home where she has been the only daughter for five years, the older sister she has only heard marvelous things about from her parents. What needs are unmet for her when she is trying to remind her family how important she is too? I suspect they might include connection, to matter, agency, safety, stability, confidence, worth. Lina gets to have some of her needs met when she finds her new friend, among them are likely connection, empathy, compassion, assurance, gratefulness, joy. 

You can just stop there – you don’t have to do all the steps, you just have to make sure you are practicing.

We also practice with our pets…we have two cats. Sometimes one or the other is eating the other’s food. How do they feel when their food is “stolen?” Perhaps sad, insecure, unsafe, abandoned, surprised, inferior. What needs are going unmet? Agency, experience, enjoyment, significance, sustenance. What are the cats feeling when they snuggle deep into one of our laps? Joy, satisfied, curious? What needs might be met during those times? Safety, comfort, closeness, significance? 

It might feel silly to move through feelings and needs in this context. It also normalizes these conversations, this language, it grows connection and safety. Let’s be brave and do it together.