Parenting: Part 2 - Basic Needs

Parenting: Part 2 - Basic Needs and Confidence

Your Child's Basic Needs

It may seem reasonable that traditional societies like the Yequana and Hopi are reliable templates for raising children, but what are the particulars?

The instructions on a seed packet show a range of conditions within which a young plant will grow to be strong and healthy. That optimal range of needs is essential to know—whether we're dealing with a tomato seed, a wolf cub, or a human child.

The observation and study of natural humans—present and historic—reveal that all human children have 4 basic needs.

By referring to these basic needs as a parenting template, we may be able to adjust our own family patterns to better provide for our children.

1) Physical

• Safety and protection with sufficient food, clothing, and shelter.

Physical safety and protection does not only save a child from injury. A child will relax, explore, and physically grow better if a community and family provide this. Without this protection, fear and chronic stress exhaust and corrode a young child's bodymind, interrupting growth and resulting in dysfunctional survival patterns that persist into adulthood and interfere with life. Sufficient nourishment allows children to grow strong, and obviously a lack does the opposite.

2) Emotional

• Unconditional love, appreciation, respect, and affection.

Humans are social beings, which means we have a need to support, care for and regulate each other through physical contact and affection. In fact, our breathing, heart rate and nervous systems are regulated through close, caring contact. Love isn't just a sweet feeling, it is a powerful, enlivening, bonding force that feeds emotional and physical health.

3) Family

• Acceptance, stability, and guidance.

In all small tribal societies, babies are not only breastfed for a while, they are regularly held close (the “in arms” period) by parents and family until they can crawl and walk. All family members work, eat, and sleep together, often in regular physical contact.

Small children are appreciated for the little miracles that they are, challenges and all. The circle of family contact and care is broad, with many relationships and supports, unlike the isolation and stresses of the modern nuclear and sub-nuclear family.

These natural beyond-family circles have rich, stable networks of care, knowledge, guidance, and skills that are passed along from elder to younger.

4) Freedom

• Explore perceptions, feelings, creativity, and boundaries.

Children have one “job”—to explore and discover their loves and abilities through the freedom to play—which is fun. This profound fun, this play, which we witness in all young animals, is not a luxury. Fun play is an evolution-honed, highly efficient way to grow, learn, and test for strengths, weaknesses, and all the hard realities that will bring a child to optimal adulthood. The sensible modern advocates of “free play” are not rebelling against structure, they are allowing their children a powerful time- tested tool to discover themselves and be their very best.

Allowing Basic Needs to be Fulfilled

Many parents may feel overwhelmed by this list. “It all sounds wonderful,” you may protest, “but there's no way this can be provided in a hectic, modern life!”

This may be true for you, but what stark reality flows out from this? Your child will not get their needs met, be internally limited and inevitably suffer. If a child does not receive the hugs and affirmation they need every day, this unmet need will, like the turning of the earth, drive them towards dysfunctional substitutes. Every single seedling on earth—without direct sunlight—will stretch out through the darkness, thin and withered, for a speck of sun. Have you seen what those deprived plants become? Weak, poorly rooted, and easy prey for diseases and foragers.

This is biology. This is physics. Like all living beings, children are what they are and need what they need. It is what it is. If you have children this is the territory you have stepped into and will be navigating. The solution is not about perfection, it's about finding the good enough window between too little and too much. The proof is in the child and the family.

• Is there a general sense of belonging and ease?
• Are your children happy with themselves?
• Are you close and affectionate and also respect boundaries?

• Do you like each other?
• Do you trust each other?
• Do you love each other?
• Do you laugh and have fun together?
• Do your children feel you “have their back”?
• Does your child feel freedom but ultimately accept limits?

There are many more questions that can be asked, and your answers may indicate how balanced things are. A healthy parent-child relationship has conflicts, but these naturally resolve towards general happiness. The overall atmosphere is the guide, and when that atmosphere gets stormy with repeated issues and conflicts, these problems need to be investigated and resolved with compassionate curiosity.

Some people believe that parenting is inevitably hard and children are naturally difficult, especially as teenagers. Successful parenting is definitely a full engagement occupation, but my own experience and relationships with teenagers from connected families reveal that they are independent personalities with very close and harmonious family connections. The ancient biologic rule for social mammal groups is to be friends, not enemies.

Protecting Original Confidence

Successful parenting starts at the beginning—womb life, birth and the “in arms” period.

Every pre-born child needs a healthy, relaxed mother, ideally supported by her partner, both families, and multiple circles of love and support. In a way, that little life is protected and nurtured like a seed inside a multi-layered shell.

If that support is optimal, it prevents activation of the mother's stress response, which would create a caustic hormone-filled womb environment for the baby. So if the mother is relatively healthy and at ease, the infant she carries is more likely to be relaxed and healthy.

This nurturing protection is the foundation of the child's confidence.

Confidence is very connected to value. When we are valued and know we have value, we are more likely to feel confident. And if we are confident we are also more likely to be valued.

When a child in the womb and early infancy has a strong and deep circle of protection, that protection is a living embodiment of that child's value. Those family members take that position because to them, the child has enormous value. And when a child is the centre of that protection they intrinsically feel it. The good, strong feeling they get in that multi-layered “hug” is the embodiment of their value—it is the proof.

When newborns and mothers lock eyes for the first time, the mother's adoring gaze is the primordial first key that wakes up a baby's intrinsic, but dormant, sense of value. This first “meeting” can be with other family members, but biologically and historically, it is the mother—the one who carried the baby—who is normally the first.

From that moment on, a child's value—and confidence—grows and is dependent on being protected, adored, and having that value continually reflected by the mother, father, and whole family. If that bond-value-confidence is maintained day-after-day, year-after-year, it is the greatest prevention of a whole manner of childhood problems. That confidence and child-parent bond allows conflicts to resolve easier. It also acts as a shield against negative influences and dangers, because a confident bonded child will turn to parents for guidance when questionable situations show up.

I have discovered that a child's confidence can dissipate under the normal pressures of life and needs to be “watered” daily. From hugs and playful exchanges to genuine compliments and encouragement, this daily care will maintain a healthy reservoir of confidence in your child. For me this is not an obligation I have to produce or manufacture. I genuinely enjoy my children and all my interactions reflect that, in the same way I feel joy towards anything or anyone I like.

(continued in "Parenting: Part 3 - Freedom, Limits, and Trust")