All children are born with four emotional needs that must be met. These needs are wired into every child’s brain although they are not consciously aware of it.

Every child craves to have these needs met. They can’t help but seek after them. It’s what they were born to do. It is one thing you can always count on.

Knowing this can be very helpful because if you meet these needs, misbehavior will decrease and cooperation will improve.

Here are the 4 Emotional Needs:

1. A sense of belonging
2. A sense of personal power
3. To be heard and understood
4. Limits and boundaries

Let’s take a close look at each one.

A Sense of Belonging

Every child has a need to feel a sense of belonging.

To a child, belonging means to feel important, noticed, included, accepted and loved. Each child yearns for his parent’s undivided attention.

When a child does not feel a sense of belonging, he feels ignored, left out, forgotten and rejected, and a child cannot bear to feel that way.

If a child does not feel a sense of belonging, he will go after it on his own.

Every waking hour will be spent exploring methods (or behaviors) that will result in a sense of belonging. When he finds something that works, he will repeat it again and again.

For example, a child will discover that hitting, teasing, throwing tantrums, whining and getting into mischief is a good way to get mom or dad’s attention, and getting their attention gives him a sense of belonging.

Children learn that even though these behaviors bring an angry reaction from parents, it is better than no attention.

Angry attention is better than no attention.

Children don’t care HOW this need gets met, only that it GETS met.

If you can meet this need for a sense of belonging in positive ways, your children won’t feel compelled to try and meet this need on their own.

Misbehavior will decrease and cooperation will increase.

A Sense of Personal Power

Every child has a need to feel a sense of personal power.

A sense of personal power means to feel independent, in charge of one’s self, having the freedom to choose; to feel empowered.

If a child does not feel a sense of personal power, she will go after it, and the easiest way to feel personal power is to simply say “no” to a request or “command”. When she discovers that refusing to obey brings a feeling of personal power, she will repeat that behavior.

Choosing to obey is the one thing she has complete control over no matter what her age.

Anytime a child engages in arguing, ignoring, being defiant, and doing the opposite of whatever you ask her to do, she may be trying to meet her own need for a “power fix”.

If you can meet this need for a sense of personal power in positive ways, your children won’t feel compelled to try and meet this need on their own. Misbehavior will decrease and cooperation will increase.

Misbehavior is not random

It is driven by a goal, deep within at an unconscious level, to feel a sense of belonging and personal power. All the arguing, interrupting, whining, talking back, ignoring, defying and other misbehaviors are symptoms of unmet needs.

If you focus only on the bad behavior by yelling, spanking, threatening and punishing, the bad behavior might go away for a while, but it will return.

Why?

Because the child must still meet her needs, and if misbehaving is the only way those needs are going to be met, then misbehavior will happen again and again.

Guaranteed!

However, if you focus on the deeper issue, helping your children meet these two basic needs, the bad behavior will go away and stay away.

Also, when children don’t have to concern themselves with meeting their own needs, they can focus more of their attention on exploring, experimenting and learning – the things that foster self-confidence and independence.

I hope you’ve been asking yourself, “So, how do I meet these two needs?”

I wish all dads asked that question. This website will show you what to do. But first, I want to introduce you to the last two needs, which you will learn in the next post.