Communication Matters: Responding compassionately to battles of daily life for Parents

By Jeyanthy Siva

This is a column on Nonviolent Communication (NVC), also known as compassionate communication. NVC shows a path, a step by step process, of how to go from disconnection and violence to connection, compassionate understanding and cooperation – with ourselves, the people around us and the world we live in. It is a language of mutual respect, empathy and honesty, and is often described as “the language of the heart”.

People who come to workshops sometimes ask me “can this method work with children?”. My answer is, “yes, it can”. All human beings want to be listened to with empathy and treated with respect and care, children included. To illustrate this, I want to share with you a story of how NVC communication helped an adult mediate between two young children, to turn them away from a “grabbing struggle” into cooperation.

Below is a story shared by Inbal Kashtan, an NVC trainer friend from California. I like this story because while the situation is not serious (two children wanting the same toy), the modeling by the adults of how to handle such a situation is a powerful teaching that will last with them all their lives:

Young children go through periods when it seems that their purpose in life is to take anything that another child is playing with. Eighteen-month old Jacob and his dad were visiting three-year-old Ray and his mom. When it came time to leave, Jacob clearly had every intention of leaving with Ray’s little car.

Ray is sometimes willing to let other children borrow his things, but this happened to be his only little car. When I checked with him if he was willing for Jacob to borrow it, his whole body went into “grabbing mode”: his muscles tensed, his eyes focused on Jacob’s hand, and he seemed ready to jump on Jacob to take his car back. Noticing the imminent grab, I asked Ray to hold on so we could try to talk with Jacob about it, and since he is used to resolving conflicts with NVC, he relaxed. If he had not relaxed, I would have begun the dialogue with my attention on him.

I tried to reflect to Jacob my guess about his feelings and needs: “You like this car? You want to be able to keep playing with it?” Jacob looked at me intently and held on tight to the car. I told him: “You know, this is Ray’s only little car, and he wants to have it in the house. Would you be willing to give it back to him?” Jacob’s body language indicated a clear no.

Ray tensed once again, and Jacob’s dad said to me: “It’s OK, we’ll just take it out of his hand.” I asked them both to wait and give our conversation a chance. I stayed focused on Jacob: “You really like things with wheels? You want something with wheels?” I looked around for a strategy that would meet Jacob’s need for choice of the kind of toy he plays with, and found one, so I asked: “Would you like this Lego train with wheels?” Jacob happily took the Lego with wheels while continuing to hold on to the little car. Now he had two of Ray’s toys!

At that moment, I did not have any evidence that what I was doing was “working.” So why would I keep going? Because I believe deeply that all people have an innate desire to contribute to others’ well being. Even when children are very young and absorbed in meeting their own needs, one of their needs is to contribute to others. I believe we can tap their generosity by exhibiting trust in their need to contribute, by articulating it and inviting them to act on it without any coercion. The lack of coercion is crucial because generosity does not arise when we are forced into it.

Equally important to me is modeling for children that all people’s needs matter and can be met. Using NVC, I do this by actively showing that their needs matter to me. The key here is modeling for children the behavior we want to teach them. If we don’t want them to grab, we don’t grab. Almost every time I am around a group of children, I see an adult say “no grabbing” while taking a toy from the hands of a resisting child and giving it to another.

This action may seem logical in our adult eyes because we are acting to meet our needs for justice, consideration, and supporting our children. However, it is not inherently different from the action of a child who grabs a toy because she wants to meet her needs for play, autonomy, and exploration.

The Shift

When Jacob still did not give the car back after I gave him the train, Jacob’s dad and Ray tensed once again, though Jacob seemed quite absorbed in our conversation. Dad repeated his suggestion of taking the car back by force. I spoke to them while keeping eye contact with Jacob: “I don’t want to force Jacob to give back the car. I want him to have choice, so I’d like to see if we can work this out with words.” Ray then moved toward Jacob, while Jacob’s dad and I watched, and spoke to him directly: “Jacob,” he said, “why don’t you take the Lego train? You can take it home, and give me back the car.” When Jacob did not immediately give back the car, Ray reached his hand to take it from him once again, but I moved closer and expressed again, to both of them, how much I wanted to talk until we figured this out. At that moment, Jacob turned to Ray, fully relaxed, and handed him the little car. It seemed to me that Jacob needed to trust that he was not going to be physically forced to do something he did not want to do in order for him to act on his own will to consider other’s wishes. His dad seemed awe-struck by his behavior.

But I was not surprised. An inner shift almost always happens for at least one of the people involved in a conflict when NVC is used, and often for both. When we trust that our own needs really matter to others, we can often relax about the particular strategies we are choosing. If Jacob had not shifted, I would have turned to Ray to see if he would shift. Sometimes, just the act of checking in with both children meets their need for trust that my request is not a demand, and that both their needs matter. This contributes to their willingness to consider the other.

The difference between needs and strategies is crucial in using NVC. When I talk about needs, I am referring to the broadest set of human aspirations, needs, and values, things like physical safety, food, and shelter, but also understanding, support, community, autonomy, honesty, play, peace, and meaning. These needs are universal. We fight, punish, or go to war when our strategies for meeting our needs conflict, and we are unable to connect with the human being on the other side of the argument.

(For information on NVC trainings in Sri Lanka, visit www.sandhi.org. Inbal Kashtan is co-founder of BayNVC: www.baynvc.org and Coordinator of Compassionate Parenting Project for CNVC: www.cnvc.org)

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