Getting everyone’s needs met: parenting example
Question: How would I make sure that a 3-year-old gets enough to sleep?
[After making a realization during a talk with a physician, I had] the following dialogue with [my children]: I said to them, “Look, I think I haven’t been clear about why I want you to go to bed at night. Does anybody know?” I’d told them over and over but I had them guess again. And I said again, “I care about your health. That’s why I want you to get sleep, is that clear?” And my oldest son said, “But dad, sometimes we’re not tired then.” Well, that made sense to me. I’d hate to have somebody tell me – even if they cared about my health – if I didn’t wanna sleep. So I said, “How can we solve this?” And then I also realized something else […] that got all mixed up in this: I would say, my concern for their health was about 50%. And 50% was for my mental health. At a certain time of the evening I just wanted some relaxation and peace and so on. So I said, “Well, you know, I’m not only concerned about your well-being but you know what I mean by just liking time to yourself?” They understood, they have that same need. So I said, “How can we get everybody’s needs met?” And then my daughter came up with it, she had a great solution. She said, “Daddy, how about if we go to our room at 8 o’clock, then you can have time but then we can go to sleep when we want.” I said, “Let’s try.” It worked beautifully. The only problem was the first night, my youngest son, age three, I heard him up until 10 o’clock playing in his room and, oh, I had to control myself, not to get in there. And then the next morning he got up and [was] really grumpy… Then I had to hold my tongue so I didn’t say, “See, I told you...” And really, he got it. I think one other time he didn’t get enough sleep and then everybody got their needs met. He found his own rhythm and I got my needs met, they got their needs met.
Marshall Rosenberg, Nonviolent Communication. International Intensive Training
NVC series: Overview