NEEDS GUIDE
Let’s Work Together Needs Guide
Thank you for accessing this additional material to support Day 4 of Let’s Work Together. This is to support the capturing of their perceptions and needs and the better understanding of what your child’s needs are.
The exercise is to take a note pad and write down what you feel your child perceives that they need. Write down everything from basics such as food and shelter, all the way up to higher level needs such as access to the internet or their favourite outdoor toy.
Try to spend a while about it, and you can also ask other adults in the house to contribute to this list too. Don’t make any judgments just yet about how acceptable or desirable each of these items are. That assessment will happen shortly, but for now just write down what you believe they have a need for.
Maslow Hierarchy of Needs
Abraham Maslow wrote a paper in 1943 entitled "A Theory of Human Motivation" and this was published in the journal Psychological Review. In this paper he proposed a theory of developmental psychology which has become a cornerstone of professional practice and drives much thinking in the area of child development. Indeed, its reach extends beyond that of child developmental thinking and is often used in discussions of adult developmental performance also.
The Hierarchy can be illustrated with the following graphic:
Maybe use this graphic and notate it with your child’s needs (as you perceive them to be) and you might come up with something like this:
Then try to draw arrows to categorise each of these in to one of the levels of Maslow’s triangle. It might be a bit of a mess but that’s ok! Mine below is certainly a mess!
Now, how do you feel about these needs? You may feel it’s easier to accept “needs” which are lower down the Hierarchy such as air, water, food, shelter and sleep. You may find it more difficult to accept “needs” perceived by their child to help with morality, creativity, spontaneity and problem solving such as access to the internet, their friends, and risky activities.
However is it easier aligning them to the Hierarchy?