Is there any place for punishment in NVC?

Question: Wanted also ask about Krsna's statement in BG 10.38, where he says daṇḍo damayatām asmi:"Among all means of suppressing lawlessness I am punishment". Is there any place for danda in NVC, I am guessing not.

My Reflections:

For a comprehensive perspective on punishment and NVC, refer to this article by Alan Rafael Seid, (CNVC Certified Trainer,and someone I am taking training from) titled, "NVC and Corporeal Punishment".

In the purport to the verse you have quoted, Srila Prabhupada explains, "When miscreants are punished, the agency of chastisement represents Krsna." Krsna and His representatives are authorized agents of dharma, Who know how to use Their discrimination to use violence in service. 

However, when we bring this principle of danda or punishment down to our level, we often observe that our punitive intentions arise from a desperate attempt to step into our power or to gain control of the situation. When we are overwhelmed, we resort to punishing those who are in a down-power role in comparison to us.

Punishment erodes goodwill and trust. If we punish our children, they may feel scared of us. Fear chips away the desire to contribute out of wanting to care for the needs of the parent. 

By using danda, we are teaching our children that those in an up-power role can use punitive means to get their needs met. This makes it more likely that when they step into roles with greater access to power, as parents, leaders, or managers, they will punish those who are in down-power roles. Hurt people hurt people. 

Marshall Rosenberg invited parents to ask two questions:

1. What is it that we want our children to do?

If this is the only question we consider, then danda is a great way to motive children's behavior because it usually gets them to submit. 

But, the second question that Marshall Rosenberg invited parents to ask is:

2. What do we want our children's reasons to be for doing as we ask?

When we ponder over this question then danda is never a good way to motivate behavior, because it not linked to an intrinsic motivation to care for the other person's needs, and that's the paradigm we are trying to create in our families with NVC.

In short, there is no place in NVC for danda. And from my own childhood experience of receiving plenty of danda, I am relieved that there is another way to parent!

The Exhaustion of Endless Needs!

Question: Hare Krishna. I have a question based on what we discussed today. We are trying to meet our needs and that of our children. I feel that sometime the needs are endless. No matter what one does for the child, there is endless expectations to meet their needs. There need to be something more that just meeting the needs. Any thoughts on this? 

Response:

Here's a needs chart that I like:

Needs are under the ground in this tree to depict the fact that needs cannot be seen, but are the root cause of all human behavior and feelings.

    A larger version of this chart can be found here.    

    As you can see from this chart, the list of needs is large, but finite. 

    What is infinite are the strategies we can use to meet needs. This key distinction between needs and strategies is very helpful in discerning how to empathize with our children. For example, one day, our child might demand to have a pet. Another day, they want a playdate with a friend. On another day, they express their disappointment at how busy we are all day with work meetings. What is important to note is that these are all strategies, because they are attached to a specific person, object, location, thing, etc. To find the need underneath the strategy, NVC trains us to ask the question internally, “If my child had that, then what would they have?”

    The need underlying all these strategies - a pet, playdate, parent's attention - is the same; connection! One could also name the need as love or to matter. When we can identify the needs behind their strategies, it enhances our ability to empathize with our children, hence the possibility that they experience understanding and relief in their bodies. We don't so much get caught up in the complexity of their strategies.

Here are two key premises of NVC:

“Our world offers abundant (not infinite) resources for meeting needs. When human beings are committed to valuing everyone’s needs and have regained their skills for fostering connection and their creativity about sharing resources, we can overcome our current crisis of imagination and find ways to attend to everyone’s basic needs.” 

And,

    

    "Our capacity for peace is not dependent on having our needs met."

    So when we talk of “meet” needs in NVC, we refer to acknowledging and getting in touch with them. Imagine shaking hands with our children's needs, “Hello beautiful need, I see you, I acknowledge you, and sometimes, I mourn that you are not met.” 

    NVC empowers us to sit in empathy with the pain of unmet needs. I have found time and time again that even when it is not possible to meet everyone’s needs in the family, acknowledging and mourning unmet needs allows us to hold the sweet pain of the unmet need together. It is this experience of togetherness that is critical in family connection. Not being able to empathize with our children's needs creates separateness.

    My experience repeatedly, over a prolonged period of time, is that my children, at the deepest level, can live with unmet needs, but not with the experience that their needs don't matter. If I can sit with my children’s pain, in empathy, not to “fix it”, or “cheer them up”, or show them how privileged they already are, my children can come to a feeling of being held with care, knowing that their needs matter, even when they are not met.

   Srila Prabhupada explains that this material world is a hospital, not a hotel. So, by default, it is not a place where all our children's needs are meant to be met.What is important is that we "meet" needs with compassion, i.e., we acknowledge the beauty of our children's needs. We express care for their needs, through dialogue and discussion. Then, even if some of their needs are unmet, we have togetherness in mourning.

     One powerful tool is to imagine, with our children, the experience of that need being met. "Wouldn't it be so nice to have a fuzzy pet that you could cuddle with all the time. Would it mean a lot to you to know that you matter dearly to this being, when you come home and they wag their tail and get excited?" I am giving this example because my children, in the past have wanted a pet. And while we tried to have a puppy, it didn't meet other needs, so we gave him to a friend. By imagining the needs that would be met if we still had our puppy, it validates the child's needs. 

    NVC is not a process of focusing our energy on trying to satisfy all the needs of our child. It's a process that gives us tools to help our children find internal peace, through being empathized with, even in the midst of many unmet needs. 

    Please share how this is landing for you, by commenting below.