Threshold to Adulthood: Raising Teenagers in Uncertain Times using Nonviolent Communication
By Alan Rafael Seid, CNVC Certified Trainer
Looking for practical techniques you can use now? See our guide, Nonviolent Communication and Raising Teenagers, for the in-the-moment moves. This essay is the deeper dive into the why.
Intro — parenting in a fraught era
Parenting is one of life’s biggest responsibilities!
As a parent you are responsible for another human being’s food and nutrition, adequate clothing, health care needs, education and learning. And because children watch what you do as much or more than what you say, you are also a role model — tasked with guiding another person on how to live life as a human being on planet Earth.
This is no small feat!
Children learn from their immediate caregivers about the world around them — and they are patterning on your meaning-making about whether or not people are safe to interact with, and whether or not the world is a safe place; whether or not they are worthy of love, care, and protection; and what everything means.
I am a parent — and Nonviolent Communication (NVC) has been a tremendous asset and support in my parenting path.
I began studying NVC in 1995, became a Certified Trainer in 2003, and had my first child in 2004. I feel excited to share with you what I have learned through the parenting process as informed by my journey with NVC.
Teenagers today face obstacles, challenges, and opportunities that are different, in significant ways, from those faced by past generations.
Despite there being so many differences in approaches to parenting, my goal is to offer something valuable for parents from any culture in any part of the world rather than focus on US culture.
In this article I first define and explain Nonviolent Communication. Then I share some of my personal experience parenting with NVC. We’ll look at some of the specific challenges teens face today, and then focus on some key principles for NVC-informed parenting.
What is NVC?
Nonviolent Communication (NVC) is a process for people to create the high quality of connection out of which conflicts resolve themselves, and people naturally and spontaneously enjoy contributing to one another’s well-being.
The name “Nonviolent Communication”
Dr. Marshall Rosenberg chose the name Nonviolent Communication out of a desire to align himself with Gandhi’s social movement from 1930s India.
If you are not familiar with Mahatma Gandhi, his remarkable achievement was ending British colonialism in India without a violent revolution. This had never been done before anywhere else!
However, the words they used in the Hindi language to describe their movement had no direct translation into English.
Ahimsa roughly translates into harmlessness-toward-all-beings, or I am not your enemy. It’s somewhat akin to the Buddhist concept of loving kindness.
Satyagraha roughly translates to soul-force, soul-truth, or the-power-of-the-truth. In some instances it’s understood as an unflinching commitment to the journey of truth and truthfulness.
In English, we took these two concepts, the-power-of-the-truth and a commitment to reduce harm — and translated them as “nonviolence.”
Unfortunately, this doesn’t tell you what it is — but rather what it is not: not violent. And this is one of the first paradoxes of NVC — since the process itself would advise describing what something is rather than what it is not.
And yet — these are the roots of the name. And understanding where the name comes from already starts to tell you what the process is about.
It is also known and taught by a variety of other names: Compassionate Communication, Empowered Communication, Empathic Communication, Conscious Communication, Life-Connected-Life-Serving-Communication… and others!
And each of these other names begins to give you additional angles on understanding what the process is about.
The History of NVC
Marshall Rosenberg grew up intrigued by how it is that some humans appear to enjoy inflicting violence on others.
He investigated this and discovered aspects in thinking and language that disconnect us from each other, and even make it easy for us to think we’re doing something “good” by perpetrating violence on another human.
He was also a student of renowned psychologist Carl Rogers, who was studying empathy at the time, and investigating why it is that authentic human connection can be so healing.
One early insight, at the core of NVC, is that when we feel connected to each other, kindness and generosity appear to flow naturally and spontaneously.
Marshall Rosenberg decided to identify the essential elements in thought, language, communication, and the use of power that can take us to a greater quality of connection. And that was the beginning of NVC.
The Purpose of NVC
NVC is not for getting other people to do what you want them to do!
It is also not about being “nice” — but rather, about being real, in a way that can also be compassionate!
In short, the purpose of NVC is to create the quality of connection out of which people naturally and spontaneously enjoy contributing to one another’s well-being.
If we drill down a little deeper, we can understand the purpose of NVC from the perspectives of speaking, listening, and self-connection.
NVC shows you how to speak what is true for you in a way that is most likely to lead to harmony than conflict.
It also teaches you how to be with someone else’s blame, judgment, criticism, or verbal attack, and be able to listen for what is important to that person at the level of needs or values — behind or deeper than the words they are using. This allows you to stand in a more compassionate place, avoid feeling defensive, and be far more likely to neutralize any potential conflict.
Internally, NVC helps you develop clarity about what you’re feeling, needing, and wanting. This helps you feel more regulated, express yourself more clearly, and use your words to create the quality of connection that leads to mutually beneficial outcomes.
The opposite of NVC: life-disconnected, life-alienated communication
Understanding “violent” communication — in other words, the thinking and language most likely to get in the way of the quality of connection you’re looking for — provides a useful contrast when learning NVC.
This thinking and language has several characteristics. It is based on the use of criticism, name-calling, static language, moralistic judgments, and rigid concepts of good/bad, right/wrong. It is based on avoiding responsibility for our intentions, words, and actions, expressing demands rather than requests, and justifying reward and punishment for those we think “deserve” it.
From this mindset it’s acceptable to motivate yourself and others through fear, guilt, shame, duty, obligation, to get a reward, to avoid punishment, or out of shoulds or have-tos — all of which breed resentment and destroy relationships. In other words, from this approach it’s more important to be right and get what you want than to have good relationships.
NVC, on the other hand, teaches us how to connect with others so that we can co-create mutually satisfying outcomes and solutions.
NVC Consciousness vs the NVC Model
Nonviolent Communication has a framework as well as things you can practice to increase your skills. I think of these as the “tools” of NVC.
But NVC is primarily a consciousness practice! When people try to employ the tools of NVC but forget the consciousness — then it doesn’t do what NVC is supposed to do, and it becomes a form of manipulation that is far away from being NVC.
NVC is primarily the consciousness and the intentionality that you bring to your interactions!
If your intention is to create a high quality connection, out of which you can co-create mutually agreeable outcomes, that is consistent with NVC!
When you can prioritize the connection first — and trust that if we can understand each others’ needs then we can find a strategy to meet both of our needs — that is NVC!
(Sometimes we can’t find a mutual solution not because there isn’t one, but because either (a) our NVC skills are not developed enough for the situation, or (b) we’re in an imagination deficit.)
When NVC consciousness and skills are understood and applied correctly, you are much more able to find win-win outcomes consistently!
When I taught my first Intro to NVC, many years ago, my mentor at the time reminded me: remember to teach it as a consciousness rather than a technique!
And, of course, the tools help!
So what are the tools?
Basic elements of the NVC Model
We start with three areas where you can put your attention in service of connection: (1) self-connection for interior clarity, (2) honest, vulnerable self-expression, and, (3) empathic listening.
Each of these three areas is also comprised of the same four components: observations, feelings, needs, and requests.
Observations are the neutral facts, as distinct from evaluations or interpretations about the facts.
Feelings are the emotional and somatic reality inviting you to pay attention to something deeper. Feelings act a bit like the indicator lights on a dashboard — they are letting you know that something deeper is happening… specifically, the needs.
In NVC we distinguish feelings from words that sound like feelings, but which actually take you away from connection. We call these “faux feelings.”
For example, “I feel attacked” is actually an image of what someone is doing to the speaker and could easily come across as blame. Furthermore, various people who see themselves as “attacked” could have a variety of actual feelings about that: one person feels angry, another feels scared, confused, sad, and so on. These two criteria can tell me whether or not it’s not an actual feeling.
The same is true with other faux feelings: I feel blamed, misled, boxed in, condescended to — there are so many words that sound like feelings but are actually thoughts!
Whereas actual feelings can bring us closer, faux feelings can lead to greater disconnection.
Needs refer to Universal Human Needs. I use various definitions which I imagine as different facets of a diamond: the more angles you perceive, the more clearly you see the whole thing.
Needs are at the core of NVC. They are how life is seeking to show up, in each present moment, inside any given person. Needs can also be understood as core human motivators — that which impels us to speak or act. Another angle: Needs are the conditions necessary for life to thrive in any human being, regardless of cultural background or geographic location.
We distinguish needs, which are universal, from the ways we go about addressing or fulfilling needs, which we call strategies and which, by definition, are not universal.
NVC holds that conflicts happen at the level of strategies, not needs. When we connect with each other’s needs, then we can together find strategies that meet most of, if not all, the needs.
Requests are a way to take responsibility for what you want by asking for what would contribute to your needs. We distinguish requests from demands.
In demands the outcome is more important than the relationship — and no is not an acceptable option. In a true NVC request you can receive a no with as much love as a yes.
These four elements — observation, feeling, need, and request — represent essential information available to us to facilitate connection.
These four elements can be found in what we are listening for, what we choose to express, and what we pay attention to inside to clarify both what is important as well as what we might like next.
Just remember: employing the model, the framework without the consciousness will not actually be NVC, let alone getting you the effective and durable results people achieve with NVC.
What NVC is good for and not good for
For more than 35 years I have researched and studied a wide variety of tools, processes, and modalities — and I have concluded that the New Age and Human Potential movements gave us hundreds of great tools along with thousands of mediocre ones.
For people on a lifelong path of learning and growing, who also want to make a positive difference, discernment becomes very important!
In my experience, NVC stands out as the most powerful for doing what it does!
Each modality has its gifts and its limitations, its strengths and its weaknesses. NVC is no different.
For example, Permaculture Design excels at working with nature rather than against nature, toward the end of edible and medicinal landscaping. (I acquired my Permaculture Certificate in 1999 and have been practicing it where I live since then.)
Dynamic Facilitation is a specific approach for helping groups that feel stuck to have a creative breakthrough.
NVC does not do what the above modalities do — nor what IFS (Internal Family Systems) does, nor what the Enneagram does, nor does it reveal what the Integral Framework reveals.
Nonviolent Communication excels at interpersonal effectiveness.
How do you create the quality of connection out of which people enjoy contributing to one another’s well-being?
How do you speak your truth in a way that is most likely to lead to harmony rather than conflict?
How do you receive a verbal attack in an unflappable as well as compassionate way?
How do you get clear what is motivating you at the deepest levels?
NVC is really good at answering these questions!
So what are NVC’s limitations?
The first limitation of NVC is access. If two people are punching each other out, or two groups are shooting at each other, then you don’t have access to the kind of dialog that could lead to a win-win solution. We might, in some cases, use protective use of force (as opposed to punitive use of force) to stop the punching or the shooting in order to create space for dialog.
Your skill-level will be another limitation in how effective you can be with NVC. Having worked on my skills I now feel confident in almost any conflict situation — and people invite me into their conflicts to help! A high skill-level gives you great confidence, especially when life puts you in an unexpected situation in which you need to use your communication skills to facilitate a positive outcome.
Third and fourth — your knowledge and your imagination — will either be limitations, or sources of great support! This is particularly true once connection has been established and you are at the point of crafting a solution, strategy, or next steps. Knowing what has been tried successfully before becomes a great asset here! Being able to imagine possibilities can lead to breakthroughs and innovative solutions. So knowledge and imagination can be great allies — and the lack of them a major limiting factor.
Here’s an analogy: for any given house-repair project you may need a screwdriver, a hammer, and a ruler. But you will not get the results you want if you try to use the screwdriver to measure and the ruler to pound in a nail.
Know your tools!
NVC does not do everything — but it is the most powerful process I know for what it does. What it does — and it does a lot of things — it does really well!
Developing yourself in NVC
NVC is typically taught in a workshop or classroom setting — and there are many options, online and offline.
You can learn more about the basics of NVC, here.
This book is a classic text for learning the concepts of Nonviolent Communication.
Having a tool and being skillful with a tool are different! I highly recommend building your NVC skills through online or in-person workshops and attending a practice group.
Besides workshops and a practice group, if you want to go deep, I highly recommend attending an International Intensive Training (IIT) put on by the Center for Nonviolent Communication (CNVC). At an IIT you live immersed for about 9 days with a group of people sharing the intention to learn NVC — which is one of the most effective ways to deepen your understanding and skills.
My experience of parenting with NVC
My experience is not unique — yet I do feel very fortunate. I took my first workshop with Marshall Rosenberg in 1995, and my children’s mother began in 1996. It quickly became a very valuable set of skills in our relationship — and so I feel very grateful that I had a chance to develop some NVC skills before my first child was born in 2004.
And it has been remarkable to witness the effects on my children as a result of growing up with:
- emotional intelligence,
- needs vocabulary,
- parents who employ power-with rather than power-over,
- a non-punitive environment in which relationships are prioritized over outcomes, and
- a home in which mom and dad didn’t hide their conflicts so much as modeled, out in the open, healthy ways of working through conflicts until we arrived at mutual understanding and a co-created way forward.
So what are the effects, the results, of growing up with NVC?
I have seen a myriad of positive effects for my children from growing up in a home with NVC. As of the writing of this article, my children are 22, 18, and 15 — so I’ve seen the gamut and I’m still in it.
Here are some of the highlights:
Self-connection, self-assertiveness.
I heard Marshall Rosenberg say multiple times that people who are connected to their needs do not make good robots or slaves.
Society has taught us to do things because we should, because “it’s the right thing to do,” or because “that’s what _______ (mothers, fathers, good partners, responsible adults, etc.) do!”
Or we are taught to be motivated by the grade, the bonus, or the reward — all of them extrinsic motivators.
By teaching connection to needs, people learn to be motivated by intrinsic motivators.
I don’t hug my child because “that’s what a good father does” or because I should! I hug my child because it meets my needs for love, connection, support — and because contributing to their needs also meets my needs!
This is a really different orientation to how to motivate ourselves and others.
Someone close to my family mentioned that my children’s “souls don’t seem as squished from school as other kids’.”
Because my children grew up in an environment that encouraged self-connection and inner clarity, they were not easily bossed around at school.
Their inner self-assurance at school was somewhat magnetic. It would manifest as other children wanting to sit next to them, or be their friend, and so on. During one parent-teacher conference the teacher said that the other boys would follow my son around, and that he was a good influence on them in class as well as during recess.
Able Navigation: Clear Requests and Strategy Negotiation
Growing up in a home that has integrated NVC means that there is less guessing about what someone else needs or wants, and there is less hinting and beating around the bush. This can save significant time and emotional energy!
There is a combination of emotional intelligence and cognitive skills that happens when someone grows up in a family culture in which clear requests are the norm.
On the one hand, there’s the emotional intelligence to go inside and clarify what I’m feeling, needing, and desiring. Then there’s a component involving the cognitive function of expressing what is alive for me as a clear, specific, doable, and present request.
I celebrate every time my children do this!
I never taught my children formal NVC or anything about the NVC model. They just grew up with it in their environment. I’m certain that they could not articulate most of the key differentiations in NVC off the top of their head — they would likely have to think about it and could give an educated guess. But they communicate clearly and effectively simply from the family culture in which they grew up.
Maturing into Self-Responsibility through Shared Power
NVC includes a paradigm of power-with, as opposed to power-over.
Even in situations in which someone does have structural power — as parents and bosses do — that power can still be exercised in a collaborative, mutually empowering way.
For example, a parent has a lot of discretion about how much they include their children in discussions and decisions.
I do not recommend negotiating everything with a three year-old! Most 12-year-olds, however, have a lot more capacity to start to think critically and intentionally about their choices and the resulting consequences.
One gigantic pitfall of parenting is when parents, usually unconsciously, try to live their own unrealized dreams through their children! For example, my mother always wished for and never was given dance lessons. Who got dance lessons? My sister!
It’s natural to want to provide for our children the things around which we experienced lack or deprivation. I’m talking about something a little different: I’m referring to loving my own dreams, goals, and aspirations as fulfilled (usually in my imagination) by my child.
Precisely because there is this tendency for parents to try to live their unfulfilled yearnings through their children, I resolved to do it differently.
From the very moment my first child was born, I had a phrase in my mind that I repeated as you would a mantra: you are your own person, you are your own person, you are your own person. I did this to remind myself about parents’ tendencies to project their life-desires onto their children and try to manipulate or guide their life journey in order to fulfill the parent’s idea of what is best or desirable.
So instead of thinking that I knew this person and having a sense of certainty that I knew what was best for them — I got curious!
Who are you? And how can I create the conditions for you to unfold naturally into your full potential?
Notice: it’s not “I want you to get good grades and get a good job.” It’s: I want you to get to be fully you and lead a fulfilling life of learning, growing, and getting to be of service.
Shared power has meant allowing them to have more and more of a voice in the decisions that affect them. Of course it’s tricky to know how much autonomy a child can handle at any given stage. As parents we do our best.
What’s important here is the orientation! Instead of exercising my power over you — having you do my bidding and claiming the right to call all the shots — I exercise power-with. I use my power only to protect, guide, or empower you — not to dominate or control.
My perspective is that through experiencing shared power children learn to wield that power more responsibly at a younger age!
When I have a relationship of power-with with my child, their self-esteem, positive self-regard, experience of being capable, self-confidence, feeling self-assured — are all supported much more than if I exercised my power over my child by bossing them around and ordering them to do things.
How does this look in real life?
I went through many moments of disappointment when I would ask my son for help in the yard, for example, reassuring him that he had choice — that it was indeed a request and not a demand — and he would say no. Most of the time that was not easy for me. And instead of making him wrong or blaming him I got to do my part of mourning my unmet needs. After all, NVC has taught me that anytime someone says no to one thing it’s because they are saying yes to something else. And so I got to also empathize with the possibility that there was something even more life-enriching for him that he was saying yes to.
The alternative would be to say you have to, and then to have him do it dragging his feet — and now the relationship is suffering because of the resentment he feels because I “forced him.”
Now when he says yes — or asks me on his own if he can help — it’s coming from a place in him that is 100% willing. I know he is doing it happily and will not resent me for it later.
Sharing power means that I treat my children with a level of respect that seems rare in the world.
One mistake parents, teachers, and caregivers make is thinking that children are incomplete adults. They’re not quite full human beings — and that’s how they are treated. My view, is that a one year-old is a complete human being at that age. If you start to see children as complete humans, at whatever age they’re at, you might start treating them with more regard!
And let’s not forget the insane standards we set for children! Adults are allowed to be grumpy and crabby — but not children! Children are constantly told to smile, to cheer up, to get over it, to grow up and be more mature. An adult can have a bad day and is allowed to be in a bad mood — but when a child is in a bad mood we often make them wrong for it!
This sense of respect, consideration, positive regard — that comes along with shared power — will change your relationship with your children!
Needs met for mattering
Quick anecdote:
I was driving and my son, 12 at the time, was in the back seat.
An intense curiosity arose in me:
“What percentage of the time would you say your needs are met in our relationship?”
He thought about it for a moment: “75 percent of the time… about three-quarters,” he answered.
“And what percentage of the time would you say that you trust that your needs matter?”
“100% of the time. No question.” Zero hesitation and no need to think about it.
Their needs are not going to be met in the way they prefer 100% of the time. That’s just life!
But 100% of the time they trust that their needs matter. And that has made all the difference!
Modeling Nervous System Regulation: Safety, Trust, and Care as the Foundation
The following story took place when my now-22-year-old daughter was three years old. I share it here because it’s a clear example of the kind of dynamic that has made for a close connection — before, during, and after the teenage years.
Back then, my home-office was in a small bedroom in the house. The only sound-proofing consisted of a thin, hollow-core door.
One day I was working, focused on a project that had an impending deadline.
I found myself distracted, hearing my three year-old daughter throwing a big screaming tantrum, coming from the dining room area.
I gave it a little time, thinking, “she’s with her mom. She’s fine. And mommy will get it under control in a moment.”
But it just kept going… and escalating!
I felt frustrated, exasperated, and irritated!
I charged out of my office, thinking to myself: “I need that girl to shut up and be quiet!”
I got within eight feet of my daughter and suddenly, something inside me clicked. I just stopped. I took a deep breath, and turned my attention inward.
I need her to shut up. “Okay, that’s on the surface,” I’m thinking to myself.
“So, if I got her to be quiet, then what would I have?”
What’s going on for me is that I’m stressed about this project. I’m needing a different level of support, and more quietness would really help.
As soon as I got connected with my feelings and needs, I had a shift! I need her to shut up was no longer a reality inside me. Instead, I was needing to focus — and more quietude would have been supportive. I needed a different quality of support!
I was no longer on a war path to get my child to be quiet. Instead, I was able to get present and curious!
Turning my attention inside, contacting my feelings and needs, and then getting present and curious — the whole thing took maybe five seconds. And it was that fast because of years of practice.
Now that I was present, I saw more clearly what was happening.
My three year-old daughter was sitting at the table, crying inconsolably, a bowl of blueberries with milk in front of her.
Her mother was in the kitchen, looking sad, frustrated, and worn out.
I approached mom first with an energy of care and tenderness. After a warm embrace, I checked in, “everything ok?”
It turned out that Mom had given our daughter a bowl of blueberries with milk, which the little one insisted on carrying herself from the kitchen to the table. Mom had warned her, “pay attention! If any fall on the floor I’m not getting you any more!”… and a few blueberries did fall out of the bowl and onto the floor.
And in my daughter’s three year-old mind this shattered the perfection of this divine bowl of blueberries! She wanted mom to get a few more out of the freezer to make the world right again, but mom said no.
I gave empathy to my wife, in silence, just through my eyes and body language.
Then I went to console the little one. “Aww! Some blueberries fell! So sad!” After helping her not feel so alone in her sadness and disappointment, I asked, “If I get you three more blueberries out of the freezer, will that help?”
She said “yeah!”
After another brief interaction with mom, confirming that it worked for her for me to move forward with my strategy, I got our child three more blueberries.
The crying stopped, the tantrum stopped, the kicking stopped… and it didn’t happen by coming from the energy of she has to shut up.
A durable and positive shift happened because I went for connection, starting with self-connection. And then inquiring: “What can we do here that would meet all of our needs?”
Self-empathy allowed me have that kind of shift.
In the long run, if I didn’t have these skills, I might have a very different relationship with my children, up to and including the teenage years and beyond!
How I treated them when they were younger would certainly show up when they’re older! If I had acted out based on she needs to shut up they might, to this day, see me as an irritable ogre — rather than someone who is willing to self-connect, slow down, and prioritize connection in service of a win-win.
The specific challenges teens face today
Teenagers today face difficulties and risks without precedent — in addition to many of the same challenges past generations have encountered.
If you are the parent of a teenager, or will be, there is value in being aware of these because you cannot prepare for, forestall, or effectively manage or navigate things outside of your awareness.
The following list is not intended to be complete or comprehensive. It is an overview and perhaps a starting point.
A crisis of meaning and purpose plus three essential questions to ask
Among the scarcest resources in this day and age are meaning and purpose.
We have collectively bought into the idea that more things will make us happier — and that is true only to a point. At the levels of survival, subsistence, and basic comforts there is a correlation between more stuff and fulfillment.
Societally we have conflated standard of living with quality of life that we have forgotten that they are actually different things!
Under this arrangement people are expected to consume more and more — which sometimes keeps us locked in to work-and-spend cycles.
Our economic system treats nature as a place to extract resources, a place to dump our waste, as an inconvenience, or something to conquer!
Once people achieve what society told them would make them happy, they are still not happy! But people perpetuate the cycle, showing off on social media as if these things did provide lasting fulfillment.
So everyone else just jumps on the more-is-better train.
But at some point we missed the connection between the consumer culture, the loss of habitat for other species, climate change — and so many other societal ills and ailments!
The prescribed life of go-to-school, get-good-grades, get-a-good-job, buy-a-house, have-kids — has left people empty, and disconnected from themselves and from a sense of community.
Amid the loneliness epidemic we can still see each other tomorrow at the office and talk about the show we watched on one of too many streaming services.
When teenagers look at adults — the rushing, the stress, the lack of presence, the numbing out, the lack of self-awareness, the entitlement, how utterly adrift we are politically — it’s no wonder most of them want nothing to do with it!
Largely, this lack of meaning and purpose parallels the fact that we don’t have a collective story that binds us together and gives us a reason to exist. At least not a fulfilling one!
If the only future we can imagine is the barren, post-apocalyptic hell that Hollywood has fed us in movies like Mad Max — then we risk bringing that future into reality, consciously or unconsciously.
We need better stories about who we are, what is possible, what the good life consists of, and about our interconnectedness with each other and all of life. The novel The Fifth Sacred Thing by Starhawk and many elements of the Avatar movies give us glimpses of what might be possible.
The answers we get depend on the questions we’re asking! Here are some valuable questions to ponder that could help us turn around the current crisis of meaning and purpose.
Three key questions for positive change
The first two questions come from Marshall Rosenberg, developer of NVC, and the last one comes from philosopher Ken Wilber.
These are questions we must ask if we are to reorient at the deepest levels to meaning, purpose, and fulfillment: who are we, what is the good life, and, what is our shared destiny on this planet?
1) Who are we?
Are we merely consumers, destined to speed up the ecosystem-to-landfill conveyor belt? Is our destiny to be merely pawns in a state-sponsored corporate for-profit game?
Is your life worth more than nine-to-five-‘till-you-die?
Are we merely citizens — armed with the rights to remain silent and to refuse to vote?
What identity have we reduced ourselves to?
Are our flesh and bones not the same stuff of exploding stars? And who would you be if that were true?
2) What is the good life?
Economics 101 has given us the wonderful “law of diminishing returns” which can be explained simply thus: eat one ice cream cone, it tastes great! Eat two, and the second one is not as fulfilling as the first one. Eat three, one after the other, and the enjoyment-per-cone continues to drop. Eat ten ice cream cones in rapid succession, and you are throwing up.
It’s the same with consumer goods, except we hardly ever notice the peak of fulfillment, which is called ENOUGH!
What did you learn about “the good life” from TV? How about from school or from your parents?
I remember as a child seeing a photo in a magazine, of someone who looked quite elegant, floating in a swimming pool on a small inflatable raft, hat over their face, drink in hand. Is that the good life? It is not for me to say what the good life is for you, but this version would get boring for me after about five minutes!
What is the good life?
Is it going on safari and killing big, beautiful animals? Is it being busy all the time, barely able to be present with your feelings and needs, let alone other people?
How much less fulfilling is a simple, nutritious home-cooked meal compared to an expensive dinner at a fancy restaurant?
Our society’s current answers to these two questions — who are we? and, what is the good life? — are at the root of what is destroying life-support systems on the planet. We are impoverishing the future simply as a result of living out the stories about who we think we are and what we think the good life is.
3) What is our shared destiny on this planet?
Simply asking the question this way brings up the point that there is no Planet B and that we are all, quite literally, in the same boat.
If who we are is inherently selfish, and if what the good life consists of is endless accumulation — those stories by themselves set the stage for a future few of us want.
This is why imagination is an act of courage! It takes a lot to imagine new and more positive outcomes!
This crisis of meaning and purpose is only one of the many challenges teens face today. To me, it seems to be a fundamental one.
If these questions are new to you, or if they are a lot to ponder, I leave you with the words of Rainer Marie Rilke, who wrote:
“…have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”
— Rainer Maria Rilke, 1903, in Letters to a Young Poet
An outdated educational system
Our outdated approach to education goes hand in hand with the lack of meaning and purpose in society.
Historically, the educational system was created at a time when we needed more compliant workers for factories.
To this day, rote memorization is taught more than research skills.
My particular experience of schooling was that it was more about obedience to authority than it was about the content they were teaching.
And who is to blame young people for being disillusioned with school? It is not their fault that formal education appears to be preparing them to participate in the same story that increasingly lacks meaning for people!
There are jobs today that won’t exist in 5 or 10 years, when there will be jobs no one has even thought of today. What exactly is the educational system preparing young people for?
There is good news in the educational space, including schooling based on NVC. I write about it in this article: Nonviolent Communication Skills and Education.
Cost of living and lack of affordability
If you follow the news and contemporary culture, this is one of the biggest topics in governance and politics.
Put aside that we live embedded in systems and structures that incentivize and reward the accumulation of capital, which in turn leads to the polarization of wealth, which puts a squeeze on affordability for everyone except the wealthy.
Because the field of economics doesn’t account for harm to the Earth, which is our real source of wealth and abundance, the long term trend is one in which material and economic abundance is likely to decline.
Peak oil is the idea that, because oil is a finite resource, we will one day hit the peak of production and after that every drop of oil will cost more. Some analysts say we have already passed the peak. What does this mean for affordability in practical terms?
Look around you and find one thing in your space that was not manufactured or transported using fossil fuels. Did you find one? Exactly! Our world is set up to depend on this one finite resource. As peak oil scenarios play out, oil itself may never actually run out, it’ll just get too expensive to remain affordable.
All of these are long-term trends. And in the short-term, we have a tariff policy I can’t make sense of, brittle supply chains, and a war that has made everything more expensive.
These are challenges faced by all of us! And, it seems like an especially worrisome set of challenges for young people today.
We are leaving the world to the next generations in worse shape. They are noticing, and they don’t like it.
A fractured and short attention-span media environment
The proliferation of smartphones, social media (with its attendant scrolling), and short-form video has created an entire generation that barely reads books, and has been conditioned to get bored quickly and have a short attention span.
Combine this with a completely broken information environment, and I can imagine it to be an extremely confusing time for a teenager today!
What do I mean by a broken information system?
The way we collectively perceive information, process that information, and collectively make decisions based on that information — that system is broken!
As a parent to one or more teenagers, how do you help a young person navigate this?
This context has forced me to become more media-savvy. I’ve talked to my children to help inoculate them from the things that might assail them online, so they can contextualize them, make sense of them, and respond rather than react to them.
A plethora of online dangers
A hazardous online environment is not something past generations had to contend with.
Child predators, porn, disinformation, endless meaningless entertainment… I need to transform my relationship with these things so that I can have frank conversations with my children and support them as best I can.
The Bottom Line
The bottom line for me is that I can’t put bubble-wrap around my child and protect them from everything. At some point, they need to face all these things!
My job is to ensure they can navigate all this effectively on their own!
If it ever was my goal to keep my child from feeling uncomfortable feelings, it is no longer! First, it’s an unrealistic goal, and second, it wouldn’t actually serve them!
Instead, I want them to know how to work with their feelings in a way that feels healthy and ends up being empowering.
By bringing NVC to my parenting I’m first showing that it’s ok to have uncomfortable feelings, and that it’s not something you have to navigate alone.
NVC contributes to something extremely important which in psychology is called distress tolerance. My research indicates that low distress tolerance is at the root of most of what people call mental illness. By helping us connect with our bodies, contact our feelings and needs, understand that judgments and criticism are tragic expressions of unmet needs, by developing friendships that include empathic support — all these things that are part of NVC help to increase your tolerance for inner distress.
And this is exactly the awareness and skills that I want for young people today!
Essential Principles for Present-Day Parenting
Based on my 22 years as a parent and over 30 years of studying NVC, here are some principles I consider essential for parenting children of any age:
Keep your short-term and long-term objectives in mind at the same time
This principle has helped me preserve the relationship with my children, and has helped them grow in ways that I want to see as a parent.
Example: Let’s say it’s time for my two year-old to brush their teeth, but they don’t want to. My short-term objective is that I want their teeth to be clean tonight. My long-term objective might be that they develop life-long good oral hygiene habits.
If I lose sight of my long-term objective, and only focus on the short-term outcome I’m wanting, then I run the risk of forcing the brushing and turning it into a traumatic experience for them — and that would be at the expense of my long-term objective.
Another example: my 16-year-old says she’ll be home by midnight. She arrives at 1 AM. My short term objectives are to know that she is safe and for her to learn the value of keeping agreements. My long-term objective is to have the kind of emotionally safe relationship that my child can come to me with anything that might be bothering them.
If I come down hard on my 16-year-old for being late and breaking an agreement, and I further blame her for my stress about it — I might be doing something to serve my short-term objective, but I am most likely undermining my long-term objective.
Autonomy vs interdependence
Autonomy — the ability to have agency and choice — is a universal human need. We all need autonomy.
However, at the level of strategies, autonomy is always relative because it is counterbalanced by what is needed to attend to another universal human need: interdependence.
These are the words Marshall Rosenberg used: autonomy and interdependence. Ken Wilber uses the words agency and communion.
These map directly onto rights and responsibilities.
I want to support my children’s autonomy and choice. I also want to support my children’s awareness that they do not live in isolation from others and that they affect others — starting in our family, but way beyond.
The principle here is to help my teenager be aware of both autonomy and interdependence. I want them to understand that autonomy is always relative because we affect each other and we are interdependent, and therefore have responsibilities toward one another. Even deeper, we show care toward others not because we should but because it also meets our needs.
Power-with vs power-over
As discussed above, the old paradigm of dominating and oppressing is based on relationships of power over others.
Nonviolent Communication rests on a paradigm of power with others.
Marshall Rosenberg often said that we are much more powerful with power-with.
This leads directly to the next principle which is infusing parenting with a paradigm or partnering with our children to solve problems or help them feel fulfilled in life.
Partnership Parenting
What does this mean?
For me it means that, rather than put my needs above or below my children’s needs, I’m operating from a place that everyone’s needs matter.
Rather than thinking it’s my job to boss my kids around or think that I know what is best for them, I include them in the decisions that affect them — in an age-appropriate way! (An 18 year-old has capacities and perspectives that a 12 year-old does not, and the 12 year-old has capacities that a 4 year-old does not.)
This brings up a distinction I learned from Marshall Rosenberg: respect for authority versus fear of authority.
I might look up to someone because of their knowledge or life experience, and that would mean that I have respect for their authority in a particular subject area. When I obey authority out of fear of being punished in some way, then I may not know the underlying needs for doing something. I’m simply being motivated by an energy we are both likely to regret in the long term.
In partnership parenting I don’t have to have all the answers! And I’m willing to partner with my child to figure it out.
The alternative is a relationship in which they will ultimately resent me because of the impact of how I wielded the power differential between us.
There is another analogy here: permissiveness vs life-serving boundaries. Remember that NVC is not about permissiveness! Instead, NVC allows you to set boundaries, firmly and with care, as strategies intended to contribute to needs.
Punishment vs consequences
Punishment is imposed by someone who has more power and inflicted one someone with less power.
Consequences, on the other hand, can be co-created.
So when I make an agreement with my teenager, we also explore the what if’s.
Me to my teenage daughter:
What time will you be home?
Her:
I can be back by midnight.
Me:
OK. And what happens if you’re not?
Her:
You take my phone away for a week.
Me:
That would be a really long time for you without your phone! Are you sure?
Her:
Yeah, you’re right. How about two days?
This is merely an example to illustrate the way it could go!
In this example, if she’s now late, we have this conversation to refer back to.
And then, some parent will say, “But punishment works! I told my kid to clean her room and threatened a punishment and she cleaned it!”
Let’s look at this more closely:
First of all, NVC is not for getting people to do what you want them to do! The purpose of NVC is to come to a quality of connectedness out of which we want to contribute to each other’s needs.
Secondly, I have two questions suggested by Marshall Rosenberg for all the parents and teachers who believe that punishment works:
Two important questions for parents, regarding punishment:
1) what do you want the other person to do?
2) what do you want their reasons to be for doing it?
Do you want your teenager to pick up their room because they value order, beauty, and cleanliness? Or do you want them to pick up their room because, if they don’t, mom or dad will freak out?
As you get clear which motivations are likely to be most life-serving, you help your child do the same.
NVC invites you to a reality in which we attend to needs without needing to ask who was bad and therefore deserves to be punished.
Try the following experiment: next time you make an agreement with your teen, ask the what-if questions and try to co-create consequences you can both agree to.
Raising disobedient children
When I first heard that this was the title of a book my friend and colleague is writing, I felt intrigued!
How to raise disobedient children is a title that will definitely catch people’s attention!
But what does it mean? I asked my friend.
She said, ask any parent: “do you want your child saying ‘yes boss!’ to what a teacher or anyone in authority tells them? Or would you prefer that your child think for themselves?”
Raising an obedient child means that you are raising a servant, raising a yes-person, someone who is too conflict-avoidant to think for themselves and who will simply obey blindly the commands from authority.
Raising disobedient children means raising children who listen to their own truth and make their own decisions from there.
Raising children with NVC means that they will be connected to their own needs and requests, and look inside rather than outside for their clarity, motivations, and fulfillment.
Marshall Rosenberg on Nonviolent Communication and Parenting
Marshall Rosenberg was also a parent, and he had some choice stories, phrases, and anecdotes.
I will leave you with a few here.
When talking with parents he would say, “I can’t make my children do anything — I can only make them wish they had!”
This speaks directly to the hopelessness of thinking that parenting means your children will do what you say.
With regard to parenting, Marshall Rosenberg would say that being a parent means spend one hour with my child, get two hours of empathy. Spend an hour with my child, get two hours of empathy. Spend an hour with my child, get two hours of empathy.
A lot of parents experience great relief when they hear this! They have been feeling alone in the challenges and the exhaustion, without realizing that most parents have experienced some version of this!
And lastly, Marshall Rosenberg’s definition of Hell on Earth: both being a parent and thinking that there is such a thing as a good parent!
Why is this his definition of Hell on Earth?
First of all, “good parent” is a subjective evaluation, not an observation!
If you told me that I was a good parent, my immediate response would be please tell me something I said or dead that you are calling being “a good parent.”
In other words, from an NVC perspective there is no such thing as “a good parent” or “a bad parent.” Instead, in a parenting role or function, there are actions that contribute to needs and others that don’t. That’s it.
If I buy into the story that there is such a good thing as a good parent, then if I don’t meet the threshold, whatever it is, then I am automatically a bad parent.
Good parent/bad parent creates a binary choice that is neither real nor helpful.
PuddleDancer Press Books on Nonviolent Communication and Parenting
PuddleDancer Press is the foremost proponent and publisher of books on Nonviolent Communication and parenting.
NVC has shown time and again that human beings are capable of arriving at mutually crafted solutions.
Because of the trust-building process involved, and the fact that the solutions include everyone’s buy-in, using NVC for parenting predictably gives us outcomes that meet a greater number of needs and are more durable.
Our books on parenting can help you:
- Create exceptional personal and professional relationships,
- Offer compassionate understanding to others,
- Know when and how to ask for that same understanding for yourself,
- Prevent and resolve misunderstandings and conflicts,
- Speak your truth in a clear, powerful way more likely to lead to harmony than conflict,
- Create mutual understanding without coercion.
Whether you are a long-time student — or are brand new to NVC — PuddleDancer Press has the educational resources, including the books on parenting, to help you grow your emotional intelligence, interpersonal skills, and communication prowess.
Check out our catalog of books on parenting… and give yourself the gift of Compassionate Communication!
