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Our Basic Human Needs

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All of us have basic needs. When our needs aren't being met, we instinctively set out to fill them. Because this is an instinctive act, we may not always be aware that our actions are designed to meet our needs, but the result is the same. This lesson is designed to help you understand what our basic needs are, how you (or your children) can learn to meet them in healthy ways and to discover how to know when your children's needs are not being met.

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

Herbert Maslow, put together a pyramid that shows us the different basic human needs that we all have. Each level of the pyramid is a foundation for the next, beginning with the bottom and working it's way towards the top. In order to successfully fill the needs of one level, the level before it has to be fully satisfied or you won't have the resources needed to fill the needs of the next level.

The levels are in order from bottom to top

  • Physical Needs: Food, clothing and shelter

  • Security Needs: Safety from anxiety and harm, both physical and emotional.

  • Social Needs: Acceptance and belonging, confidential relationship with someone, trusting and sharing with others.

  • Achievement Needs: confidence, self esteem, feeling needed.

  • Self Actualization: Satisfaction from achievement and self expression.

    Adapted from: A. Herbert Maslow as quoted by D. Bruce Gardener's Development in Early Childhood (New York: Harper and Row, 1964), p. 18.

    Physical needs are those that are necessary for sustaining life. These have to be met before the individual is able to expend energy working on other needs. If you don't have food to eat, then your energy is focused in the pursuit of food, not in developing a safe environment or in seeking social acceptance.

    Security needs are very important, especially in early development. Security needs include safety from tension, anxiety, and harm, both physical and emotional. When a small child is in a home where these needs are not being met, the results can be severe. Physically they can literally fail to thrive and become thin, sickly and even die. Emotionally, a child in an insecure environment can adopt serious defense mechanisms that will temporarily protect him from the environment, but can result in serious mental illness later in life. If a child is being neglected physically or emotionally, if he is being ridiculed, teased profusely or abused in any form, or is in the midst of constant tension (as with an alcoholic or abusive parent) his security needs are in jeopardy. A child's security needs should be fully in progress by the time they are six months old.

    If we have a child who claims not to "need" friends and shows signs of reclusiveness, it may be that he is not able to work on that level because his security needs have been damaged or are not met. In either case it is imperative that the parent be aware of this and focus energy on helping the child rebuild his security needs, rather than continue to ridicule the current maladaptive behaviors.

    Social Needs are those needs that cause us to seek acceptance from others. We all need to have a sense of belonging, to be loved, to have friends and to experience a confidential relationship with someone close to us. Teenagers are especially in need of having their social needs met and it is vital to their emotional development that they are allowed to do this. They need to seek out and form strong relationships with peers outside their home environment.

    Parents are sometimes threatened by this and attempt to restrict the teens peer activities. This, in most cases is a mistake and is generally an attempt on the part of the parent to prevent the child from "needing" someone other than the "needy" parent. Parents are often concerned that their child will learn new things from peers or engage in unhealthy activities if they are allowed to spend time with peers. The fact is that if a parent has done his/her job, the child will be able to handle the peer situations well. If the parent is insecure about the child's ability to handle outside influences, then the parent needs to work through their feelings (fears and insecurities) instead of hampering the child's development in an effort to reduce their own anxiety.

    Achievement needs is our way of creating situations in which we can feel important and of worth to others. Setting and accomplishing goals is a great way to fill this need. Doing service for others, and achieving small successes are another way to fill this need. Often when we have not fully met our basic-level needs such as social needs, we attempt to fill this need in unproductive and unhealthy ways. This is often manifested in lying about ones accomplishments, attempting to be seen as powerful or intimidating, or by controlling others as a way to convince ourselves that we are powerful and important.

    Self Actualization is the top of the pyramid. This can only be achieved when all the preceding needs have fully been met and maintained. Once they are met we are able to focus our energy outside of ourselves and find our own niche in life. We are able to gain deep satisfaction and joy from following the road we have chosen for ourselves. We experience inner peace and calmness and are seldom, if ever, troubled by external influences. We receive satisfaction from perfecting our skills and we are inclined to give back to the world and attempt to help others find learn how to fill their needs.

    Spiritual Needs are also an important human need. Throughout history it can be seen that spirituality has been a strong motivating aspect of human nature. Although not everyone has an established religion to which they affiliate, everyone has an inner sense of spirituality which plays a large role in how they choose to live their life. This inner spirituality is what helps us to create our value system, our sense of ethics and the morals by which we live. The need is filled when we give it it's proper placement in our life and allow it to be a motivating factor in how we choose to live.

    You Cannot Give what You Don't Have

    Remember Monty Hall in the game show Let's Make A Deal? Every show he would go out into the audience and ask people if they had certain objects. From one he might ask for a hard boiled egg, from another, yellow paper clips. If the people had what he requested, they would be rewarded and if not they missed out. In life we have a storehouse of "emotional" objects that we have acquired over the years. When we become parents, we give (in one way or another) these object to our children. If we have acquired patience, we are able to teach our children patience, if we have acquired poor communication skills, we in turn pass them on to our children.

    We are unable to give to our children (or others) the things we have not yet acquired for ourselves. Like the game show contestant, we are unable to give what is needed. If we want our children to be respectful to others, but we have not acquired nor utilized that skill we are not able to give that to them. "Do as I say, not as I do" has never been an effective parenting tool.

    Consequently, we must have a full reservoir of things that fill our basic needs in order to help fill our children's basic needs. We need to have a full reservoir of love, before we can give love to our children, We need to have a full reservoir of acceptance before we are able to show fill our child's needs for acceptance. It is our duty as parents to give to our children and to keep our reservoir well stocked so that we have something to give them.

    Filling our Reservoir

    Looking at our life situation and recognizing areas of need is the first step. If we are homeless or unable to provide food clothing or shelter, then that is where we need to begin. If it is a struggle to provide these things, but they are available, then you are more able to go onto the next level. The same is true for the higher needs.

    We can keep our reservoirs full by allowing ourselves to feel good about ourselves. I say "Allow ourselves" because many of us have ample opportunity to fill our reservoir, but we don't allow ourselves to take in compliments from others, or we don't take time to give to ourselves. When someone points out something about us that they admire or appreciate, we need to allow ourselves to take it in. Say "Thank You" and then internalize the compliment by acknowledging the truth of it.

    Sometimes we are too quick to minimize the efforts we put into things in an attempt to appear humble. But humility is NOT the act of minimizing ones self-worth. When someone says "wow you did a great job on the decorations," thank them, then allow yourself to look around at what you did and pat yourself on the back. Fill your bucket with the feeling of accomplishment.

    Just as we need to learn to take responsibility for the good things we do we also need to take responsibility for those things we've done that have contributed to a less than optimal outcome. We not only carry with us a reservoir of positive feelings, but we also have one that we fill with negative feelings. Our goal is to continually empty our negative reservoir and to fill our positive one. When we take responsibility for the negative contributions we have made, we no longer need to put them into our reservoir. Instead, we deal with it and choose not to feel bad about ourselves.

    The Side Effects of Not Having Our Needs Met

    Our children let us know when their basic human needs are not being met. Because they are young and unsophisticated in their attempts to fill their needs, they find extreme ways of going about filling them. This is often referred to as acting out, or misbehaving. Every time a child acts out, it is an attempt to fill their basic human needs.

    Kids bully their siblings because they are trying to fill the need to feel important either to themselves or to the parent. When the parent yells at them it is in a way supporting their feeling of being important. They might be subconsciously thinking, "Mom recognizes me, she is paying attention to me, therefore I must be important." Granted, this is an ineffective way of filling the need, and in the long run, the negative feelings they feel towards themselves defeats the purpose, but it may be the only way they have learned to fill that need.

    We need to recognize that an acting out child is a child in pain, one who is desperate to feel important, loved, accepted, or successful. If we can attend to the need instead of the behavior, we will not only extinguish the unacceptable behavior, but we will be enabling them to meet their own needs; to fill their own reservoir.

    You cannot lift another soul until you are standing on higher ground than they are.

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