Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of need most assuredly applies to understanding a child's development and their behaviors as they progress toward adulthood. Therapist working with families whose children exhibit negative behavior often find a link between behavior and the child’s sense of unmet needs.
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
Abraham Maslow’s A Theory of Human Motivation, centers on explaining the needs of a human being’s inner drives. The hierarchy is such that needs are arranged in a motivational manner that one’s higher needs are not met until lesser needs are satisfied.
Maslow states, “Man is a perpetually wanting animal. Also no need or drive can be treated as if it were isolated or discrete; every drive is related to the state of satisfaction or dissatisfaction or other drives.”
Physiological
Listed among the physiological needs to be fulfilled are homeostasis and appetite drives. The homeostasis drives are substances that flow through the blood stream: blood; salt, sugar, protein, and, acid-base balance substances. The appetite is described as the drive to acquire what the body lacks.
Maslow links negative behavior to multiple situations in the life of a child where physiological needs have not been met. In counseling many young children their negative behaviors surfaced because of their mistreatment by their parents. The mistreatment often involved parents withholding the basics of life, i.e. food and water, to penalize them for bad behavior.
The emotional trauma associated with the lack of these necessities is great but it’s even greater when it’s coupled with physical trauma as well.
Maslow states that the motivation for these needs is not the only determinate of behavior but it is a contributing factor.
Safety
Maslow delineates the affects a lack of safety can have on a child verses an adult. In general an adult through time learns to manage their reaction to possible threats to their safety. A child’s perspective of their world can change with the onset of an illness, volatile parental relationships and other uncertainties of daily living.
Frequent movement in a child’s world can include or involve either shifts or changes in authority figures through parental custody fights, a temporary stay in foster care and displacement due to economic stress in the home. A lack of safety, as viewed by a child, elicits thoughts of shame, blame and/or powerlessness where they have no influence in the matter.
The result in the lack of safety can lead to issues of attachment to others and irrational beliefs about life itself.
Love, Affection and Belonging
The key concept proposed in this need is the motivation to connect with others and sensing loss when the connection is ended or postponed. As with the motivational drives of the section on safety, the unfulfilled drives of love, affection and belonging can result in the exhibition of maladjustment behaviors.
One aspect of maladjustment in behavior is the inability or desire to establish an emotional connection to the significant people in their life. Trust in others is a key to establishing and maintaining relationships over time.
The environment in which love, affection and belonging is nurtured is the basis for attaching to the significant others in a child’s life, i.e. parents, siblings and extended family. Maladaptive emotional, social and moral attachments are affected by the socialization of negative relations such as, yelling, physical aggression and inappropriate discipline.
Esteem
Maslow describes the drive for esteem as a two-tiered pursuit. The first is a want of “strength, for achievement, for adequacy and for confidence in the face of the world.” The second motivation is obtaining the respect of others via acquiring a reputation and its subsequent prestige.
A child’s self esteem cannot have room for positive development when its existence is based on unmet motivational drives and negative input.
Self-actualization
The motivational drive is not met until or unless the individual, having met all other needs, realizes their purpose for which they exist. Maslow illustrated the point by mentioning a musician makes music, painters paint and poets write poems.
In counseling a client seldom moves forward with unresolved issues in their past. And while all counselors do not dwell on a client’s past as the central point of treatment, it is clear that one cannot move forward without an understanding of their past.
But how can we expect a child to mature into adulthood with streams of thoughts that inform them that they have not met the milestones in the history of their development. It’s hard to love others when one does not feel loved (even by one's self).
We cannot afford lofty thoughts of creativity when our sense of self has always been focused on survival and safety.
Reaching ones potential can only be perceived and achieved when we feel comfortable in the context
of our world around us. Is that world safe, are we together with those whom we love, can I reach beyond my goal of yesterday and be in a new place tomorrow?
Source:
Abraham Maslow. 1943. A Theory of Human Motivation. Psychological Review. Vol. 50(4). pp 370-396. Retrieved from www.psychclassics.yorku.ca/Maslow/motivation.htm
Samuel Means - Samuel Means is pastor and counselor who works toward helping families find the resources they need to build strong positive ...
Join the Conversation