Chitty Chats with Stacy

reflection 8 Basic Needs
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[00:00:00] Good morning, friends. Happy Monday to you. I have been thinking a lot about basic needs over the last few weeks, and it's been interesting how this conversation comes up. When I do a lot of training with educators and parents, one of the things we always check in about is, are your basic needs met? Are your students or children's basic needs met?

And sometimes Sometimes that question is met with a little bit of resistance because there's this whole component of, Oh, they, they won't behave that way. Basic needs aren't that important. It's they're fine. They can hold it together even if their basic needs aren't met. And I had this situation arise, uh, this weekend that I want to share with you in my own [00:01:00] personal life because I think it's meaningful.

So, First, let's chat about basic needs. So in my opinion, right, like basic needs are our food. Gotta have enough calories. And we want to remember that when we're stressed and our heart rate's racing and it's, you know, we're living in a stressed out state. Sometimes we can burn more calories. water is hugely important.

We know that dehydration can be linked to dysregulation, uh, emotional dysregulation. And I live in. High elevation and water is definitely survival. So, um, you know, for those, those of us that don't drink a lot of water, dehydration can be a huge player in emotional dysregulation. Sleep, sleep is huge. Uh, I think we are finally reaching a point in our research where we know that sleep impacts brain functioning.[00:02:00]

It impacts our cognitive abilities. So lack of sleep can also impact our brain functioning, our cognitive abilities, and our emotional dysregulation. So we have food, water, sleep. Social connection. Social connection is really important. Uh, we're created to be built in tribes or to live in tribes and if we don't get a lot of social connection, that basic need isn't met.

Now, I want to be clear, There is a different level of social connection for every person, right? introverts, uh, you have people who might be on the spectrum, autism spectrum, and might view social cues and social interactions a little bit differently. In the reality, we, we gotta have connection though, right?

So, connection. Uh, and being outside, vitamin D, that's important. Those are some basic needs. Uh, and movement. Movement is a basic need. So, some people call that extra. I [00:03:00] like to call it just movement, moving your body, uh, being active in some way, going for a walk, moving around the classroom, whatever that looks like.

So all of that to say, I was at a restaurant with my husband and my daughter this weekend. Uh, it was, it was for our breakfast, but it was at 1130 in the AM. So it was really more at lunchtime. No one had eaten, no one. We'd had a lazy Sunday morning and my husband and I were working through, uh, miscommunication.

And my daughter says to both of us, we're not having this conversation until after you two have eaten. You're starting to get snippy. I don't want you to make a scene. And we both looked at her like, what is happening over there? And she said, we know this conversation will go better after you've both eaten some food.

So let's just, you know, Give me your phones. Just give me your phones. We don't need to be looking at [00:04:00] calendars. Just give me your phones and We'll talk when we're done eating and I was like, huh? So you're gonna keep in mind. She's almost 17 She's been raised by me and her her father and I've been I've been driving home Emotional regulation since this little pumpkin was in utero.

So to have her Call out my husband and I, which by the way, we were, we were edgy, but there was no yelling. There was no screaming. It was just a miscommunication and working it out like all marriages have. And I appreciated. that she was able to articulate you two need to meet your basic needs and this will go much better.

So, uh, my husband said to her, thank you for being the adult here and thank you for weighing in. And she was great and was like, I don't actually have to be an adult. These are just the basics of how emotional regulation works. So let's eat and it'll all get better. So we continued on our morning. We had some food, it [00:05:00] was delicious.

And then we solved our problem pretty quickly, after we ate. And so I just want to drive home the point of the importance of basic needs and we don't want to minimize those things. Uh, when we take a walk, when we take a drink of water, when we move our bodies, when we're dysregulated, when we change scenery from one classroom to another or get outside for three seconds, really literally three seconds, we really contribute to our own emotional regulation in a much healthier way and it really helps our relationships.

So for whatever that's worth, hope you can find some value in that story. I love having children of my own who really understand these concepts because I think we're in a space in the world where this generation is very tuned into mental health and emotional wellbeing and they're not [00:06:00] settling for what previous generations have settled for and they definitely want to feel better.

They've also experienced some of the hardest, I want to say, I don't want to say hardest times in history, because that's not true. We know that the depression was hard. We know that Vietnam was hard. We know that there were certain times in history that were really hard. I also just think it's really important to acknowledge that these kids who went through COVID, it was hard.

Uh, it impacts their development, uh, significantly because they missed out on social connection for some for several years. And so basically Basic needs is a critical component. We have to look at our own basic needs and we need to look at those children in our lives. And so for whatever that's worth, I hope you have a wonderful Monday.

Feel free to tell me a story about your own emotional dysregulation due to basic needs. Can't wait to hear from you. Talk to you soon. [00:07:00]