NVR parenting resonated with me quickly. It just made sense. One of the first ideas that caught my attention was the focus on the unmet needs experienced by a lot of children who struggle to meet socially acceptable standards of behaviour. Peter Jakob talks about the unmet needs in this article from 2011. Peter identifies four unmet needs: the need for safety and protection, the need for belonging, the need for a sufficiently benign narrative of self, and the need for support to make progress developmentally. As a family we'd experienced various therapeutic interventions before arriving at NVR and the first three were, to one degree or another, embedded in the other approaches we'd experienced - but the central focus on developmental progress was new. It makes sense that we need to think about development when we're supporting children with emotional and behavioural difficulties becase a lot of unacceptable behaviour is about a skills gap - children don't sit still in class because for whatever reason they can't sit still; children have outbursts because they don't have better ways to manage those big feelings or because they can't access the thinking part of the brain at that point in time. But the focus on supporting development as part of NVR work is more than addressing the skills gaps that can lead to behavioural and emotional chellenges. It's about supporting children to reach their potential generally, so that children can live their best lives both now and as they grow up and move towards independence.