The Listening Circle: Activity and FREE Cards

In our Nonviolent Communication lessons, we are working on Power 6: The Power to Listen. Wednesday's activity was extremely powerful and I wanted to share it. It's called The Listening Circle (page 140 of The No-Fault Classroom) and we used a deck of picture cards from The No-Fault Game.

I am here to tell you that this activity was amazing. The children did this with so much care, and they really opened up to each other. One child talked about being saved from a snake bite, another about the death of a pet. Remember that we have been practicing NVC for quite a while, and we started with scenarios from picture books so that the conversation wasn't getting too personal. Now they were ready to really dive in.

And during my turn I realized that it is such an incredible feeling to have people really listen to you. To have so many people, one after another, look at you and ask you what you need makes you feel like you really matter. When we did our debrief afterwards, one little boy described it as "magical" to "give the gift of caring" to other people.

The Listening Circle is part of strengthening Power 6 and we have spent a lot of time building our skills and leading up to this moment.

Power 1 - The Power to Get to Calm Alert

Power 2 - The Power to Know Your Needs

Power 3 - The Power to Meet Needs

Power 4 - The Power to Read Feelings

Power 5 - The Power to Observe

Power 6 - The Power to Listen

Each group sits in a circle on the floor or around a table. They spread out a deck of Needs Cards (yellow) in the space between them. Each card should be face up and everyone should be able to see and reach all of them. The Feelings Cards (red) are kept in a pile. The instructions are as follows:

"Player One is to tell a short story of something that happened that brought up feelings, then select and lay down the Feeling Cards for the feelings that came up.

Next, ask each student one at a time around the circle to take a turn guessing the need that was connected to the feelings. Ask them to both verbalize their guess (Were you needing ____________?) and also to pick up the corresponding Need Card from the center of the circle and place it in front of Player One.

After each student in the circle has had a turn to guess a need, Player One responds by saying which needs were or are most important in the situation they shared. Player One can also pick up new Need Cards from the center pool.

Play continues until each student has had a chance to tell their situation and have classmates guess their needs."

Allow five minutes for each child, so half an hour total for the group of 5. Thank you to Miss Lakota and Miss Flossie for coming to be extra adults!

Example:

When it was my turn, I gave the scenario of Zac not washing his dishes after his breakfast. Every day we have the same conversation about it, ie. why am I coming downstairs in the morning and finding dirty dishes on the kitchen table? I don't understand 1) why this is so difficult for him to do and 2) why it is bothering me so very much. I thought that having some clarity on why I was getting irritated would help us to have a new conversation about it, instead of repeating the same conversation over and over and over.

Zac is very on board with the NVC process and he did not mind this example being shared. It's an authentic frustration for us and bringing it to the group was actually trememdously helpful. I thought it might also be interesting for them to see a typical household situation from the parent point of view!

I laid down the Feelings Cards for tense, frustrated, and confused.

The children in my group took this scenario very seriously and listened with as much care as they did for one another. They laid down the following Needs Cards for what needs I might be having that were underneath those feelings. They were very insightful! They asked me

is your need to be able to trust that Zac will do what you ask?

do you have a need to be considered, to matter?
do you have a need for rest and relaxation?

is your need to be heard and understood?
is it learning and exploration, to discover why this keeps happening?
do you have a need to understand yourself and why this is aggravating you?

I hadn't even thought about Rest and Relaxation, but I decided that was probably the biggest need for me. I just didn't want to come downstairs and start my day and immediately have something added to my to-do list.

This listening process was so gentle and kind and the children really responded to it. They asked me if we could do it again and again!

If you want to do this activity at home, here is a set of FREE downloadable Feelings & Needs cards with the same images that we used in this exercise.