This language is from the head. It is a way of mentally classifying people into varying shades of good and bad, right and wrong. Ultimately, it provokes defensiveness, resistance, and counterattack. It is a language of demands.

Life-Enriching Education: an education that prepares children to learn throughout their lives, relate well to others, and themselves, be creative, flexible, and venturesome, and have empathy not only for their immediate kin but for all of humankind.

Empathize with silence by listening for the feelings and needs behind it.

Tragically, one of the rarest commodities in our culture is empathy. People are hungry for empathy, They don't know how to ask for it.

When we listen for feelings and needs - we can see that people who seem like monsters are simply human beings whose language and behavior sometimes keep us from seeing their humanness.

I think that there is a problem with rewards and consequences because in the long run, they rarely work in the ways we hope. In fact, they are likely to backfire.

In NVC, no matter what words others may use to express themselves, we simply listen for their observations, feelings, needs, and requests.