Hello and welcome to the first installment of our new midweek series Five Minutes Smarter. The purpose of this series is to give a brief introduction into topics that adults have a hard time explaining and kids have a hard time understanding. For example, in the future we will be talking about difficult topics such as divorce, money, education, artificial intelligence, and more. We'll give a brief introduction to a difficult topic and let you parents take the discussion from there. As always, we continue to strive to remain family-friendly and apolitical. In this first episode, we are going to talk about the basic needs of humanity. As a lot of you know, in real life, I am a career teacher. And in my decades of teaching, I've answered a lot of questions, some of them easier to answer than others. And one question that gets asked every single year I've taught is when a student comes to me and says, Why is it so hard for me? My friends understand everything just fine. Why is it difficult for me? Well, there's a lot that goes into that answer. Aside from everyone's brains working differently, everyone also has different circumstances that they come to school with or that they start their learning with. There is a hierarchy of need. And when certain needs aren't met, it makes it really difficult to learn. Let me explain. In the early 1900s, there was a psychologist named Abraham Maslow, and his life's mission was to figure out what makes someone healthy. What does a person need to be healthy in their mind and their body? This mission led him to create Maslow's hierarchy of needs. A hierarchy is basically a way of ranking things, normally from essential, meaning you have to have it, to unimportant or non-essential. Think of it like Pokemon or Avengers. Some are more powerful and thus more important than others. Now, Maslow's hierarchy is organized like a pyramid, and at the base or the most important part, the part on which all health and happiness resides is physiological need. This is just a fancy way of saying the physical stuff. According to Maslow, in order for a person to learn and be healthy in their mind, there are certain physical non-negotiables for their body that must be met first. This includes things like food to eat, a safe place to sleep, clean water to drink, and a safe and clean place to go to the bathroom. These things are the absolute bare minimum it takes for a person to exist and survive. And according to psychologists, these are the most important things for life. The essentials, if you will. Now, on top of that base layer of the pyramid is several other layers. The next one up above the physical need is safety and security, or stability. It's nice to have a safe place to sleep, but if that place isn't consistent, it can affect the way your body and your mind handles things. As we go higher up the pyramid, we get to love and belonging. This is the middle of Maslow's hierarchy. This is having a parent or a family that loves you and you feel safe with. It's not until we get to the very tippy top of Maslow's pyramid that we get to things like self-esteem and self-expression, personality. In short, what Maslow's research found was that it's hard to know who you are if you don't have food, water, sleep, and safety. So why do I bring this up? Why is Maslow's hierarchy of need important to kids? Well, because your bodies are growing and fast. And there will be times when you find yourself cranky and hungry. And your emotions might not be coming from actual stress or anxiety or sadness, but from your need to fulfill the basics of Maslow's hierarchy. In short, if you are upset, you might just need a snack and a nap. I'm Mimi Fotz, and this has been Five Minutes Smarter with Hello from the Van.