Children’s love for parents

Dad teaches his three-year-old son: “Yura, you don’t love dad and mom, you love only yourself, sweets and chocolates!”. And Yura says, corrects dad: “More cookies!”

This is special — you can’t imagine!

​​​​​​​In good families, one can often observe the behavior of children, very similar to the love of children for their parents: even the smallest children are drawn to their parents, miss their parents, feel sorry for their parents … In fact, this is not love yet, this is her similarity, but it is from this that the true love of children for their parents can subsequently be formed.

The love of children for their parents is the care of children for their parents, when everything that is necessary is done and done with joy. This is the necessary physical and material assistance, and this is moral support, plus all the necessary signs of attention.

When children are born, they do not yet love their parents. At birth, children love their parents no more than you love eating apples. Your love for apples is manifested in the fact that you eat them with pleasure. The love of children for their parents is manifested in the fact that they enjoy using their parents.

There is no natural, biological basis for children’s love for their parents: there is an imprint, there is affection, but love for parents is not transmitted by genes.

In the parent-child relationship, biology works only in one direction — the parent tries to bring the child to an independent life. All. Biology does not look in the opposite direction at all; after the puberty of children, the biological functions of the parents are completed. Further relations between children and parents are no longer biological, they are already social and personal-psychological relations.

​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​There is a danger here: if you seriously believe that children love you simply by the right of your parenthood, you risk never teaching them to love. You run the risk of raising a child who only looks like a loving child. «You love your mommy, don’t you? Can you show me how much you love her? — this game of parents with a child is exciting for both parties and rather useful, but it alone will not give much.

If a child is not taught to be friends, to cooperate, and later to love, the child most often grows up as an ordinary egoist who cannot love anyone but himself.

And sometimes someone who doesn’t even love himself. If a girl loves only to eat cakes, slander with her friends and feel sorry for herself, so fat and useless to anyone — do you think she loves herself?

If a child does not know how to love, he can use his parents and sometime play the game “I don’t love you” with them: if, for example, it’s cool, profitable, or you can take revenge on them. The most common way to dislike parents is to make claims to them because their parents did not add something to them (children) ↑.

On the other hand, it is the child’s self-interest that can be used to make children try to establish good relations with their parents. Smart children from early childhood understand that it is profitable to treat their parents well. So there are fewer conflicts with them, they will resolve more and give more money. Sometimes it is necessary to explain this to some children directly: it is better to be friends with parents. Some children, growing up (and sometimes with the help of explanations from their parents themselves), understand that their attitude towards their parents is an example (model) for their own children, and if they want to be loved by their own children, they need to show an example of love for their own children. parents.

As a general rule, our children will treat us the way we treat our parents. Somewhere parents are kept in honor and prosperity until death, somewhere they are taken to the forest and left there, eaten somewhere, but in all cases the children know that this is also their fate in a few decades. When these children grow up and become parents themselves, they, simply taking care of themselves, their future, try to treat their parents well (sometimes with love) — they set an example for their children.

Children will love you — but it will be later when you teach them this. In order for children to quickly learn to love their parents, they just need to be taught this.

The ability to love is a certain height of personality. This height can be taken, this height must be taken, but exactly what cannot be done is to believe that the ability to love will fall on our children by itself, without our concern about it.

If you feed your child delicious porridge day after day, all your child will learn is to eat porridge.

The ability to love is a certain level of culture and understanding of what love is.

To a simple question, “Why do you think that you love your mother?” Children respond very differently. “Because I am very pleased when my mother kisses me!” (girl 8 years old). “Because I eat everything that my mother gives me” (answer of a 14-year-old teenager). Maybe it’s already a gift for mom to eat whatever she puts on her plate, but it seems like most kids never begin to understand that love is a giving relationship.

Love is the desire to give another person the best that you have.

Love is a real interest in another person, and not just when you need something from him.

Love is the joy of being able to take care of a loved one.

Whether children will have such a level of culture, whether children will begin to understand what love is, and whether parents will be worthy and interesting enough for children to love them, depends on the parents. It all starts with parents, with the time and effort they are willing to devote to their children. With the qualifications that they, as parents, have; from the way of life that they lead — and from those patterns of relationships that they demonstrate to their children with their lives. If it is natural for you to love and care for someone, if it gives you sincere joy, then you are already setting a wonderful example for your children.

Children begin to love their parents when their parents love to talk and play with them, when they kiss them in the morning and have quiet conversations in the evening, before going to bed, when the parents’ face lights up every time the child runs up to him, when the child understands that his parents are about him really care.

To realize that in fact the children do not quite love you, that the children only use you with pleasure is not very pleasant to realize, and most parents who have cute children prefer to believe that the children still love them. And in many respects they are right: no matter what biologists say, it is worth believing in the love of children for their parents, at least for pedagogical reasons.

When parents believe in it, children begin to believe in it more easily. And love in many ways begins with faith. The love of children for their parents, at least in the beginning, is rather learned behavior, which is formed according to all the laws of the formation of learned behavior: an easy start, suggestions, profile activities, reinforcement of core activities, suggestions again … — and the result of suggestions is faith.

The child is neither deaf nor blind. He hears and sees that everyone has mothers, that mother is always good, that mother knows everything, knows everything, that mother must be loved, that there is nothing more precious than mother, that own mother is sacred and similar pedagogical suggestions. This is how the socially accepted behavior of a good child in relation to “beloved parents” is formed. Interestingly, under favorable circumstances, this eventually turns into love for parents. External activity is internalized into internal activity. But — it takes time. And the right suggestions.

Children begin to love their parents when they begin to believe that they love their parents. And faith comes along with suggestions, along with reinforcements for the caring activity of children, along with the interpretation of their actions as manifestations of love.

Mom has a birthday, my daughter climbed the Internet for an hour, found a beautiful picture for a postcard to her mother. In this, you can only see that the daughter loves to surf the Internet, or you can thank the daughter for being so attentive and caring.

In a situation where you can both reproach and thank for what you have done, wise parents are usually in a hurry to thank and are not in a hurry to criticize.

I came home, I ask my daughter: “Darling, feed me, please!” She takes a plate, throws buckwheat into it, puts it in the microwave, turns it on, runs away. — Well, call it dinner … But instead of being angry that they didn’t do everything for you and didn’t set the table, find an opportunity to thank for what was done. Praise in front of my mother: “And today the little housewife fed me, she is caring, all in you!” And in order to make such positive translations, parents themselves must believe that their children love them. It is always easier, inwardly easier, to raise children when parents believe that their children love them. Raising children is not an easy job, sometimes hard, but if parents believe that their children love them, everything goes easier.

In order for children to begin to love their parents, children must learn to care for many other people.

Parents who know how to love themselves make sure that their children know how to love. And they make sure that children love them too — not because they terribly need the love of their children (such parents can be completely self-sufficient people), but because their children should be loving people, they should be able to love. And they teach them love, teach them to love — and the love of home flowers and forest plants, the love of pets, and the love of grandparents, and the love of parents (to themselves).

It is usually more convenient when mom teaches children to love dad, and dad teaches children to love mom.

Some children are lucky enough to grow up so that they themselves understand the need to learn to love. And even if their parents did not specifically teach them to love and did not give them an appropriate example, such children begin to love both their parents and other worthy elderly people, considering this their duty — not a heavy burden, but a worthy and joyful duty.

And once the time comes when children become completely adults, and our parents become just like children. And then we need to take care of them.

Video from Yana Shchastya: interview with professor of psychology N.I. Kozlov

Topics of conversation: What kind of woman do you need to be in order to successfully marry? How many times do men get married? Why are there so few normal men? Childfree. Parenting. What is love? A story that couldn’t be better. Paying for the opportunity to be close to a beautiful woman.