Unconditional love: what is it about, who needs it and where are its boundaries?

There are bad families, there are good families. In bad families, the child is ignored, scolded indiscriminately, breaks down almost anything, beaten … — but in good families they play, talk, explain, support, and not once, but always. What is the reason for such a different attitude of parents towards their own children? Some psychologists believe that it’s all about love, more precisely, the unconditional love of parents for children: if it exists, the family will be good, if not, it will be bad.

In fact, this is a gee simplification and a rather primitive myth. How parents behave towards their children is determined by a number of factors, and unconditional love in this series is not the most important point. Moreover, unconditional love does not always help in the matter of education: it is often the unconditional love of a mother that spoils children, turning them into little tyrants.

It’s necessary to understand.

The main word in the formula of unconditional parental love is the word «always». To love unconditionally means to love a child always, under any conditions, and not just when you want. To love unconditionally means to take care of him always, and not when it is convenient for us and despite our sometimes bad mood. To love unconditionally means to support a child under any circumstances, including despite his once bad behavior. Children can be difficult, children can be uncomfortable, but they still need to be loved!

The manifestation of unconditional love in the first year of life is especially important. During this period, the child should physically feel that his mother is next to him, that you can cuddle up to her, that she is warm, soft, kind. The more attention a child under one year of age receives, the more likely it is to develop normally. At this time, children practically do not manipulate (or in very rare cases). If the child is crying, you just need to listen to the cry and see what he wants. At this time, you do not need to be angry either with the child or with yourself. The calmer mom is, the better.

But one unconditional love will never replace mind and experience. An inept loving mother can easily bring up a whim, after which she will suffer herself day after day and sooner or later she will begin to break down on the child. Mom needs not only love, but also knowledge, including knowledge of how to relate to the crying of a child and how to respond to his pranks.

For example, a child is traveling in a stroller, his mother gives him a toy, and he takes this toy and throws it away. Not because he doesn’t like the toy, but because he likes to throw it! Any mother will come, bend down and give the toy to the child again. What will the child do? That’s right, throw the toy out again. And if you don’t give him a toy again, he will start yelling. And how to be? In such a situation, a well-mannered mother does not freak out because she never freaks out, a loving mother does not yell at a child because she loves the child anyway, and a smart mother begins to alternate positive and negative reinforcement so that the child does not learn problematic habits. Unconditional love must be complemented by good breeding and intelligence.

And the most important thing is that our children need not only our love, they also need our exactingness. Moreover, if unconditional love is more important in the early stages of a child’s development, then the older the child, the more demanding becomes. The child must understand that he not only has the right, but he also must: he has the right to play, but he must clean up the toys after himself. He has the right to play his own way, but he has no right to hit other children. And when he and his mother go out onto the roadway, he must hold on to his mother’s hand.

And this is where the problems begin with unconditional love. It is easy to say that it is the combination of soft, unconditional love and exactingness that creates the best conditions for the development of a young personality. The difficulty is that parental exactingness opposes and contradicts it in many situations. The easiest way to see this is on the difference between the male and female approach to raising a child.

The concept of unconditional love is usually close to women and not so close to men. It is clear that all men and women are different, but the statement is statistically reliable: a woman is determined to love a child as he is; the man demands that the child «corresponds to what it should.» Man’s love is demanding. If a man himself has high self-esteem and loves his child, he sets a high bar for him in advance: “It’s not just anyone who grows, but my son!”. A man is ready to react harshly if the child does not obey him, and will forgive him no sooner than the situation is corrected.

But women tend to have different views. It is often not so important for a woman whether her children will be perfect and meet some high criteria (after all, these criteria are not hers, but her children, relatives); it is more important for a woman that “God forbid nothing happens” to them. Of course, a woman will be upset if her children turn out to be much worse than others, but a woman will not rest against her horn for the sake of the “quality” and “perfection” of her children: “Healthy, normal, no worse than others — and thank God!” To strain a child with demands, all the more seriously and methodically — no, this is contrary to female nature. A woman does not like to be tough, she always wants «for good.» She is more often ready to forgive, closer to her: “A child has one duty — to be a child!” and “The child doesn’t owe anything to anyone!”, often with a controversial addition. The child is always right.

The contradiction of approaches is sometimes serious, but not everything is so fatal. With a closer look, intelligent exactingness does not at all contradict love, but is one of its manifestations. The exactingness of caring parents to the child is one of the languages ​​of their love. And if a father demands that his son study normally at school, go in for sports and stop playing computer games at night, then this is just a manifestation of his love for his son. His son is not indifferent to him, and he strains both himself and his son in order to ensure that his son has a worthy future. For the son to grow into a man.

Demanding for a child is also one of the languages ​​of parental love.

Can parents who profess unconditional love punish their children? The answer to this question is extremely important, because one thing is an internal prohibition to punish the innocent, another thing is the prohibition to punish the guilty. The experience of the best educators shows that with proper upbringing, a child is brought up practically without punishment, he himself wants to learn, he himself wants to meet the expectations of the educator, while the same experience says that education is just as impossible without punishment. If a child runs out onto a busy road and does not listen to you in a good way, you will resolve the issue differently, because you do not have a spare child. Not always and not all issues can be resolved only for good, especially since sometimes children quite consciously test their parents for strength.

Punishment is fine. Depriving you of sweets or hugs for a while is also okay, because hugs are not all love, but only one of its languages.

There is no need to be afraid that depriving a child of warm attention during punishment, you deprive him of love and inflict injury on him: the requirement of unconditional love is not about that.

Notice that unconditional love is mostly spoken of in relation to parents and children. Cultivating unconditional love in a relationship between a husband and wife is less often recommended: if your girlfriend has a husband who is a slacker, gu.e.yang and an alcoholic, you are unlikely to instruct her to run to the store for him with even more love. This is where unconditional love doesn’t work. Similarly, if you have a child who is a slacker, gooey and a gamer, treating him with unconditional love is just as stupid.

In fact, the punishment of a child does not contradict parental love at all, it’s just that parents, like their punishments, are very different. It is one thing when parents punish a child because they are used to letting their negativity out on him, and another case when they love a child and are forced to strain him in the name of his own interests. It is difficult to confuse, and the children themselves understand and feel this very well. Therefore, it is wrong to say that unconditional love is incompatible with punishment. If parents punish a child, this does not mean at all that they do not love the child. That is why they punish him because they love him!

When my children grew up, I asked one of my sons what he thought of the way I raised him. Sasha thought about it, then said: “I could have been stricter!”