What does love for children mean? Loving your child - what does it mean? Is it necessary to show feelings?

Do we love our children enough? Are we expressing our love adequately? Will we “spoil” them if we love them too much? Julia Gippenreiter answers the questions that most modern parents ask themselves.

Psychologies: Loving your child - what does it mean?

Julia Gippenreiter: This means satisfying one of his most important needs. Every person, regardless of age, needs to be loved, understood, recognized, respected, so that he feels needed. And a child without love simply cannot develop normally. And how he will perceive himself throughout his life - his self-esteem - largely depends on how satisfied his need for love is.

What does parental love give him, why is it important?

Yu. G.: A small child still does not know anything about himself; he sees himself as his loved ones see him. With every address to a child - a word, intonation, gesture, even silence - we tell him something about him. From repeated signs of approval, love and acceptance, the child develops the feeling “I am good”, and from signals of condemnation, displeasure, criticism - the feeling “there is something wrong with me”, “I am bad”. The child perceives punishment as the message “You are bad!”, criticism - “You can’t!”, inattention - “I don’t care about you” or even “I don’t love you”. Therefore, while caring about the child’s safety, his upbringing, and academic success, we must be aware of what message we are sending him now. The younger the child, the stronger the influence of the information he receives from us. Fortunately, with young children, parents are usually more affectionate and attentive. But as a child grows up, we strive more and more to “educate” him and often do not think about how much he needs our warmth, acceptance and approval. We just don't focus on how we speak to children. But they always understand us literally, and the tone in which the words are spoken is more important to them than the meaning. If the tone is harsh, angry, even simply strict, the child concludes: “They don’t like me,” “They don’t need me.”

Are children so unsure of our attitude towards them?

Yu. G.: Yes, not sure. They count any manifestations of our love, they have their own emotional accounting. They compare all the time: “My brother gave me a flower - my mother was happy, I gave it - I was less happy”, “My mother loves my dad more than me”, “The guests spilled tea, my mother said - nothing, but I spilled it - I was scolded”... They are very there are not enough external “signals” of love. But a positive attitude towards oneself is the basis of a person’s psychological survival. Therefore, the child is constantly looking for our love, fighting for it, looking for confirmation that he is good.

This question may seem more than strange to some, but thousands of people around the world still ask it - how to love your child? Why do parents think they don't love enough?

Why do children complain about their loneliness and feeling of uselessness? And is it okay to be childfree? There are many questions, and psychology has found answers to all of them to one degree or another.

How to reduce anxiety in a child? you will find on our website.

Love for children - what is it?

What does it mean to love a child? Today they talk and write a lot about unconditional love.

This is the value and ideal of time, in a sense, its philosophical characteristic. They say and write a lot, but do all parents understand what it is?

Unconditional love called complete acceptance of your loved one. This is not easy, it requires work on yourself, certain mental strength.

This means that your child is your main love, not because he diligently plays the violin, has beautiful brown eyes, or because he is the smartest in the class.

Unconditional love is complete acceptance of a person for who they are, simply because they are your person. In this case, this is complete acceptance of the child, because you gave birth to him.

This is your life's work: from a small seed to grow a personality. And you do not impose your vision of an ideal child on your own child, but accept your descendant in his real appearance - not the most ideal, not always able to do what you expect from him.

Painful childbirth or a difficult period in the first months of a child’s life could be a shock for a woman: and it is so strong that it does not allow her to rebuild herself, to realize the happiness of what happened.

If parents they don’t like an already grown-up child, the reasons may also be different. Perhaps they do not like one child in contrast to another - the first is smart, talented, cheerful. And the second one doesn’t have enough stars in the sky, he can’t put two words together, and he’s not the prettiest one.

But it's not about the child, it's about your high expectations. He is who he is, and he deserves your love simply by the fact of his birth: the very birth of a child is like a guarantee for him that he will be loved. Take the burden of your own hopes off a person who is simply growing, simply living his life.

Why do some parents don't love their children? The most common reason is that they were not loved, and this experience, this model migrated into their lives. It's hard to love when you don't know how. Many parents are infantile, although they themselves do not realize it.

The child interfered with their life plans: they blamed the innocent child for not graduating from university, not getting a good job, not living for themselves...

But it's more truthful: the child has knocked you out of his rut, and you didn’t want to put in the effort to go the other way. A huge number of parents received education with a child in their arms; he was their engine and motivator.

Husband or boyfriend does not want to have children

Then again, maybe he doesn't know what it's like to love.

Analyze what kind of relationships were there in his own family. Show him unobtrusively how good it feels for the child when dad pays attention to him.

Many men do not immediately realize the fact of paternity: but if it was the father who helped the baby take the first steps, if under the father’s guidance the child learned to hold a spoon and assemble a pyramid, it is rare that the father will not receive his dose of happiness and pride.

In men, in principle this feeling of love for children is not so developed- this refers to that female desire to smile at a baby on the street, to pat an unfamiliar child on the head.

Many men experience the tenderness of a child for the first time only when they have their own.

A labeling a young guy as a child-hater is simply stupid- although if he violently expresses his negativity, there is reason to think about it.

These are neurotic problems that may indicate that a person, in principle, does not know how to love, he is focused on himself and a stranger is not valuable to him.

Why don't fathers love their children? And there are many reasons: for example, the child is unwanted. This happens if a child becomes a reason for marriage. Sometimes a parent seems to lose love for a child when they divorce their mother.

Remember that love is also gift, talent, work, effort. Not all people grow up; many live and literally wallow in their immaturity and unwillingness to be responsible not only for someone else’s life, but even for their own life.

Is it necessary to show feelings?

Trite - but that's what they were born for.

In order for a person to grow up healthy, and not a neurotic with a bunch of problems, he needs experience in love. He will build many things in the future on the foundation laid in childhood.

Love feeds, it gives the child self-confidence, determines the very essence of its existence.

And it is expressed not in the high cost of toys and the coolness of organizing a child’s birthday, but in daily attention - the most precious thing you can give him is your time. As it has been wisely noted: to raise a child well, spend less money on him, but more time.

Childfree, pregnancy: pros and cons. Psychology:

Unloved children - consequences

The worst consequence- this is what they carry with them throughout life.

This unloved child will feel guilty: this feeling pushes one to aggression, another to the world as a whole, a third to the desire to prove something about himself to everyone all his life.

In a word, growing neurotic A person who spends his life tilting at windmills will deny himself happiness.

Unloved children - causes and consequences:

If you yourself were not loved as a child, this does not mean that you will not learn. Try to change your usual, stereotyped attitude towards things. The main thing is to want change.

What to do if your child is annoying?

Start with the fact that this is your problem, not the child's. He is who he is.

He has little life experience to change to please people.

Identify within yourself specifically what you don’t like. Think about whether this can be done and, finally, whether it should be done. Do you want to customize it for yourself? Are you sure this will be good for him?

Trust him - listen at least once without interrupting, without lecturing. If heart-to-heart conversations are not practiced in your family, this is already a big omission on your part as a parent.

Look at your child - this is your creation, it is exactly 50% of you and 50% of the person you once loved very much.

He didn't ask to be born- you promised to love him, because you gave birth to him. Don't you want to love what was created for you? You may have problems with self-esteem and self-perception.

How to treat obsessive movement syndrome in a child? find out right now.

How to love a child correctly? Find out from the video:

How to accept him as he is?

You got a little man absolutely helpless and lifeless without an adult nearby. You taught him to walk, eat, talk, read, you gave him the whole world.

Where is the point where you stopped? When you exhaled and said - well, that's enough, now you're on your own. Why did this happen?

Even at twelve he is just a child. He has learned to be arrogant and is doing worse than his friend's son. He is awkward, doesn’t want to read books and sits on his tablet for hours. But here’s an amazing thing: there are no children who don’t need anything.

There are no children who do not want to learn - knowledge is the basic need of a child at the physiological level, the key to survival. And he has his head buried in his tablet and doesn’t want to communicate with you, not because he’s such an adult and made a choice, they say, I’m that kind of person, I don’t need anyone or anything, you all go...

He simply does not know how to otherwise indicate that he is: lonely, they don’t hear him, they are not sincerely interested in him, etc. He is still too young to bear his pain. But you are old enough to understand your child.

Don't give up- work. The main thing is to want to help him and not be afraid to demonstrate your love. All people on earth need it, and a twelve-year-old teenager too.

How to love an adopted baby?

This is a different problem: you need to prepare for this kind of parenting.

And when the child is already in the family, you understand that he is yours. Just the way it is. And you must learn to love him in the same way as your own. I love you for being with us.

One simple example. Belarusian actor Pavel Kharlanchuk is raising two adopted children and three relatives. The adopted boy did not fit into the family for a long time, and one day he said - take me to my grandmother, I don’t want to live with you.

Exhausted by a lack of understanding of the situation, the parents did just that: if you want, go ahead, it will be better for you. And having almost reached my grandmother, my father stopped the car. He saw the child's frightened eyes, the awareness of the inevitable and, in fact, the unwanted.

Pavel said to his son: “Well, what are you... Well, how are we going to give you up? We will not give you to anyone, because you are our son. We love you. We will not give our child to anyone." And he turned the car around. The wall was broken. The boy saw the love that every child on earth needs.

How to love an adopted child? Tips in this video:

What to do if your son or daughter doesn’t love your mother?

Probably, you have high expectations. The forms of manifestation of love are different - and your child still has to learn to guess the one you need.

Remember that children do not follow our words, but our examples. There is no point in educating: they will still repeat everything after us.

Are you sure that you are showing him your love?? Not care, feeding and filling the closet with things, but love?

Love for a child is also a physiological need. But it is difficult for him to show his love for his mother, who is too demanding, rude, and does not tolerate actions that do not follow his pattern.

And this will be difficult to do even for an adult. Maybe for you manifestations of his love -

Natalya Chernyshova
Essay “What does it mean to love children”

What means loving children? Some people think that loving a child is Means prepare him in advance for independent life, having a clear idea of ​​​​the kind of person they want to raise. These parents strive to combine their feelings for the child with reasonable demands, kindness and severity, respect for him and faith in his capabilities. Others are sure that loving a child means grooming and undead him, take care of and insure against all sorts of efforts - both physical and moral. These parents, unfortunately, do not want to understand that love for a child, although it is very important in his upbringing, is not the most important thing. They also do not want to understand that a strong, but unreasonable, blind feeling makes education a difficult task and often does not bring joy and happiness to either the child or themselves.

Having started my teaching career, I slightly rethought the concept of love, i.e.

love for children.

Let me start with the fact that every parent, bringing their child to kindergarten or school, hopes that they will come across a competent specialist who loves children. But this very concept of love for children is blurry, not clear... And if I now I'll ask: What meaning exactly do you put into this concept? What means loving children? Does he treat them well? Protect from trouble? Give your children all the best that is in you? To be gentle, kind, and ultimately, not indifferent to their problems? A does it all mean loving them? You can treat children well, but be indifferent and burnt out. And the teacher at the preschool educational institution already protects from troubles, since these are his direct responsibilities, moreover, he signs a mountain of documents about the safety of life and health of the students under his care. Or maybe love lies in the phrase "give away all that is good"? But what is good for one may not be very good for another... And if you are gentle and kind, then, sometimes, this can spoil the child much more than reasonable severity!

So what means loving a child? And how can you determine the love of an adult for children? I think one cannot but agree that love is the creator of all that is good, the creator of the sublime, the creator of the bright and strong, albeit a slightly peculiar creator. In the absence of love, an adult will never be able to be a good teacher, because he will never be able to find spiritual contact with a child, from which mutual understanding between the child and the adult is impossible. Without love, it is impossible to cultivate spiritual generosity in a child, the ability to be kind and sympathetic... But along with all this, love can play a cruel joke!

Why don’t we adults manage to form those character traits in a child that we would like to see in him? And I think the answer may be that parents tend (and this is not alien to educators, although to a lesser extent) idealize the child. Sometimes, love for children blinds to the point that an adult becomes like a blind person or a blindfolded person who is unable to see where "light", And where "shadow". And the inability to see flaws children makes adults pedagogically powerless.

So I fell into such a trap when I started working in a preschool institution. Yes I can say that I love children, but sometimes it plays a cruel joke on me.

And a child without love simply cannot develop normally. And how he will perceive himself throughout his life - his self-esteem - largely depends on how satisfied his need for love is.

P: What does parental love give him, why is it important?

Julia Gippenreiter: A small child still doesn’t know anything about himself, he sees himself the way his loved ones see him. With every address to a child - a word, intonation, gesture, even silence - we tell him something about him. From repeated signs of approval, love and acceptance, the child develops the feeling “I am good”, and from signals of condemnation, displeasure, criticism - the feeling “there is something wrong with me”, “I am bad”. The child perceives punishment as the message “You are bad!”, criticism - “You can’t!”, inattention - “I don’t care about you” or even “I don’t love you”. Therefore, while caring about the child’s safety, his upbringing, and academic success, we must be aware of what message we are sending him now. The younger the child, the stronger the influence of the information he receives from us. Fortunately, with young children, parents are usually more affectionate and attentive. But as a child grows up, we strive more and more to “educate” him and often do not think about how much he needs our warmth, acceptance and approval. We simply don't focus our attention on how we speak to children. But they always understand us literally, and the tone in which the words are spoken is more important to them than the meaning. If the tone is harsh, angry, even simply strict, the child concludes: “They don’t like me,” “They don’t need me.”

P: Are children so unsure of our attitude towards them?

Julia Gippenreiter: Yes, we’re not sure. They count any manifestations of our love, they have their own emotional accounting. They compare all the time: “My brother gave me a flower - my mother was happy, I gave it - I was less happy”, “My mother loves my dad more than me”, “The guests spilled tea, my mother said - nothing, but I spilled it - I was scolded”... They are very there are not enough external “signals” of love. But a positive attitude towards oneself is the basis of a person’s psychological survival. Therefore, the child is constantly looking for our love, fighting for it, looking for confirmation that he is good.

P: So how can parents express their love?

Julia Gippenreiter: Say more kind words: “I feel good with you”, “I’m glad to see you”, “It’s good that you came”, “I like how you…”, “I missed you”, “It’s so good” that we have you." Don’t forget to hug the child, caress him, touch him. American family therapist Virginia Satir recommended hugging a child several times a day, saying that every person needs four hugs simply for survival, and for good health, at least eight hugs a day are needed. Children have a need to “recharge” with our love: for example, a very small child who has just learned to walk returns to his mother, clings to her lap - and goes on to play and explore the world. And he is not afraid, because he is sure: his mother is here, not far away, she loves him and can protect him. With age, the forms of “recharging” change: family tea drinking, reading before bed, just talking, sitting together... These family rituals are necessary for a child to feel: we are together.

P: But what about education? Hug, praise - and not scold for bad deeds, not punish if he has done something?

Julia Gippenreiter: Unfortunately, many parents are sure that the main (if not the only) educational means are rewards and punishments, carrots and sticks. But education is not training, and parents do not exist to develop conditioned reflexes in children. First of all, you need to build a human relationship with your child. Before raising him, criticizing him or punishing him for actions that we don’t like, we need to learn to unconditionally accept the child. Mom tells her daughter: “If you are a good girl, I will love you.” But love is not a commodity or money. For psychological well-being, a child needs confidence that our love is not evaluative and does not depend on any conditions. We love him not “because he...” and not “only if he...”, but simply because he exists. Only against the background of unconditional acceptance is everything else possible: education, negotiation, establishing discipline, even punishing, if the need arises.

P: Can there be too much parental love?

Julia Gippenreiter: The question is what we understand by the word “love”. Janusz Korczak wrote: “It depends on the mother whether she will give the child a breast or an udder.” What does it mean to “give an udder”? This is precisely too much love, but one that is not good for you. After all, while raising a child, we help him become a human being, that is, we teach him to be guided not only by instincts and the desire to have fun. We cannot help but put restrictions on him that are necessary for his own good. But some parents find it difficult to do this - they are afraid of upsetting the child and are ready to satisfy any of his desires to make him feel good. However, in fact, they do not help him become a person, they “give him an udder”: they fill him with tenderness that is pleasant to them, cram food into him, protect him from cold, heat, heat, germs, bad influences, they get into his life with obsessive care and anxiety. When a child is not seen as a person with his own independent needs, deserving attention and respect, but is seen only as his blind devotion to him, as his animal feeling, this is not at all the love he needs. There is never too much true love for a child - responsible, respectful and friendly.

P: You talk about love for a child as a separate concept. How does this feeling differ from its other types, for example, from love between adults?

Julia Gippenreiter: Yes, love for a child is a very special kind of feeling. We cannot love him as we love a man or a woman, if only because we will never have complete possession of the child. In addition, we love him, knowing that sooner or later he will leave us to start his own family (and the very idea that our beloved husband or wife will leave us is unacceptable to us). We invest all our strength and resources into the child... to let him go into an independent life. Although there are many different sides to “adult” love: in addition to, for example, sexual, there is also a purely human one. Only in this sense, the relationship between a man and a woman and the relationship between a parent and a child are not fundamentally different: it is the same interaction between two people.

P: What is important about the human aspect of the relationship between an adult and a child?

Julia Gippenreiter: This is understanding, respect for the individual, trust. Some parents are afraid to open up and talk about how they feel. They avoid trusting relationships for fear of losing their authority. But when we express our feelings openly and sincerely, children see that we are real people too - and, in turn, begin to trust us. In my book I give an example, a letter from one mother, who, seeing that her son was missing his father, said: “I see that it’s hard for you without your dad, and it’s hard for me too. If you had a dad and I had a husband, life would be much more interesting for us.” The mother trusted the boy with her experience, both felt better and became closer. Have you become closer as a man and a woman? Of course not. How are mother and child? Also no. Who then? Just like two people. In fact, first of all, you need to be friends with your child. Yes, he is younger than us, he knows less, he has less experience, we are responsible for him. But he is our friend. Try closing your eyes and imagine that you are meeting your best friend. How do you show that you are happy with him, that he is dear and close to you? Now imagine that this is your child: he comes home from school, and you show that you are glad to see him. Introduced? Then try to actually do it. Don't be afraid that you will “ruin” it in these minutes. This is simply impossible.

We love our children catastrophically little. Parents are sometimes busy making money and are torn between two or three jobs. Therefore, there is simply no time left for your beloved child.

As a result, many mothers and fathers are left with a complex for life, due to the fact that they did not love and did not caress their children. So how to love a child?

Just recently, some 20-30 years ago, grandparents took an active part in raising children. Simply because the parents physically could not be at home. Today they are being replaced by nannies. Sometimes they are required not to constantly participate in the child’s emotional development, but to be compliant and able to obey the master’s regime.

Love for a child

Meanwhile, the baby experiences the need for emotional support and love from the first minutes of birth. And over time, this need becomes greater. Psychologists unanimously reiterate how important close physical and bodily contact with children is.

Basically, the figure who gives warmth and love is, of course, the mother. She will play a major role in the development of the baby up to the age of 5-6 years. But if the mother is separated from the child or the parent rushes to work in the morning, then the children develop an “orphan complex.” He becomes psychologically and emotionally disconnected from his peers. It will be difficult for such a child to create and maintain deep and lasting contacts with others. He will not be able to fully rely on another person.

The absence of a constant, rather than episodic, emotional connection leads to early neuroses in children, which in the future can spoil life, especially personal life. After all, it presupposes a high interest in a loved one and deep emotional intimacy.

How to love a child or 5 love languages

For example, when children are raised in orphanages and orphanages, where the staff simply does not physically have enough time and energy for all the children, they grow up insecure, with low self-esteem and a level of aspiration. And if since childhood the child has heard only reproaches, then it internalizes this model of behavior.

Parents' love for their child

How to show your child your love?

Parents should often carry their own children in their arms, hug, cuddle, kiss, bathe, stroke the back, and so on. By the way, psychologists advise placing those children who are deprived of all this on the first desks in schools. So that they have the opportunity to receive attention from teachers who will look at their notebooks, hug them by the shoulders and shake their hands.

How to accept your child?

By the way, the academic performance of each child depends, as we know, not only on intellectual abilities. It is important for the child to have confidence that they are accepted and loved.

There is another way to show your child that he is loved. With the help of a glance. Warm, loving, enthusiastic, adoring and happy. Such a look speaks more eloquently than any words that we love our child.

Mother's love for child

Within a couple of months after birth, each baby begins to focus his gaze on various objects, distinguish them, and also look through the eyes of a person, and not necessarily his mother.

Mom is the most important and vital person. The baby constantly reaches out to her, gets bored and cries when mom is not around for a long time. But most often in modern life it turns out that the role of mother is played by grandmothers, nannies and sometimes even fathers.

Some mothers run off to work, build a career, and at this time their husbands sit at home with the children. Moreover, each of them hopes that male severity does not prevent the stronger sex from being affectionate and nurturing children, looking at them with the adoration of their mother.

How to communicate with a child?

We must learn to look openly and directly into the eyes of our own children. Then the kids, in turn, will learn to confidently look other people in the eyes. One rather interesting pattern: the more often and the more openly children look adults in the eyes, the more often the kids are offered help and support.

Psychologists from Great Britain conducted a simple experiment in a children's hospital. It turns out that volunteers who help doctors in hospitals for free more often go into the wards of those sick children who are more sociable, spontaneous and open-minded.

Children feel everything, voice, intonation, irritability, good and evil. And you can visually see how sincerely and warmly the adult treats you. But an analysis of Russian reality showed that physical contacts and glances are most often used by mothers and fathers as a means of punishment.

The stern, angry, stern look of one of the parents seems to call on the child to stop and warn about physical punishment. However, we all also learned the saying “hitting means loving” back in childhood, when physical punishment, simply a belt, was perceived as the norm.

Janusz Korczak “How to Love a Child”: 10 Commandments for Parents

So how to love a child? To love means to stimulate his concern for loved ones and others. Love is an incentive for children to fearlessly discover and experience the world as it is, with all its sorrows and worries.

A good mother, instead of saying “Cuddle closer to me, baby, while I’m next to you, you shouldn’t be afraid of anything,” should say: “Baby, don’t be afraid to look into the eyes of others, friendly and openly, as I look into your eyes. And know that no matter what happens, you will always have the strength to cope with difficulties. There will always be someone nearby who will support you and someone who needs your support and help.”

Mother's love should help open the world to the child. A declaration of love can sound differently. For example, “I’m interested in what you do,” “you’re dear to me,” “how beautifully you did it,” “who drew this so wonderfully?”, “let’s hug.”

According to the editors of the site, it is important to establish a trusting relationship with your child, then you can understand each other.
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