Love As Children Grow All these and more are legitimate needs of children, and yet, in this book, we are focusing on love. We believe a child’s need for love is basic to all other needs. Receiving love and learning to give love is the soil out of which all positive endeavors grow.
During the Early Years During infancy, a child does not distinguish between milk andtenderness, between solid food and love. Without food, a child will starve. Without love, a child will starve emotionally and can become impaired for life. A great deal of research indicates that the emotional foundation of life is laid in the first eighteen months of life, particularly in the mother/child relationship. The “food” for future emotional health is physical touch, kind words, and tender care.
As toddlers gain a greater sense of identity, they begin to separate themselves from their love objects. Although before this time the mother may have removed herself from the child’s vision, now the child has the ability to remove himself from persons he depends on. As he becomes more outgoing, he learns to love more actively. No longer a passive receiver of love, he now has the capacity to respond. However, this capacity is more one of possessing the loved one than of selfgiving. During the next several years, the child’s ability to express love increases, and if he continues to receive love, he will increasingly give love.Children need to reach appropriate emotional levels of maturity before they are able to learn effectively at their age level.
The foundation of love laid in the early years affects a child’s ability to learn and largely determines when she is able to grasp new information. Many children go to school ill-prepared to learn because they are not emotionally ready to learn. Children need to reach appropriate emotional levels of maturity before they are able to learn effectively at their age level. Simply sending a child to a better school or changing teachers is not the answer. We must make sure our children are emotionally ready to learn. (See chapter 9 for more on the relationship between love and learning.) During Adolescence Meeting a child’s need for love is not as simple as it may sound, and that’s especially true when adolescence begins.
The dangers of adolescence are threatening enough in themselves, but a child entering this time with an empty emotional tank is particularly vulnerable to the problems of the teenage years.
Children raised with conditional love learn how to love that way. By the time they reach adolescence, they often will manipulate and control their parents. When they are plea sed, they please their parents. When they are not pleased, they frustrate their parents. This leaves the parents paralyzed because they are waiting for their teens to please them, but these teenagers don’t know how to love unconditionally. This vicious cycle usually turns into anger, resentment, and acting out by the teenagers.
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