Children who hear that they are loved in many different ways are likely to find their own ways to say it to the people they love—all through their lives.
FROM THE SONG
There Are Many Ways to Say I Love You
There are many ways to say I love you.
There are many ways to say I care about you.
Many ways, many ways,
Many ways to say I love you.
There’s the singing way to say I love you.
There’s the singing something someone really likes to hear.
The singing way, the singing way,
The singing way to say I love you.
Cleaning up a room can say I love you.
Hanging up a coat before you’re asked to.
Drawing special pictures for the holidays
And making plays.
You’ll find many ways to say I love you.
You’ll find many ways to understand what love is.
Many ways, many ways,
Many ways to say I love you.
Singing, cleaning, drawing, being understanding,
Love you.
As a parent, day in and day out, you’re a nurturer, comforter, problem-solver, protector, limit-setter, and much more. In the safety of the family, you’re helping your child learn how to get along with others, how to deal with rules and limits, how to cooperate, compromise, and negotiate—all qualities that are essential for whatever relationships may be in your child’s future.
Every human being needs to be loved and needs to be able to love in return. That is what allows us to be human.
In their very early years, children learn easily from us parents. They look at us. They listen to us. They experience the care we offer them. Just as they take in the nourishment we give them, they take in our real qualities, too. Children seem to absorb a great deal of who their loving caretakers are. In fact, our children’s love for us parents is the reason they want to please us—and not displease us. Isn’t it amazing to realize that the real motivation for human beings behaving toward each other in pleasing ways begins in—and grows from—love experienced in infancy?
When we know care is there, life can seem well worth living, even with the ups and downs of our ever-changing world.
The very young baby is ready to receive all kinds of clues as to whether or not he should make the effort to live. And the clues come from the mothering person who takes care of him. The child who is tenderly cared for can, little by little, begin to participate in his own care.
At first, he begins by sucking hard enough so that he’ll get enough milk to keep alive. Later, he learns to feed himself and to care for other needs. He takes increasing responsibility for the care of his own body, growing slowly but steadily in the conviction that he is worth taking care of. And little by little that baby grows and takes over more and more of his own care with the support of family, neighbors, television friends, society—he becomes a caring person himself: one who has the capacity of being the available loving adult to the next generation.
At many times throughout their lives, children will feel the world has turned topsy-turvy. It’s not the ever-present smile that will help them feel secure. It’s knowing that love can hold many feelings, including sadness, and that they can count on the people they love to be with them until the world turns right side up again.
In the disappointment of a defeat, a child may seem to find little comfort in our saying, “But you really tried hard, and I’m proud of you.” It takes time to get over a disappointment. For those children who have learned to feel valued and loved by the people they love, these disappointments do pass.
For a child, moving through life within a family may be a little like being in an airplane: There may be a lot of rough weather outside, and the plane may shake around quite a bit, but inside, you’re safe. Sad, scared, and angry, perhaps, but within the special atmosphere of a loving family, even those feelings are safe. When a child learns to trust that there is a loving caregiver right there to help in rough times, he or she can weather most any storm—and ultimately be stronger for the experience.
When there is pain or sorrow in our children’s lives, as there is bound to be, there is often no way we can make it go away. Often, our quiet availability is just what children need, far more than they need our coaxings or cajolings or threats or punishments. Our reassuring presence may be enough to help them find inner resources of their own. When children can cope with hard times—drawing on whatever comfort they find from us and from themselves—their parents can be very proud indeed. That ability to cope may be one of the greatest abilities that parents can help their children acquire.
Disciplining a child includes making rules. I prefer to think of this parenting task as “setting limits.”
Providing a framework doesn’t take away children’s individuality. In fact, structure generally helps them to be more free because it provides boundaries. It’s like a fence that offers security for what can happen inside the enclosure.
It can be very frightening for a child not to have limits. Not only can the world outside be frightening, but the world inside, the world of feelings, can also be scary when you’re not sure you can manage those feelings by yourself.
We feed our children, and as we do so, we help them feed themselves. We keep them clean and warm, and we try to keep them healthy, until they learn to do those things for themselves, too.
In the same way, we provide our children with the limits they need until they learn to exercise self-discipline.
Limits need to be set and explained with care so that children don’t come to feel that we’re trying to restrict their capacity to fall in love with life.
While children certainly need to learn about rules and consequences, they also need the staunch support of grown-ups who help them believe they can make it through.
There’s probably no way we can keep our children from feeling sad or angry when they lose, any more than we can keep ourselves from feeling that way. What we can help them understand, though, is that though we appreciate them for what they do, we love them even more for who they are. We can let them know, too, that whether they win or lose, we will always be proud of them for doing the best they can.
Our deep sense of knowing that we are cared for is probably the most important thing we human beings have for coping with the perpetual changes in our bodies, in our lives, and in the world around us. We give that sense of being cared for to our children in the consistency of our care. As they experience the sometimes unsettling transitions of day to night, summer to winter, they come to trust that, even in the darkness and cold, there will be care until light and warmth return.
A friend told me about her daughter, Amy, who was angry with her one day. Amy had been sent to her room and, shortly afterward, a note appeared from under her door. It read, “I hate you, Mommy!” When Amy calmed down and came out from her room, she noticed that her mother had put the note on the counter. Turning the paper over, Amy wrote, “I love you, Mommy.” Then she added, “P.S. I will never hate you as much as I love you.”
That story reconfirms the words of our Neighborhood song, “It’s the people you like the most who can make you feel happiest, and maddest.” And what a message for us parents—even though we may not appreciate it at that moment—to know that our children’s momentary angry feelings won’t make their love go away. Children do come to understand that when we set limits and enforce them, we’re showing that we love them.
Even people who care deeply about each other can agree to disagree about some things.
One of the most essential ways of saying, “I love you” is by careful listening—listening with “the ear of the heart.”
Anger is a difficult feeling for most people—painful to feel and hard to express. It can help us and our children to remind ourselves that having angry feelings is a part of being human, whether we like it or not. It’s just a fact that lovable people get angry sometimes. We can’t expect our children never to be angry, any more than we can ask that of ourselves, but we can help them find healthy outlets for the anger that they feel—and help them know the good feeling that comes with self-control.
We all have our limits of patience and endurance, no matter what age we are, and that’s something children need to know is natural, human, and acceptable.
It seems to me that to love a child is to be outraged with that child at times—to care enough to be really angry. The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. I once heard a little boy say to someone, “You can’t make me mad. I don’t even like you.”
It takes thought and emotional energy to work through our own angry moments. If that’s what we’d like our children to learn, we’re going to have to make it clear to them that we value being able to stop ourselves from doing something that could hurt someone. Children will catch that message from us if we truly believe it’s important. And they’ll want to make it their own in order to become more like the people they love.
Adults have complex feelings toward children—even as children have complex feelings toward adults. When, for instance, one of our children does something dangerous despite our warnings and rules, we may be angry, frightened, frustrated, and disappointed all at once. It’s our love for our children that gives rise to these different feelings, but that’s not an easy relationship for young children to understand. In the heat of the moment, it’s not easy for us, either, to keep in mind.
At a time like that, our children are most likely to feel our anger, but even as we scold, we need to help them learn where the roots of that anger lie. Trying to be honest with ourselves and our children about what we think and feel helps us continue growing. Encouraging our children to be honest with us about what they think and feel helps them develop their capacity to love themselves and love others.
What children want is for you to talk with them and listen to them. They want your undivided attention. They want you to recognize that their story—the one they bring to your story—is important, too.
We need to try to show our children that we love and value them. By doing so, we can help them learn that there is much in the world to love and value as well … and that goes for the people in it, too.
A friend of ours found a way to give her four children the best gift of all. Each week when she does the shopping, she takes only one child. She doesn’t buy anything special for that child, but somewhere along the way, she makes sure to say something like, “I really like these times when it’s just the two of us together.” Young boys and girls don’t really want their mothers and fathers all to themselves all of the time, but they do long for the feeling of being best-loved and most beautiful and specially prized at least some of the time.
Children aren’t the only ones who hunger for individual attention. Friends need time alone together; so do husbands and wives; so do older parents and their grown children.
Here we are, all on this boat together, this floating planet … together. I feel blessed even in times of trouble. I wonder how human beings get that feeling? I guess it comes from a long line of people in our life who have, in one way or another, “sung” that song:
It’s you I like.
It’s not the things you wear.
It’s not the way you do your hair,
But it’s you I like.
The way you are right now,
The way down deep inside you,
Not the things that hide you,
Not your toys—they’re just beside you.
But it’s you I like.
Every part of you—
Your skin, your eyes, your feelings,
Whether old or new.
I hope that you’ll remember
Even when you’re feeling blue,
That it’s you I like, it’s you yourself,
It’s you. It’s you I like.
Above all, I think that the willingness and the courage to keep on trying develops best if there is someone we love close by who can lend us some of the strength we do not yet have within ourselves. I don’t mean someone who will do a task for us, but rather someone who will share our times of trying just by being around and being supportive, someone who can sustain the belief that we can succeed even when we doubt it ourselves. We all need quiet, caring cheerleaders like that—grown-ups as well as children.
When the gusty winds blow and shake our lives, if we know that there are those people who care about us, we may bend with the wind—but we won’t break. You’re such a gift to your own children. I hope you have such sensitive care in your own life, too.