Showing Your Children Your Unconditional Love

Just as God’s love for His children has no strings attached, so must be our love for our children. Of course, you might be thinking that your love for your children is already unconditional. Maybe so, but are you showing your love in a way that comes across to your children as unconditional?

We are making a big mistake if we allow our children to feel we love them only when they are well behaved or do well academically, socially, or on the playing field. And yet, especially in our hyper-paced world, we are continually tempted to virtually ignore our children for our work and other concerns while we lavish attention and praise only when they have done something outstanding. Even worse are the times we give them our undivided attention only when we are correcting them for poor behavior. By putting ourselves in the position of responding to only the good and bad peaks in our children’s behavior, and not being proactive in demonstrating our love to our children, we are teaching our kids that our love is conditional.

Such showing of conditional love may at first result in well-behaved children. After all, they have learned that good behavior or superior achievement earns parental affection. But they have also learned to be insecure. They will come to believe that if they don’t continue to perform to your standards, they will no longer have your love. This can lead to multiple emotional and behavioral problems. Notice: “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love. We love him, because he first loved us” (1 John 4:18–19). If you do not show your children that your love for them is unconditional, they will fear losing it. And notice that the above passage says, “We love him, because he first loved us.”

Before I continue, I want to give you some recommended reading. Dr. Ross Campbell admirably covers the subject of demonstrating unconditional love to our children, and the possible consequences of not doing so, in his books, How to Really Love Your Child and How to Really Love Your Teenager. Both books are usually available in Christian bookstores, sometimes available in regular bookstores, can be ordered from Amazon.com. I recommend these books as some of the best parenting information I know of. I say this because most of Campbell’s basic premises agree with the Bible. Unfortunately, he also uses some unbiblical psychology, apparently agrees with dating (a relatively modern, unbiblical practice that all too easily leads to immorality and later divorce), ignores homeschooling, and contradicts his foundation that God’s love is unconditional by preaching an Arminian gospel that makes God’s love conditional.** Despite these flaws, I believe you will gain much from these books.

So how do we avoid giving our children the impression that our love is conditional? Saying, “I love you,” is important. We should say it frequently. But it is not enough. Remember, God demonstrated His love to us even while we were sinners. We must actively show our love to our children, and Campbell is right on the mark when he says we must fill their emotional tanks through eye contact, physical contact, and focused attention.

God has not given our children into our care to put them into daycare centers, send them off to school, and otherwise ignore them while we pursue our careers and higher income (and feel we have fulfilled our duty by scheduling “quality time,” whatever that is, with them). Yes, I understand that there are single-parent and other situations when daycare and school are necessary. Whatever circumstances we find ourselves in, however, we parents, not someone else, are responsible to convey unconditional love, God’s love, to our children. We can do this through their emotions by our deeds, and to their intellect through teaching them the Bible. Yet, since children are largely emotional beings, if we don’t first supply their emotional needs, our Bible teaching may fall on deaf and, eventually, rebellious ears.

Notice how the Bible supports having eye contact, physical contact, and focused attention. Psalm 32:8 says, “I will instruct thee and teach thee in the way which thou shalt go: I will guide thee with mine eye.” When you speak with your child or when your child speaks to you, make eye contact with the child. Don’t do this only when correcting the child, and don’t do this only when praising the child (which will be interpreted as conditional love). And, as much as appropriate, accompany the eye contact with a pleasant expression.

Physical contact is also necessary. In Mark 10:13–16, Jesus not only allowed the little children to come to Him, “he took them up in his arms, put his hands upon them, and blessed them.” You will also find many places in the Bible where physical healing is done with a touch, and where angels comforted those disturbed at their appearing by touching them. I’m not saying that touching of itself heals, only that appropriate touching adds comfort.

Jesus did not withhold physical contact even with His adult disciples: “Now there was leaning on Jesus’ bosom one of his disciples, whom Jesus loved…. He then lying on Jesus’ breast saith unto him, Lord, who is it?” (John 13:23, 25). If this physical contact (which, I hope I needn’t point out, was not at all sexual) between Jesus and His disciples (who were, in some ways, like children to Him) was right, how much more the physical contact parents should have with their children? Touch your children often.

The third way to fill up a child’s emotional tank is through focused attention. Sadly, focused attention is especially difficult to give our children in our frenetic world. We must do it, nonetheless. When we pray, God pays attention to us. Because He is God, He has the ability to also pay attention to untold numbers of others who are praying to Him at the same time. Even so, His attention is focused. He does not miss something you say because He is distracted by something else. When you pray, you have God’s attention. As a human, you don’t have the ability to hear many people at once. So, to give your child focused attention, you must pay attention to him or her alone.

Give your child your focused attention when he or she comes to you and wants to speak with you. Turn to your child, look him or her in the eye, and pay attention. By giving your child eye contact, physical contact, and focused attention, you can turn most occasions with your child into quality time. But you must also take the initiative and create time with your child. Set aside time to be with your child, to give your child eye contact, physical contact, and focused attention. Campbell gives some ideas of how to do this in his books.

Please make the effort to show your sons and daughters unconditional love. The rewards of your children knowing without doubt that you love them will be priceless.
 

**For example, on page 126 of How to Really Love Your Child, Campbell writes, “…this is the way God loves us—unconditionally.” Yet Campbell makes God’s love conditional on pages 124-125 by saying, “He [God] gives directions to be carried out, yet gives amazingly wonderful promises to those who are willing to obey…. If we want what He wants, a loving, caring, Father-child relationship with Him—we must accept His offer” (Ross Campbell, How to Really Love Your Child (Wheaton, IL.: Victor Books, 1977, emphasis mine). [Return]

Print-friendly PDF Version

Copyright © 2002-2009 Peter Ditzel