Listen. For once i aggree with the who. Love is conditional. I know people that flat out hate their parents for what was done to them. It is possible for love to end.
But as i've said.... where the kids love is based on humane treatment etc... some parent's love is often based on control. The only difference is the condition under which love ends.
We were talking about a parent's love for their child, not the other way around.
Are we? The two are inter-related. IE: if somebody does not accept me as i am and love me for it, am i likely to reciprocate?
Yeh, that's where it started out, and someone (Who?) expanded it by talking about unconditional love between people in general.
In terms of parent/child relationships, I think this is worth repeating:
Greatly enabling the parent to love the child unconditionally is the
realization that the development of their child's limbic system is years ahead of his prefrontal cortex. This simply means that he is not an adult! Armed with this knowledge, it is easier to appreciate why children may at times appear irresponsible, selfish, impulsive, immature and inconsiderate. The fact that puppies act like puppies and not like grown dogs is readily accepted. Yet parents have trouble accepting normalcy in their own child!
This is more than likely due to the fact that the parent?s own normal, childish behavior was not accepted unconditionally in their childhood. It's a viscous, incidious cycle and can take considerable effort to break. It can be exceedingly difficult to have unconditional love for your child if you you never experienced it. Disrespect can be subtle, and much disrespect toward children is condoned and accepted as desirable in our society. Long ago it was believed that children were just little adults with all the capabilities of adults, and were expected to act as such or face harsh punishment. Science and objective observation has shown that not to be the case. Little ones don't yet possess the skills of self control, which is something useful for humans to master. If a parent doesn't possess self control, their child likely will not, because they aren't capable of assisting their child's mastery in that area. Many kids reach adolescence with no ability to self monitor and control.
When a kid screams, "I hate you", many parents take it literally and personally. With their limited skills, "I hate you" is their best/only way of saying they feel disrespected, and chances are almost certain, they are reacting to disrespect. One must also wonder where a young child has heard, "I hate you"? Mom to dad, dad to child? "I hate you", more times than not, means, I feel hurt, scared, frustrated... but ultimately disrespected. Wee ones tend not to harbor resentment. But the older a child becomes, the stronger the drive to defend against disrespect- a survival technique. Hence the issues that arise in adolescence. Lacking unconditional love, having been disrepected, not taught self monitoring/ control skills, they too often land in warehouses where they will be further disrespected until their will is broken and they conform (or get kicked out). Not because they've learned respect in a respectful environment, but because they fear punishment. They learn to "act" as expected.... goes back to that old belief that kids are little adults.
It's 2007. When will they learn? When will they eeeeever learn?
