The psychology behind parents love

Humans’ behavior is shaped on the basis of their genetics and personalities, as well as environmental factors and interactions among them. The early years of any child’s life are very crucial, as they contribute to the foundation of his or her overall personality and behavior. In early childhood, when a child is physically fit and all their basic needs are met, they meet developmental milestones and lead a healthy life. Whereas when their basic needs are not fulfilled, it can create an unhealthy background for their future personalities. Parents love is an important factor in a child’s early-age growth. Let’s talk about it and how parents love can affect children’s lives.

When children are small, they can’t express what they feel, but they can never forget how they feel. Even when their needs are fulfilled, if they feel they are not surrounded by loving and caring people. It can affect their self-esteem, resilience, and future relationship bonds with others. It’s really important to understand that their perception of their needs, love, and care guides their mental well-being.

What is parent love?

Parents love is about unconditional love, care, support, comfort, acceptance, and attachment. Parents have a deep bond with their kids from the day they learn they are expecting a child. Each day, this love and affection get deeper as time passes. In general, every parent wants their kids to live a healthy and independent life. In India, parenting is about lots of sacrifices. Parents make their best effort to uplift their children.
But how much is too much or too little can they really know? It’s completely subjective, and when they find it difficult to create balance, it directly affects a child’s growth and learning.

Also Read: Dear Parents, It’s time you have that conversation with your child

The impact of parents love on children When children get exposed to healthy parental love, they experience safety and develop confidence to face future adversities. When they grow up in the shadow of parental rejection, they experience self-doubt and a feeling of worthlessness, and they often seek approval and acceptance from others. Also, when they get overly protected because of their parental love, they become poor at managing stress, future challenges, and adjustment. Parenting is a trial-and-error process, and as the child grows, their parents grow as well. With each trial, parents learn new things from their previous experiences. It’s important for parents to understand that instead of doing self-blame, it’s better to work on being better day by day and forgive themselves when it is required.

Barriers to a parent’s love:

1) Expecting your child to be the best among others:

It’s very common to see that in this generation, parents often flaunt their child, like seeing how well they can learn, speak, dance, or act. When kids fail to do so, parents feel bad, and sometimes they even scold the child. But what they forget is that kids have unique identities and skills. They can do what they enjoy (play), but they will not do what their parents enjoy. So whenever anyone comes to visit them, let them be comfortable with them first so that they can behave as they are in general.

Also Read: Pet and its Psychological Impacts on Parents

2) Too much responsibility:

When parents have too many physical, financial, and emotional responsibilities, their bond with kids gets affected because of it. As they are under pressure to perform tasks, they have less time to spend quality time with their kids. Even kids can feel it. They crave their parents love, as it makes them feel good. For them, their parents are their world, and because their world is overburdened, they feel neglected.

3) Lack of Boundaries:

Healthy boundaries are really important in any relationship. If parents do all the work on behalf of their kids, they become dependent on them. It’s really important for parents to help their children learn things in their own way. When they learn to eat on their own, they will create a mess, but this is how they will eat. Just be with them and see that they did not get hurt in any way in this process. Gradually, they will develop the habit of eating on their own.

4) Displacing negative emotions on them:

As humans experience negative emotions every day and have fewer chances of channelizing them, it happens that parents displace those emotions on their kids when they fail to do the expected behavior. Whenever the child is getting beaten or scolded, they must know the exact reason why they got punished. This is how they will learn what to do and don’t do in life. When there is nothing clear about why they were punished, they will repeat the mistakes. If, as parents, anyone is feeling filled with high negative emotions, it’s better to take a 5-minute break and then talk to the kids. This break will slow down the displacement.

Also Read: The Drops of Love: A Couple with Down Syndrome Got Married

Actions that facilitate parents’ love:

1. Have realistic expectations from their kids.
2. Create a healthy and interesting environment for them. Kids misbehave most of the time when they get bored. If they are invoiced constantly, their energy gets channelized in the right direction.
3. A positive learning environment at home. Whenever kids come up with any problem, first listen to them and ask questions, which helps them think and find answers instead of proving answers to them. Stand strong with them in adversity. If parents will only listen to their kid’s small details, then they will develop trust and share their big problems.
4. Keep the 4 P’s of parenting in practice. These 4 P’s are: practice, praise, point out, and prompt.
5. As parents, share your learning experiences and happy memories to develop a good bond with kids.
6. Don’t always ask them to study. Instead, I asked them to play and talk as well. Initiate the conversation when they are not starting it.
7. Be firm, fair, and friendly in your communication with them.
8. From time to time, discuss your opinion about your child with your partner so that you both can decide how to guide them.
9. Let them understand that it’s ok to fight or argue, but what is not is to keep that fight going for a long time. Focus on solving the concern.