Unconditional Love

What is love?

Love is such a powerful emotion that many describe it as the purpose of life, or the peak of the experience of being alive.

We all deserve to experience true, authentic, unconditional love.

We deserve to experience that in most of the relationships that exist in our lives including with family, friends, romantic partners, and our children. Unconditional love gives us the safety and confidence to live authentic, enjoyable, full lives. Due to Rahma Health’s focus on parenting, this article will mainly focus on unconditional love towards children.

What is unconditional, authentic, true love?

This is one of the most difficult questions to answer. We will all have unique and personal answers to this question.

However, there are some general truths which our answers may include:

• Safety: psychological, physical and emotional safety. Your children should never fear that you will hit them, scream at them, disrespect them, swear at them, or try to control their lives
• Respect: respect our children’s minds, emotions, bodies, opinions and when they say “no”. We should support our children to be able to critically think, know their values and make their own decisions
• Support to be one’s authentic self: we should always strive to see our children for who they truly are and support them to be themselves. We should not force our own expectations, hobbies, career ambitions or life plans onto our children.
• Embracing human imperfection: all humans are imperfect, and we should love our children with all of their flaws, foibles and mistakes. We should support them as they learn and grow
• Being reliable: being there when our children need us
• Being connected: being there for our children physically and emotionally. Being available and fully present to sit with them, hug them and listen to them. They should feel authentically seen and heard
• Not using children to live out our own dreams: our children have their own lives to live, and we should not force them to fulfill our own ambitions e.g. they are forced to go to university because that was a lifelong dream of ours

Why is it important to unconditionally love your kids?

The benefits of unconditional love are innumerable. It is core to the human experience. Some of its benefits can include:

• Improved connection between parents and children
• Better physical, mental and psychological health for parents and children
• Children love and respect themselves more
• Improved self-esteem
• Improved academic and career performance for our children
• Longer life expectancy
• And so much more!

Our children need to feel our love, not only hear it

One of the most difficult things about unconditional love is that we can never prove it to our children through words or repetition. They need to feel it.

This will be best felt in the hard times after they have made a mistake or when they are having a tantrum. In those moments, it’s essential to lean in and show them that you love them unconditionally: even when they’re angry, or even when they have made a mistake.

Often, our children remember and learn from our actions much more than from our words.

Unconditional Love doesn’t mean no boundaries, or no discipline

Unconditional love helps our children feel safe in the boundaries that we set, and will make them more likely to adhere to rules and have less behavioural issues.

Many behavioural issues stem from attachment anxiety. Unconditional love and a secure connection with your child will mean that they will have better behaviour.

You should lean on respect and unconditional love to redirect and support your child when they misbehave. For example, if they hit another child, you can stop them and hold them to keep the other child safe. Then, you can use sensory strategies to help them calm down. After they have calmed down, you can teach them what emotion they experienced, why you stopped them, and what the rules are about hurting other people.

Children feel safe and calm with clear, consistent boundaries. For more, you can explore Janet Lansbury’s Respectful Parenting work.

We can learn Unconditional Love from children

Our children express unconditional love towards us every day. We can learn from the authentic, special love they consistently radiate.

Reflect on how your child loves you no matter how much you weigh, what colour your hair is or how much you spent on their birthday gift. They love us because we are theirs and will always be. That’s it.

Loving yourself is an essential part of the process

Some people start by learning to unconditionally love their children, and then learn from that process to offer themselves unconditional love. Others start by loving themselves and then learning to love others. Whatever your journey may be, loving yourself will improve all the relationships you have in your life.

In psychological health, loving one’s self is a core, essential ingredient. If you have not achieved this yet, we would recommend working with a professional to help you. Please reach out to your Family Doctor or Psychologist. It is worth the hard work required. You deserve to feel truly worthy. It will also model positive self-regard to your children, which will give them a stronger foundation and a better foundation for psychological wellbeing.

Our children are often mirrors for us and may reflect parts of our own selves that we may dislike. We can work with a professional to understand how those many be manifesting. For example, some of us may feel shame at our children’s shyness or messiness, but this may be a manifestation of our own trauma and shame about that part in ourselves. We would benefit from working with a professional to love those parts of ourselves so that they do not affect our ability to offer complete, unconditional, all-encompassing love to those little incredible people who have been entrusted to us.

Here are some useful information and sources

• Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself, book by Kirstin Neff
• The Good Life, Harvard Study, book by Marc S. Schulz, Robert J. Waldinger,
• Through the Dark Wood, book by James Hollis
• The Prophet, Khalil Gibran, especially the reflections ‘On Children’