Parenting is hard, there’s no way to sugarcoat that. When your child is a baby you are in awe of how cute they are and their endless crying and needs don’t affect you as much.
Once they grow into teenagers, sometimes the challenge of parenting them is a lot. Loving your child is the single most important thing you can do for them, the rest will follow.
Providing your child with trust, understanding, and unconditional love will strengthen your relationship and help them grow into the best adult they can be.
Unconditional Love
There are heaps of articles out there that say that loving your child is not enough, that tough love is required. Some will say that love alone will not get them through. And whilst I agree in part, to some of what they are saying, I don’t entirely back their words.
Unconditional love is loving without boundaries, loving through mistakes, heartache, and loving through anything that life can throw at you. Your child should never feel as if something they do could make their own parent not love them.
Love Is Enough
I hear clients tell me about their children, stepchildren, and friends’ kids and how they’re acting out and behaving. It all boils down to their lack of self-image. These children are not feeling loved.
When babies are born everyone they come in contact with loves them, adores them, talks to them, coos over them, and showers their parents with a supportive conversation. Tips and tricks on how to raise the child soon follow. But once they morph into teenagers and start to act out, to become their own individual, we see this shift. It’s as if they are not loved as much as they used to be.
Giving your child unconditional love will allow them to grow into the person they are meant to be.
Love Through Bad Choices
Trust that you raised your child to be a good person. Trust their decisions and their choices, and be there for them whether they succeed or fail. Trust goes a long way in any relationship, and as your child grows into an adult they need your trust to be confident in their choices.
When they were a child you may have told them not to jump off the stairs, but did they listen? And if they didn’t listen, which they probably didn’t, did you hold them when they cried because they were hurt? Most likely so. Why should this be any different in their teen years?
Your child needs space to evolve into an adult. Let them make bad choices and learn from those experiences, be sure they know that you will love them through anything and everything.
My Parenting Experiences
Throughout everything that my son threw at me the one thing that remained solid was my love for him. He always had a room in our house to come home to and the door was always open. My phone was always available for his call. All without judgment.
As I collected him from the ICU for a near drug overdose he looked at me and through tears said to me “Why do you continue to love me when I continue to treat you this way?” To which I simply replied, “I’m your mother. I will love you unconditionally for the rest of my life, no matter what comes at me.”
When I was sitting at the back of the courtroom when he was there for one of his various charges, the judge asked me if I had anything to say. “Just that I love my son and I want him to come home. I want him safe. I want him happy.”
When he was a broken mess in our garage and he thought the world was ending and that he’d never recover, I reassured him that he was only 17. His entire life was ahead of him. I assured him that I loved him and it would all be ok.
Loving Your Child Through It All
Above and beyond everything else children need to know that they’re loved unconditionally, no matter how much they stuff up in life.
They need to know at all times, who is in their corner – no matter what happens.
At the end of the day, love wins.
Parenting is tough, loving your child is easy. Let me help you navigate through these difficult years with love, respect, and a well intact parent-child relationship. Contact me today, and let’s get through this together.
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