Love revisited

                                                             by Mizin P. Kawasaki, MD

We enter Starbucks, the ubiquitous coffee house, and a tall woman and her young son follow closely behind us.  We place our order for the pastries and drinks.  My children sit down with the snacks, and I bring over their hot cocoas and my coffee.  The little one eats her chocolate croissant, and the older one eats his cinnamon roll. 

Meanwhile, the preschooler behind us bounces around, and he tries repeatedly to jump onto the serving countertop.  Then he pulls on his mother’s purse.  She chides him and asks him what he wants to eat.  She tells him that he cannot have a bagel because he already had one; he also cannot have a cinnamon roll.  Throughout all this, he is jumping around.

Suddenly, the mother screams out angrily that the little boy will get nothing because he has bitten her.  He begins to cry out desperately.  Tears stream down his face, and he tries to grab her. 

His mother pushes him away and tells him that he is a bad boy for biting her.  She repeats that he will get nothing, and he continues to scream and cry. 

As soon as she gets her coffee drink, she stalks out of the shop.  The little boy runs after her and pleads for her attention.  She will not turn around.  He continues to cry.  She buckles him into his car seat, and she speeds away. 

    ***

Looking after the mother and son through the window, I could feel his pain and suffering.  He just needed her to reassure him that she still loves him even though he has done something unpleasant and harmful. 

Throughout their visit to the shop, she told him repeatedly to behave himself.  I heard no dialogue.  Instead, I heard her one-sided monologue. 

It is possible that the little boy was not making a good effort to communicate, but one wonders how articulate a preschooler should be.  If anything, he indicated through his bouncing behavior that he was not prepared to behave in this shop. 

Perhaps all of this could have been prevented if the child had not been brought into the shop in the first place.  He was not ready to comply with the standards of behavior his mother had set for him.

The recognition of how a child is capable of behaving in any given situation is crucial to preventing a child’s supposed misbehavior.  In all probability, the child did not think that his behavior was bad at all. 

In reality, it is his mother’s judgment of him that is actually bad.  Whoever said that a young child should cooperate in a coffee house?  It may be expected of him, but it is not clear that he can comply.

As for my children, who were chomping away at their snacks, I have one thing to say:  they enjoy eating and drinking at Starbucks.  They will behave because they like it there. 

We go there expressly in order to enjoy a snack.  I know how my children behave.  If they are unwilling or incapable of going, I would forgo the visit.

I comment on this woman’s behavior because it demonstrates perfectly how conditional parental love can be.  Naturally, she is a human being, and she may have been having a bad day.  I fall into that category often enough, but it is no excuse for putting conditions on love for one’s children. 

What I witnessed was the typical threat that admonishes a child to behave:  “Behave well, or I will not love you.”  This sentiment is pervasive, and many parents will exhibit this type of love.  It is not pleasant to behold because a parent holds power over her child and uses it to manipulate the child's behavior.

What is forgotten is that a child only wishes to be loved, especially by his mother and father, and that his behavior does not reflect his “badness.”  If anything, this child wants more love and attention from his mother.  He was asking for her love, and the opposite occurred:  he incurred her wrath and sheer dislike by biting her.

I do not condone biting.  In fact, several hours after this incident, my daughter bit me after her bath.  I was shocked by the biting, and my unthinking response was to scold her.  I tried to shame her and waited for her downcast eyes to lose their brightness and charm. 

What a sorry spectacle I must have been by asserting a show of authority over a three-year-old child.  Afterward, I reflected briefly and blamed myself.  I had often chased her around our home, and she would laugh as I made believe that I wanted to “take a bite” out of my adorable baby.  I had done this in jest innumerable times, yet how was she to know that? 

Evidently, my daughter did not know, so I apologized to her for scolding her.  After all, it was evident that I had most likely taught her the idea of biting. 

To stress how unconscious I was of my own behavior, I was about to mention my wanting to bite her just ten minutes after her bath.  I had to stop myself since I never meant it literally.  Words, however, are very powerful. 

Once parents use threatening words, our posture and mindset change, even when we address small children.  Our words initiate a cascade of responses.  This is why we need to weigh what we say so very carefully. 

No human being likes to be threatened.  Even so, little children are on the receiving end of such words too often.  This is a form of education, but an extremely unhealthy one.  It leaves children insecure and untrusting since they are not sure that they can they trust their own mothers and fathers.

The key to establishing a better understanding of children is to listen to them.  Parents should be willing to engage their children in a dialogue, which implies two-way communication.  Both parties listen to each other. 

Imagine if the woman at the coffee shop had actually listened to her son and discussed with him why he could not have what he wanted.  Perhaps she could have tried to learn what it was that he wanted.  If she had sensed that he was not cooperating, it would have been better to leave the shop without her coffee.  It is possible, though, that she really needed her caffeine fix. 

The conflict between this mother and her child may actually have been an internal conflict within the mother.  Undoubtedly, a mother may so often sideline fulfillment for herself that she becomes frustrated.  The tipping point may be something trivial, like the inability to procure a cup of coffee in peace.  Sadly, the lesson a child learns is that he is part of a pecking order, and he is far down the order.    

I can sympathize with the mother because I have lost my temper often enough.  It is the frailty of human nature.  Unfortunately, it is not only a mother who is frail.  A child is even more delicate.

In this case, the child is traumatized by the lack of love his mother displays after he bites her.  The mother teaches her child that she will not love him if he behaves badly.  The only problem is that the child cannot learn the meaning of the lesson if he cannot feel any sincere love or concern about his well-being.  He perceives all too well, however, his mother’s dislike and anger. 

The anthropologist and humanist Ashley Montagu has a most brilliant and enlightening definition of love.  He states the following:

                                        LOVE is

.....the active process of communicating to the other by demonstrative

acts of your profound involvement in their welfare such that you give

them all encouragement, sustenance, support and stimulation that they require for their unique fulfillment;

.....that they can always count on you to be standing by, that you will

never commit the supreme treason of letting them down when they are

most in need of you, but that you will always be standing by when they

are in need;

.....and that you are there to help them become all that is good and

loving that is within them as potentialities which you will encourage

and nurture.

This profound definition of love clarifies how often love is misconstrued.

Mothers and fathers would become better parents if they would take a pledge to prioritize loving their children with Ashley Montagu’s definition in mind.  As adults, some parents may have misconceived notions of love that they learned them from their own upbringing.  It is crucial, nevertheless, to think clearly about the meaning of love. 

By discarding past and unhealthy misconceptions of love, parents can teach their children to learn how to love and care for others.  This they can do only if their parents make the effort to provide their children with unconditional love. 

Open communication and dialogue should rectify misunderstandings when parents or children falter in expressing their love.  The parent-child relationship is constantly evolving, and the basis of its healthy development is unconditional love.

This essay was originally published in Nurturing magazine, Issue No. 7/8.

Revised on April 20, 2006

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