Daniel A. Bochner, Ph.D.

So many times in my office I hear a child, often a teenager, upset about the rules their parents make. Sometimes they act like their parents are such a pain to them. I don’t always disagree with the specific arguments the child is making, but as I look at the anguish on the parents’ faces, as a parent myself, one thought re-occurs to me over and over again. The fact that the child is reacting toward their parents with so much distaste, and the fact that their own view brooks no compassion for their parents’ angst, certainly means at least one thing. They have no idea how much their parents love them.

It is the rare parent who is able to keep in mind just how much it's true that love is really a very one-way process between parents and children. But if I want to be honest about it myself, I have to admit that I had no idea how much my parents loved me until I had children of my own. On a daily basis, however, because I love my children so much, it is relatively automatic for me to assume that my children love me in return to that very same level. My love for my own parents, however, grew so tremendously after my children were born that I know it really doesn't work that way at all. If you assume your children love you as much as you love them, you are unfortunately going to be at a significant disadvantage in every argument you have with them.

It is natural for children to get what they can. They do so in the context of loving their family but, if they are normal, they are thinking far more of themselves most of the time than they are of us. In fact, that is their job. They are attempting to grow, with us parents in the roles of earth, nutrients, and sun. Simply stated, they need us. That's not exactly the same as love. So it only makes sense that we love them far more than they love us. We constantly think of sacrifice for them without even thinking of it as sacrifice, while they often don’t even notice what we do...

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