Hi SereneWolf and Tee!

Nice to see you both around again. 🩵

I just thought I’d give my two cents on unconditional love because it’s a fascinating topic. I hope that’s okay? 🩵

It’s interesting to learn that as a parent a ton of “bad behaviours” are developmentally appropriate up into your teens.

So they are not really to be viewed as bad behaviours, because developmentally executive function doesn’t develop fully until adulthood. I guess that is why it’s called that. 😅

So part of being a good parent is staying calm and trying to teach your child how to process and manage their emotions in a healthy way and set healthy boundaries.

I think I only really started properly understanding unconditional love as a parent. It’s a unique experience. It is doing something for someone else, including experiencing “bad behaviour” and expecting nothing back. You just appreciate the person for who they are and enjoy spending time with them. Have faith that they will figure out their difficulties in time and find their own way in the world.

I think for adults it probably looks like something different. It’s important to love ourselves unconditionally too. So it is a balance between loving ourselves and loving others. Obviously, “bad behaviours” are not developmentally appropriate as adults and there are a lot of expectations socially and in the workplace.

I think it comes down to personal choice. What are you willing to accept? How do you view others mistakes? In very stressful circumstances are mistakes forgivable? How severe are mistakes? How much do mistakes negatively impact you personally? Where exactly is the line that you set to protect yourself because you are also important? 🩵

Hi Alessa,

thank you for chiming in! 🙂

It’s interesting to learn that as a parent a ton of “bad behaviours” are developmentally appropriate up into your teens.

So part of being a good parent is staying calm and trying to teach your child how to process and manage their emotions in a healthy way and set healthy boundaries.

Totally agree! Parents sometimes expect their children to behave like little adults. They don’t let them make mistakes or do silly things. My mother was certainly like that – strict, judgmental, a perfectionist. Her love was definitely conditional.

By bad behavior I meant e.g. when the kid is hitting another kid, stealing their toys, behaving in an aggressive way. But even then, the parent should have unconditional love for their child, and find healthy ways to curb that bad behavior. Maybe the child is simply copying the parents’ aggression, or their peers’ aggression, and so the cause is somewhere deeper.

In any case, unconditional love and support is needed. I think it’s not effective or beneficial to set boundaries with a child who doesn’t feel loved and appreciated. First love and support, then boundaries. And that’s how it should work naturally too, because you don’t set boundaries with a newborn. You only start setting boundaries and teaching them things later, when they are old enough (and loved enough) to understand…

I think for adults it probably looks like something different. It’s important to love ourselves unconditionally too. So it is a balance between loving ourselves and loving others. Obviously, “bad behaviours” are not developmentally appropriate as adults and there are a lot of expectations socially and in the workplace.

I think it comes down to personal choice. What are you willing to accept? How do you view others mistakes? In very stressful circumstances are mistakes forgivable? How severe are mistakes? How much do mistakes negatively impact you personally? Where exactly is the line that you set to protect yourself because you are also important?

Definitely, we need to love ourselves first in order to even be able to be in a healthy relationship. Healthy self-love, self-compassion, self-respect… all that is important.

I think there are actually pointers at what constitutes a healthy vs. a toxic relationship. I mean, there are behaviors that are considered toxic for the relationship. And if they repeat consistently, if there is a pattern, and the person is ignoring our pleas, then we need to figure out what to do about it.

Of course, nobody is perfect, we all make mistakes. We can all react impulsively and say something we’ll later regret. But we can also repair the relationship. If the other person doesn’t even admit they did something wrong, that they’ve hurt us, that’s already a problem.

It also depends what is the nature of the relationship, because one cannot always leave the relationship, even if things really hurt. So we need to calculate and tolerate certain things. But we can still be aware that those behaviors aren’t really healthy, even if we choose to tolerate them for the time being…

Hi Alessa,

good to chat with you too! I totally get that you’re busy with your studies and taking care of your son. I think completing the two in parallel is a monumental task, so kudos to you!

I was thinking some more about unconditional love, and I think we need to differentiate between the love towards our own children and the love we have for our partner and other adults in our lives.

What I mean is that we need to be able to emotionally regulate and soothe our child – because the child depends on us for that and is learning those skills. Whereas with an adult, we don’t need to serve as their emotional regulator/soother – they should be able to do it for themselves.

Of course, it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have empathy and understanding for our partner, and even soothe them and comfort when they are in need. But if an adult is hypersensitive and we need to walk on eggshells not to upset them, or we cannot bring up some issues without them getting mad at us – that’s already a problem.

When an adult is hypersensitive, it shouldn’t be our task to keep them calm and happy (and we can’t even do that without completely giving up on our own needs). We shouldn’t be a buffer for their negative emotions, specially if it happens on a regular basis, without them taking responsibility for those emotions.

Whereas we should very much serve as a buffer for our child’s negative emotions, and soothe them, rather than blame them or ridicule them for having those emotions. And as you said, stand up for them when needed:

But being a mum, it’s really important to stand up for your kid. Somehow it’s easier to do that than for myself.

I guess because you know that your child (as any other child) is largely helpless in the face of potential abuse, and that being treated poorly and abused in childhood can leave a trace for life… So it’s great that you stand up for him!

As for yourself, maybe you feel you’re fairly resilient emotionally and you know how to self-soothe (you’ve spoken about that), so it’s easier for you.

But I guess it’s not the point to endure, even if we’re capable of that. We all have the right to be treated with care and respect. And if someone keeps treating us poorly, the question is why we should endure (unless we really have no other choice). At least that’s how I see it…

Wishing you and your son good health and a successful start of nursery! (has he started going yet?) ❤️