Dr. Ray Guarendi, clinical psychologist, author, speaker, radio host, and family advocate

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IS LOVE ENOUGH?

Dear Dr. Ray,

We adopted twin girls, age six, two years ago. Both my husband and I thought that if we just loved them, they would thrive. It hasn’t been that simple.

Loving Hard, But …

Love is at the critical center of parenthood. Without it not much else good happens. Properly understood, love is more than critical; it is enough. The key, though, lies in what we understand love to be.

Most people think of love primarily as a blend of emotions: empathy, affection, kindness - you know, warm stuff. It is that, but it is much more. It is also commitment, perseverance, sacrifice and discipline.

Love in all its fullness will help our daughters thrive. Love as feelings and their expression, however positive, may indeed fall short in helping you raise well-adjusted children.

Many people who adopt older children see the pre-adoptive history as lacking in or devoid of emotional connections. Understandably they want to replace what was missing quickly and fully. The reasoning is: This child didn’t have much love. I have plenty of love to give. If I restore the balance, the child will blossom. This sounds like your hope for your girls.

No doubt some kids do need extra hefty doses of acceptance and warmth immediately from their new parents in order to begin feeling secure. Such “warm love” can work magic in softening a sclerotic history. It may be, though, that the healing will take longer than you anticipated. Further, your love will need expression in ways that don’t seem like love, at least at first look.

In addition to lots of affection, you will need lots of perseverance in teaching social skills. With all your encouragement will also come strong limits, especially on the girls’ more resistant misconduct. Along with the family good times will be some “bad” times of asserting your authority.

Most of us readily recognize love shown through affection. It’s much harder to sense the love in making a youngster stand in the corner or go to bed early because of a tantrum. As one mother told me, “Discipline is love in action,” though it doesn’t feel like love. It feels more like frustration, anger or distress - negative reactions at odds with love.

A critical point: Discipline itself is not mean or negative, though some people might approach it that way. Nasty words or verbal attacks certainly are unnecessary, even hurtful, and they are not discipline. They are emotional clutter that is counterproductive to good discipline.

It is not momentary feelings, positive or negative, that are at the defining core of love. It is commitment. It is love to supervise closely whom your girls associate with - for the next twelve years. It is love to scrutinize and monitor all the media seeking your daughters’ attention, even if far more than do most American parents. It is love to give social freedom more slowly than others in their peer group get it. It is love to limit the trinkets and material goodies that might pour in from relatives, because you think they’re too much for your children’s good.

Despite whatever emotions accompany it, the purpose of such discipline is good. It is to teach and shape character. Indeed, if not for the underlying love motivating it, discipline alone would be too much of an unpleasant effort to continue for nearly two decades.

Love has many faces: softness, firmness, compromise, resolve, kisses, consequences. Some of those faces may look less like love than others, but all are still love. If that’s the breadth of love you and your husband are talking about, then it is enough. And it is love that will help your girls thrive in your home and beyond.