Teaching Our Children to Be Generous With Love

There is a kind of generosity that has nothing to do with money.

It is the generosity of remembering that other people have feelings too.

It is calling someone because you know they miss you.

It is noticing when someone is hurting.

It is apologizing when you have caused pain.

It is making room for another person’s perspective even when it is uncomfortable.

It is understanding that love is not only something we receive.

Love is something we participate in.

And I think one of the most important things we can teach our children is how to be generous with it.

I learned this partly by realizing how badly I had failed at it myself.

Addiction Made My World Smaller

One of the hardest truths I have had to accept about addiction is that it made me incredibly self-focused.

I don’t necessarily mean selfish in the deliberate, cruel sense of the word.

I wasn’t waking up thinking:

How can I make everyone else’s life about me today?

But addiction reorganizes a person’s priorities.

The substance, the craving, the withdrawal, the shame, the consequences, the next crisis, the attempt to feel better, the attempt to avoid feeling anything at all—eventually, enormous amounts of mental and emotional energy begin revolving around the person who is struggling.

And everyone around them gets pulled into that orbit.

Where am I?

How do I feel?

What do I need?

How do I get through today?

Who is angry with me?

Who will forgive me?

Who will help me?

How do I escape this feeling?

How do I fix what just happened?

When your internal world becomes that consuming, there may be very little room left to genuinely wonder:

How is everyone else doing because of me?

That distinction matters.

A person can love their children tremendously while behaving in ways that are profoundly self-centered.

Both things can be true.

Children Learn Love by Watching Us

Children learn far more from the relationships surrounding them than they do from lectures about kindness.

If I tell my child to be considerate but she watches me consistently disregard other people’s needs, she is learning from my behaviour.

If I teach forgiveness but never apologize, she notices.

If I demand understanding for my pain while showing little curiosity about hers, she notices that too.

Children are constantly constructing an understanding of relationships:

What happens when someone hurts me?

Do I repair relationships or discard them?

Do other people’s feelings matter when they inconvenience me?

Can I disagree with someone and still love them?

When I make a mistake, do I acknowledge it?

When someone disappoints me, do I punish them indefinitely?

Does love require reciprocity?

Can two people hold different versions of an experience without one person’s humanity having to disappear?

These lessons eventually become part of how children love other people.

That includes how they love us.

Selflessness Does Not Mean Self-Abandonment

This is where I think parents have to be careful.

I do not want to teach children that being loving means tolerating mistreatment.

That isn’t generosity.

That’s poor boundaries.

I don’t want my daughters believing they owe anyone access to themselves simply because that person loves them.

I want them capable of saying:

That hurt me.

I need some space.

I disagree with you.

I love you, but I cannot participate in this.

I forgive you, but something has to change.

Those are healthy boundaries.

But I also want children to understand that boundaries and compassion can exist at the same time.

You don’t have to destroy someone to protect yourself from them.

You don’t have to hate someone because they disappointed you.

You don’t have to pretend someone’s wrongdoing never happened in order to acknowledge that they are still a complicated human being capable of change.

And you don’t have to become responsible for someone’s happiness simply because you care about them.

That is the balance.

Teach Them to Ask, “What Is It Like to Be the Other Person?”

Empathy requires imagination.

One of the simplest things we can teach children is to periodically leave the centre of their own experience.

Not:

What did they do to me?

But also:

What might they have been experiencing?

Not:

Why didn’t I get what I wanted?

But:

What did this cost someone else?

Not:

They hurt me, therefore they are terrible.

But:

They hurt me. Why? What happened? Can it be repaired?

Understanding another person’s perspective does not excuse harmful behaviour.

It simply prevents us from becoming people who believe our own pain is the only pain in the room.

That is emotional maturity.

Let Them See You Repair What You Break

Perhaps one of the greatest gifts we can give children is letting them discover that adults can be wrong without becoming worthless.

Parents make mistakes.

Sometimes enormous ones.

Our children will make enormous mistakes too.

So let them hear:

“I was wrong.”

“I hurt you.”

“I understand why you were angry.”

“I wish I had handled that differently.”

“Tell me what that was like for you.”

“What can I do differently?”

And then listen.

Not defensively.

Not waiting for our turn to explain.

Listen.

Because children who experience repair learn that relationships do not have to end every time somebody fails.

Teach Reciprocity

Healthy love moves in both directions.

That does not mean keeping score.

It means noticing whether we are always receiving and rarely giving.

Children can learn this through ordinary life.

Help Grandma without being paid.

Call someone on their birthday.

Bring your sibling something because you thought of them.

Thank the person who cooked dinner.

Notice when someone has been doing more than their share.

Ask your friend how they are instead of immediately talking about yourself.

Do something kind when there is absolutely nothing in it for you.

These tiny acts teach a profound lesson:

Other people’s happiness matters too.

Teach Them That Love Is a Verb

We say “I love you” constantly.

But children eventually need to understand that love without behaviour can become meaningless.

Love is attention.

Love is consideration.

Love is honesty.

Love is reliability.

Love is accountability.

Love is sometimes sacrifice.

Love is making a phone call you don’t particularly feel like making because somebody matters to you.

Love is remembering.

Love is listening.

Love is occasionally putting down what you want because someone you care about needs something from you.

And sometimes love is having a difficult conversation instead of disappearing.

Addiction Taught Me This the Hard Way

I can look backward now and recognize something painful.

There were times when I expected enormous amounts of understanding from the people around me while I was not capable of giving them the same emotional consideration.

I was hurting.

I was surviving.

I was struggling with something incredibly powerful.

Those things explain some of my behaviour.

They do not erase its impact.

That distinction has become incredibly important to me.

I can have compassion for the woman I was without pretending everyone around her wasn’t affected.

And perhaps one of the most meaningful things recovery can teach our children is exactly that:

We are allowed to examine ourselves honestly.

We can say,

I became selfish.

without saying,

I am a selfish person.

We can say,

I hurt people.

without concluding,

I am incapable of love.

And we can say,

I taught something through my behaviour that I no longer want to teach.

Then we can begin teaching something different.

What I Want My Children to Know About Love

I want my children to protect themselves.

But I also want them to remain tender.

I want them to recognize manipulation without becoming suspicious of everyone.

I want them to establish boundaries without becoming indifferent.

I want them to recognize selfishness in others while remaining capable of examining it in themselves.

I want them to understand that forgiveness does not require reconciliation, but that neither should permanent estrangement automatically become our first solution to human failure.

I want them to know that some relationships are unsafe and should end.

Others are simply wounded and need repair.

Wisdom is learning the difference.

Most of all, I want them to understand that love is not merely about finding people who love us well.

It is also about becoming someone who loves others well.

Generously.

Responsibly.

Without abandoning ourselves.

Without demanding perfection.

Without making every relationship revolve around our own feelings.

And with enough humility to occasionally ask:

Am I giving the people I love the same grace, consideration and humanity that I hope they will give me?

Because our children will inevitably inherit some of our wounds.

That is part of being human.

But they don’t have to inherit all of our patterns.

Sometimes the most important thing a parent can teach a child is:

I finally recognized what I was teaching you, and I decided to learn something different.