Traditional wisdom–which is to say, what we have been hearing from California-based psychologists for about 20-30 years–holds that all this child needs is love.
But: ask yourself: is love all ANY child needs? Is it? Do they not crave, and ask for, and even demand, if it is not forthcoming, structure? Purpose? A destiny to follow? Do they not want to belong, are they not born to belong, to something bigger than themselves? First the family, then the larger family, then the civilization as a whole?
Do we not all need a reason to suffer, to transform? Do we not need a purpose to our work larger than filling our own bellies, and inseminating or being inseminated, so as to create progeny?
What my inner child needs, more than anything, is permission to grow up. Both of my parents more or less tortured out of me all ability for authentic self actualization, for agency, for growth. This is the deepest need I have, not love.
How can anyone give or receive authentic love when they don’t exist? So often, what is called love is nothing more than primitive needs being met. It is one partner playing the parent, and the other being the child. Both say “I love you”, but one is reverting to childhood, and the other, likely, giving the other person what they did not get in childhood.
What I want is freedom, freedom from this dynamic, freedom to allow everything to begin to flow again. I do not need or want anyone’s love right now. Not until I have my own to give.
I would go so far as to say that I don’t feel anyone can be authentically loving until they are already full. Love is always a process of giving, not taking. It can be a circular, healthy, joyful process, because people who have enough can always create more. But it is never a process of one fountain filling another, lower fountain, by emptying itself. Not among adults, at any rate.
It is right and proper for parents to give love to their children without expectation of reciprocity. On balance, their very generosity will be rewarded with filial loyalty and love, if they are honest. But even there, you cannot give and expect to receive. You must first be full. Far too many parents, in our own world, use their children to meet their own emotional needs. They constrict them, bind them, in the name of “protecting” them. They take from them, without giving.
This, in any event, is my own story. It does seem to be common enough, though.