The Most Important Gift to Give a Child

If there is only one gift to give a child, this is the most important. This gift can be given regardless of economical status. This gift will not get lost, broken or put in the toy box with all the others. It will never go out of style, it is indestructible and a child can never have too much of it. Probably the most important feature of this gift is longevity, anyone with a child realizes the importance of this feature. This gift will last the child an entire lifetime! That's a pretty strong guarantee and hard to find these days, but this gift has all of that and so much more. Every child wants and deserves to have this special gift, it really is priceless and there are no replacements. This important gift is unconditional love. If a child doesn't receive this precious gift at a young age, it will be searched for the rest of his or her life. All too often in the wrong places and in inappropriate ways, but the quest for it will never end.

To give a child unconditional love is to tell that child he or she is valued and that there are no conditions on that love because of what they do or how they do it. A child should never feel a need to earn acceptance and love or they will carry that need with them for all their life. That should be freely given and in continuing abundance. There are no terms for love, no matter what a child does wrong or right. Conditions can't be placed on a child to feel accepted and loved, then love will become nothing more than something to be earned. Love simply cannot be earned, never... under any circumstance, or it's not love. A child studies hard in school, does their homework and they earn good grades. Love is to be given freely, it isn't earned. Sometimes there is a need to be repetitive, I'll say it again, love isn't earned.

A child needs guidance and discipline to learn to survive in the world. There will always be consequences for wrong behavior and a child needs those boundaries as well. Every child needs to know they can make mistakes and still have unconditional love and acceptance. It is so important for the child to know we don't like the behavior or actions and will not accept those actions, but to make the distinctions between the child and the behaviors in a way the child can understand. Children all too easily internalize what they hear and we often don't even know we're sending the wrong message.

Unfortunately without the gift of unconditional love, a child will grow to believe that the only way to survive in the world is through performance, and through this performance they will be accepted and loved. They will believe love is strictly conditional and they will never be able to give it to others until their own conditions are met as well. It becomes a perpetual way of life. They will believe love comes with strings attached and they learn to be manipulative to either give or receive love. Their view of love becomes very distorted.

A child that receives the gift of unconditional love learns they have value and worth for who they are, not for what they do. A child given unconditional love is free to be all that God created them to be without the constant fear of rejection. They will learn there are rules and conditions that must be met to survive in the world, but they will also learn that acceptance in the world is still not a guarantee. They won't need that acceptance from others when they were given unconditional love and acceptance freely as a child. They will have the firm foundation to know that they can succeed and that it's okay if they sometimes fail. Children given the gift of unconditional love will learn to love themselves and can therefore return the gift to others.