by Pam Parish

In order for any parenting “rule” to work consistently, your children must know first and foremost that you love them unconditionally. We tell our children that we love them multiple times everyday. However, it’s more than just the simple words “I love you” - we also have to understand who they are as individuals and what their love languages are so that we can also show them how much we love them in the way they receive love. With our girls we understand that Kristan’s love language is words of affirmation and Heather’s is touch - so we have to show our love for each of them in different ways. For Kristan, it’s telling her she did a good job on something (you should see her face glow) and for Heather it’s lots of hugs and kisses, she loves being close to us. We are intentional in loving our daughters and they know that no matter what they do we will never stop loving them - ever.

We’ve seen lots of parents use love as a tool in their parenting, giving it or taking it away based on the child’s behavior. Our children need a foundation of unchanging love to properly grow into the men and women God designed them to be. God doesn’t remove his love from us when we misbehave (and we all do) - so why would we do that to our children?

Love is definitely first in everything we do. And, it’s also second. We’ll talk more about discipline in some of our other sections, but - as it relates to love - we have a rule. After discipline, love is always next. It is extremely important that our daughters know that we love them, even after they’ve just screwed up. We always go back and reaffirm our love for them and the value we find in them after we’ve disciplined them. Many times we begin our correction with statements of love and end with statements of love.

Yes, it’s that important.