FocusOnTheFamily

Love: The parenting priority

Written by Laird Crump

Cooking is not my forte. My kids rave about my wife’s cooking, but they remind me of my poor culinary skills whenever it is my turn to cook.

(Of course, there are only so many ways to serve “KD!”) It may sting a little, but you know, I don’t get bent out of shape over my failure at that particular parenting task. Gourmet cooking is low on my list of parenting priorities.

What is the most important task in parenting? Sure, giving your kids guidance and providing for them is important. But the greatest gift we can give our kids is love.

A scholar once asked Jesus what the most important thing in life is. "The most important one," answered Jesus, "is this: . . . Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.' The second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these," (Mark 12:28-31).

Jesus nails down the bottom line of life – loving God, and then loving our neighbour. And who is our closest neighbour? Could it be the child in the next bedroom, or the kid sitting in your family room with a video game controller in his hands? How about that teenager who just dinged up your car?

The challenge with loving those around us is that communicating “I love you, and I care” is no simple task. If I really want to communicate love to my family, should I only use the words I am comfortable using? Of course not. If I expect to be heard and understood, I need to discover methods of expressing love to them in ways that they recognize. Some feel loved when you hug them. Others feel loved when you give them your time or help them with their homework. Each of our four children senses love differently. What makes your children feel really loved?

We can do everything else right, but if we fail to express love, we fail miserably. The consequences of feeling unloved haunt people their whole lives. Kids live at home with their families for only a short period of time. I’d like to think that when our kids leave the nest, they’ll say something like, “Mom and Dad had their quirks, but they really loved me.” In fact, kids will forgive a lot of parenting mistakes as long as they know that we have done our very best at loving them. I may be a lousy cook, but I know for sure that I do love my kids.

Laird Crump is the regional director for Focus on the Family Canada in the Greater Toronto Area. He explores this subject further in a seminar of the same title. For a full list of available marriage and parenting seminars, email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

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