The Southern Baptist Academy Blog

-by Mimi Rothschild

The need for attention is a fundamental need. Seldom does anyone grow into a confident and happy personality, who has never felt himself loved and accepted during his growing years. A child feels insecure and unhappy when he feels unwanted end of. Such a feeling can cause serious mental and emotional upheavals. Once mothers were urged to care for the physical needs of their babies, but otherwise to handle them as little as possible. This did not work. Babies who were not handled were fretful, anxious, and early developed feelings of not being wanted or loved. It was discovered that babies in institutions, even where sanitation and regularity of routine were expertly supervised, have a higher mortality rate in the babies brought up in homes where standards of cleanliness and regularity were less ideal, but we’re babies were loved and fondled.

Older children, too, need frequent reminders that they are loved and wanted, even though they shy away from demonstrations of affection, especially in public. They do appreciate and need to know that parents and teachers are interested in their play and plans, and that they are ready to help if needed. They should feel confident that adult friends are glad when they are happy, and sorry when things did not go well.

Some children develop an independent attitude toward outward manifestations of affection. There are a thousand ways of showing love. One of the best ways is to refrain from doing whatever embarrasses, confuses or belittles a child whose independence is genuine. However, there are children who hide a yearning for perfection behind an attitude of. I don’t care. Only cities want to be about. I’ll show them my new city. Such a child may have been deprived of affection when he needed it most. It is not easy to tell the difference between true independence in this taste for outwardly expressed affection and a cover up for the unsatisfied longing for it: the outward symptoms may be identical.

Sometimes, young children resort to infantile ways to win the affection. Often and unhappy child will risk his grace or punishment, if that is the only way he knows to gain attention.

When homeschooling parents remember to give children the consideration and respect, which they give to their older friend, the adult child relationship would be happier. Children can be seen as coworkers, especially when they are carrying out purposes of their own. Children plan and think. They have their own rates of speed in working, and nothing is more disconcerting than to have some adult constantly urging her rehab. “Hurry up!” “The rest are all through.”

Children have their own sets of values, and there is nothing adult about it. A blue glass button is more prized by a three-year-old and a quarter would be. The child is found to read this of glass which had fallen from a bicycle lamp found the quote ruby of great price.” Period. Looking through it changed the world for him in the twinkling of an eye. It was his chief treasure, and he was inconsolable when he lost it. Another child walk up to her daddy, holding out her dress on which the child’s grandmother had just sewed a colorful patch a generous proportions seen, she cried, displaying proudly like an adult would seek to hide. Grandma did it nice!. Nor would she permit her new patch to be covered with a bid at dinnertime. In the back of each child is an endless variety of heredity and environment. Before each one of the same endless possibilities for the development of gifts. The adult should seek to safeguard the rich promise a variety, encouraging each child to be the best that he can be: not like daddy or brother James, or some other model, but to be his own best self. True, we hold for all children, the ideal of Christian character that has been set forth in the Bible, but within that ideal. There is possible infinite richness and variety of personality. To be a Christian is not a cramping experience.
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Mimi Rothschild is the Founder of Learning By Grace, Inc. the nation’s leading provider of online PreK-12 online Christian educational programs for homeschoolers.