Unselfish Love for Children

It is essential to love children unselfishly in order to do two things:

1. To be able to supernaturalize one’s love for them;

2. To be able to endure their demands.

1. To supernaturalize one’s love:

Parents should strive to love their children not only because of their natural charm but for higher and truly divine reasons:

“I love my children so much,” parents say, as if vying with one another; mothers especially are likely to talk like that. One feels like warning them, “If only you could love them a little less but love them a little better.” Or rather, since we never love too much but badly, “Love them as much as you wish, but for their sakes, not for your own.”

For their sakes: Do not give in to all their caprices; do not try to spare them every effort; do not treat them as little idols; do not teach them pride and vanity even from their earliest years.

For their sakes: Be alert to know what might harm them not only in what concerns their body but also in what might even remotely concern their soul.

For their sakes: Try to discover, behind these baptized souls, the Holy Trinity dwelling within them and the likeness of Christ; do not rest satisfied until all your training and education is directed to make of them truly holy tabernacles of the Most High and authentic continuations of Christ.

2. To be able to endure their demands:

Very little children are defenseless and powerless. They always need assistance. Mothers generally know the secret of guessing their needs, but the baby will still cry, become restless and set up a howl. Every baby in the cradle is a revolutionary in the bud; the best established customs ought to give way to its caprice, or so it thinks, and if its desires are not obeyed, it storms and puts the house in an uproar.

Furthermore the child is born cunning. It finds out very quickly the best ways to get what it wants, not through reasoning but by intuition. Such an action, such an attitude produces the desired result; the opposite way of acting does not work. There is no more limpid logic to be found anywhere.

Nor any more transparent pride. It knows itself to be the center of the household and is not ashamed to act the part. It is a monarch. Papa and mamma, brothers, sisters, and all the other members of the household make up its court, each one dancing attendance to its thirty-six wills. It distributes as rewards the favor of its broad smiles.

Later it will play, jump about and run; breaking things will be a delight; so too will it be fun just to sit still and listen to a story. The little girl will be taken up with the care of her doll and if her doll says “papa” or “mamma,” her elders need expect to hear nothing else all day! The little boy will play soldier or train or if he has received a drum or whistle for Christmas, and the household will be well aware of it!

Parents should take serenely and as a matter of course the baby’s pranks and outbursts, while working toward a wise training, the prelude of a wise education. They should expect their growing children to make noise, to be curious, to want to touch everything; furthermore, they need not feel obliged constantly to put a damper on their romping and their noise; but whenever and wherever necessary, they ought to explain to them what they may do and what they ought to avoid.

Note: Adapted from Raoul Plus, S.J.’s Christ in the Home (Colorado Springs, CO: Gardner Brothers, 1951), 207–208. This book is a treasure chest of advice for Catholics on the practical and spiritual concerns of raising a family.