Happy families practice “love spirals”
Most parents love their children, but in happy families the parents demonstrate their love all the time. Raising children is difficult. The intensity of family life is such that things can only go two ways.
One is a downward spiral. The baby screams, the kids break something, some mishap occurs. The stressed parents respond with criticism or punishment. The kids scream louder. Things get worse and worse.
The other is an upward spiral. The kids are cute, adventurous, smiling. They love learning and attention. Even a mother’s mere presence makes a young child feel secure and happy. Parents take pride in their children and practice small acts of love, which make the children even more playful and sunny. This in turn elicits further love from the parents, and so on.
Both spirals are evident in all families, yet in happy families the positive spirals outweigh the negative ones. Over time, the children in happy families become more secure and content and will usually reinforce the positive spirals.
The parents set the tone by their early actions, when the family is just starting and the first baby is born. By creating and reinforcing the positive spirals and defusing the negative ones, the parents slowly but surely craft a happy family.
The return on early acts of parental love is enormous. For relatively little effort, there is a massive benefit, for the child and the whole family
