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Unconditional love vs. validation

"Unconditional love means loving your child no matter what.  Although unconditional love is critically important in parenting, it is a different concept from validation.  Unintended hurt an happen even when unconditional love is present.  You can have unconditional love and still invalidate your child's feelings, just as you can have unconditional love and validate your child's feelings.  When you give unconditional love while invalidating your child's thoughts and feelings, you run the risk of fostering the child's unhealthy dependency on you or others.  Unconditional love creates a safe environment, but invalidation teaches the child that he can't make his own decisions and can't keep himself safe, but needs you or someone else to do that.  'I love you no matter who else hates you' does not validate the child's loss of a friend.  'We've always got each other' does not help the child deal with his emotions about not making the team or about his father's move out of the house.  It is actually more confusing to him than simply validating him." - Karyn D. Hall, PhD and Melissa H. Cook, LPC in The Power of Validation

Validation is important to your child's emotional health as is unconditional love.  Since we love so deeply, we want to validate.  Being intentional is the validating is important as we can easily invalidate in that love.

Renee Madison, MA, LPC, CSAT is a counselor in Colorado.  She can be reached for appointments at 303-257-7623 or 970-324-6928.
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