Liking Our KidsRead Time 9 min

My niece pulled her boys out of school early to play in the tree. Near their house is a giant evergreen with branches perfect for climbing. The boys, ages 7, 5 and 4, played house, designating each branch a room. My niece is taking theology classes two nights a week, and she missed them, so getting them out of school early on a lovely spring afternoon made sense to her. Her recounting of this story reminded me of the importance of not just loving our children. We all love our children. But do we like them? I think it matters.

I have a friend whose mother, in her frustration when her children would misbehave, would threaten to leave. That’s a mom who probably doesn’t like her children despite loving them deeply. I’ve talked to other parents who love their children but are happier when they aren’t around. I’ve wondered how their children feel about that.

I propose that loving children is necessary but not sufficient. Liking children is equally important.

What’s the difference between loving and liking? In the Catholic sense, when we love someone, we desire goodness for that person. When we feed our children, bathe them, give them a safe home, we are loving them. These actions take care of their immediate physical needs — those base needs we have to have handled in order to grow as a human. It’s possible to love someone, yet not particularly like that person. Loving as a parent is hard. It requires sacrifice of self and resources. Raising a child from birth to 18 can cost north of $300,000. That’s a lot of money to spend on someone who isn’t always rational.

Loving requires interrupted sleep and worrying. It asks us to feed the other person before ourselves and clean up the mess. Loving demands that we do what is best for our children despite their loud objections. Doing the loving may feel like enough. And in some sense, it is. All of these things will result in an adult child. I don’t believe it’s sufficient, though.

Liking our children is different. How do we know when someone likes us? There are body language signs and verbal cues. Children pick up on these just as adults do. What do we do when we like someone? We look him in the eye, lean in when talking, and maintain a physical closeness. We make time for her, offer to help, laugh at jokes. We remember what he tells us and follow up with questions later. We compliment her. We initiate conversations with him. We smile. We tease good naturedly. We pull them out of school to climb a tree and play.

Engaging in our children means sometimes we play with cars on the floor or have the fifth tea party of the day. It means reading the same book multiple times because our child likes it. It means discovering what interests our middle schooler and learning more from him. It means truly listening to the argument of the teenager and maybe changing your mind because you’ve been convinced. It means we respect our kids enough to apologize when we’ve done wrong and ask them to forgive us.

Liking our kids isn’t always easy. It’s hard to like people who demand so much and give little back. It’s hard to like people who throw tantrums, slam doors and roll their eyes. It’s hard to love an uncivilized, selfish savage because that’s what it feels like they are sometimes. It’s a choice. And we make it every day. It’s an exercise in seeing the good hiding behind the bad, in remembering the sweet during the sour, and offering grace instead of anger.

It’s a superhuman feat we can only do with God’s help. As our Father, I believe he both loves and likes us, which is pretty amazing considering what turkeys we can be. If we ask him to assist us in liking our children, he will. He will give us what we need to read “Chicka Chicka Boom Boom” yet again, to listen earnestly to one more description about the merits of the Pontiac G8, to remember the nugget we were told yesterday so we can follow up on it today and to offer a compliment instead of a criticism.

Raising kids to be decent human beings takes a lot, especially because we aren’t always decent human beings ourselves. But we can do hard things with God’s help and a healthy dose of the Eucharist to sustain us. Now, more than ever, we are living in a world where our values are rejected, where God is rejected. Loving our children is critical and liking them is crucial. When it gets hard, ask God for help. He will surely assist because he is so good.