Love Through The Eyes Of A Child

Essay, Research Paper

Love through the Eyes of a Child A child s view of love is different than that of an adult. Children are concrete, simplistic, and intense in their love of the people and possessions in their lives. Examples of a child s love are easily seen through observation of their actions and expressions. Typically, children are unable to conceptualize love in an abstract manor. To illustrate this point, the child building a gingerbread house with her grandmother, as pictured in the collage, individually associates love with the grandmother, the candy, and the art she is creating. In contrast, the grandmother has the ability to identify the experience as creating a memory of quality time spent with her grandchild. Because children are so concrete, often their ideas of love are also simplistic.When a child defines love of a person or object, it differs from the love an adult would speak of because; the roots of their attachment are more simplistic. In the collage, the pictures of children playing with their toys and the child playing with his mother, illustrates this point. Typically, children love an object or person based on one generalized feature unlike adults that calls to mind many factors their attachment. Although children s attachments are simplistic, they can be extremely intense as well.

One only needs to experience the loss of a most beloved person or thing to understand the intensity of a child s love. The absence of a loved person or object can be devastating to a small child and until that person or object returns, little solace is attainable. It is often this intensity that adults recall and seek later in life.Children express and experience love in a genuinely unique manner. The concrete and simplistic way, in which they see love, seems to be truly unconditional. The intensity with which they express love is unmatched by any other age group as the love of a child is pure and consuming.