17 Precious Gifts Your Kids Need from You to Thrive - Life's Little Pleasures and Struggles

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Have you thought about what kind of gifts your kids need from you?

As parents our most precious assets are our children, and yet so often out of our own needs and desires, we forget they are their own unique people. Our kids need us for their healthy emotional, mental, and physical growth. Parenting requires we find the balance between loving our children, disciplining them, guiding them, and allowing them the necessary freedom, confusion and suffering essential for their self-discovery.

All children have some very basic needs, which when given in the correct manner, help them to develop the resiliency required for a strong sense of self. They don’t need expensive toys or latest gadgets from us to feel happy and loved. It’s time to take a step back and realize what our kids truly need from us. Let’s put our money away and invest in things of greater value. Here are 17 precious gifts that your kids need from you to thrive and grow.

“You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.” ~Kahlil Gibran

Unconditional love

All children need unconditional love. Your kids need to know that no matter what mistakes they make or how things turn out for them, it doesn’t change your feelings for them or affect their relationships with you. They want to know that no matter what, you will always love them and care for them.

When we show love to our kids with fancy, unnecessary things, we raise kids who feel entitled to more new stuff and have low capacities to experience lasting joy. What we can never give too much of to our children is our love. Love is simple and pure. It’s not a material thing, and it is the feeling of complete acceptance. We should love them because love is what they need.

Time

The gift of time is the one gift you can never get back or take back once it’s gone. So think carefully about who or what is getting yours. Your children need your love, time, and attention. There is no substitute for those things coming from you. Never let babysitters, friends, gadgets, videogames, or other things become the parent or caretaker of your children.

We are living in a time and age where we are keeping busier than ever, and all have obligations, but your kids must come first. Make some quality time daily to spend with your kids to strengthen your bond and connection with them, in whatever capacity you can. With a teenager it may only be 10 to 15 minutes of facetime with them, and that may be all they need, but make sure they get it on a regular basis. Whenever your kids are in need, they need to know you will be present.

Attention

In a world full of distraction, your attention is a priceless gift. One of the very precious gifts your kids need from you is your undivided attention. For children, getting attention is even more important than for adults. Children need your attention in order to grow, develop self-esteem, and to flourish and succeed. There is even research showing that parental attentiveness has a connection to releasing children’s growth hormones.

Hugs and Kisses

Your kids need your hugs and kisses while growing up. Touch is one of the most important and grounding aspects of a relationship. It has shown to have an immediate impact on reducing stress levels. A 20 second hug can help your kid grow smarter, healthier, happier, more resilient and closer to you.

Your children are going to go through the same hardships as any other human being. When we see them struggling with something, we need to keep our own anxieties and stress aside for a while and offer affection and support, letting them know that “it’s alright, and this too shall pass.” Talk to your children, hug and kiss them often, and snuggle them. It gives them comfort and makes them feel loved.

Stability

Stability comes from family and community. Ideally, a family remains together in a stable household, but when that’s not possible, it’s important to disrupt the child’s life as little as possible. Stability gives your kids a sense of belonging and security. A stable home becomes the foundation on which children build the rest of their lives. They need to know their place in the family, who they can trust, and who is going to be there for them. Don’t ignore those things or keep changing.

A Peaceful Home

A calm, peaceful, and welcoming home is a precious gift. To know that you can always come home and take refuge from the chaotic world outside is among the sweetest things in all the world. If your home feels peaceful where the environment promotes an overall sense of well-being, you and your family will create more happy memories there to cherish for long. Your children will appreciate that because a peaceful, welcoming home creates emotional security for your children.

The world outside can be selfish, cruel, chaotic, and emotionally painful to deal with. But when your home is a sanctuary, your children are better able to weather the world outside their home – knowing they have a peaceful place waiting for them to return and take refuge in.

Education

Education is one of the priceless gifts your kids need from you in order to flourish and thrive. The importance of good education can’t be undermined or ignored. Your kids need that to succeed in life. Make sure they get the best possible education for their future. This includes school, of course, but it also includes the invaluable life lessons you provide during the time you spend together.

Opportunity for Personal Growth

Every person has the potential, both professionally and personally, to accomplish greater things in life. That’s also true for your kids. Your kids need opportunities to experience new things so they can find out what they enjoy and what they are good at.

Take the time to help them develop the skills they may someday want to use. Give them the opportunities to learn new things and grow. Help your kids pursue their dreams, and whenever possible, help them open doors that might otherwise have remained closed. Or better yet, show them how to open those doors themselves.

Patience

Parenting is difficult and challenging because we have an idea of what we think is best for our children and we can over pressure them to be the image we hold of them. However, our children need our patience not our pressure. Each child’s development is on its own unique course. If they are not up to the standard in every area of life, losing patience and adding pressure only defeats them.

Showing patience is a genuine gift because, ultimately, showing patience shows how much you care. Patience communicates we believe, that in time and with enough practice, they will find their way. Give them room to experiment, explore, and make mistakes. When they make mistakes or fail in some endeavors, we need to be patient with them and show them the right way if we know better. We do not want to raise children who only feel loved when they are performing well.

Encouragement

One of the most beautiful and powerful gifts your kids need is encouragement from you. Your words are powerful. They can make or they can break. The simple words that you choose to speak today can offer encouragement and positivity to your kids. Or your words can send them further into despair. So, make sure you choose the words carefully that encourage them to do better in life, and avoid all kinds of negative talks.

Appreciation

Your kids need the gift of appreciation from you. When kids get enough appreciation, they develop into secure adults with healthy self-esteem and confidence. How do we ensure that there is enough appreciation in the lives of our children? However big or small their achievement is, acknowledge them and appreciate them. That will help them to achieve even more.

Children who are recognized and appreciated for the good things they do such as studying hard and doing well in school or helping in household chores, will likely repeat more of these behaviors. And if they get appreciation, they are more likely to be appreciative. That will increase their emotional well-being and overall happiness.

Faith

Raising children is scary and as parents we can get so caught up in fear we forget to have faith. Our belief in our children determines their belief in themselves. When our children feel dominated by our fears about every new little thing they want to do, explore, or experience, our fears covertly communicate we do not believe in them. This covert message undermines our children causing them to either not believe in their abilities or to rebel against the controlling nature of our fears.

We must have faith in our children, and give them the rope they need to struggle, discover, and succeed.

Discipline

Every adult who cares for children has a responsibility to guide and correct them toward appropriate behaviors. Children need to learn everything from the ground-up including appropriate behaviors, good manners, how to get along with others, how to solve a problem, and how to achieve their dreams. Discipline should not be avoided or withheld. Instead, it should be consistent and positive.

When a child receives a time-out after hitting his sibling, he learns skills that will help him manage his anger better in the future. If you refuse to give in to a temper tantrum, your child will learn that’s not a good way to get his needs met. When you ignore whining, your child will learn that whining won’t change your behavior.

Guidance

Positive guidance and discipline are crucial for children because they promote self-control, teach responsibility and help them make thoughtful choices. It’s our duty to teach our kids right from wrong, but it’s not for us to decide who they are supposed to be. As parents we need to stay away from controlling, manipulating, and pulling our children away from their natural interests.

When you use positive guidance, you take a step back, check your own emotions, and calmly take on the role of encouraging, and training a child to build the social skills and self-control necessary for future challenges. You accept that just like learning to walk or read, social skills and self-control are learned, and just like learning to walk, there will be missteps along the way. In every learning opportunity, you accept that children will make mistakes and that mistakes are OK. You teach and encourage them to keep trying, and they will eventually get it right.

Family Meal Times

One of the beautiful gifts that your kids need and will always love and remember when they grow up is having meals together. Make meal times a priority in your home. Meals provide unparalleled opportunity for your relationships to grow, the likes of which cannot be found anywhere else. There is a popular saying – “A family that does not eat together, does not grow together.”

To make the family meal times more exciting, you can prepare the meals together as a family during weekends. Spending time in the kitchen with your family creates beautiful memories that last a lifetime.

Also, research shows that children who eat meals with their families are healthy and perform well in schools. So, sit down as a family as often as possible to eat a meal and discuss your day and share stories.

Compassion

One of the wonderful and essential gifts your beloved kids need from you more than anyone else is the gift of compassion. Yet when our children are upset, we often do the opposite: we do not listen or seek to understand or feel their pain or seek to end their suffering. In fact we cause more suffering by being tough on them. That’s not compassionate.

When a friend is upset or cries, we don’t leave him alone, or yell at him to shut up, or lock him in a room, or force him to sit quietly on a couch. That would be considered not only rude behavior but offensive and unacceptable. What the friend needs is compassion – a gentle hug, a receptive ear, someone who understands and feels his pain and wants him to feel better. That same compassion your kids need from you when they are hurt or upset.

As for example, during the pandemic, many of our children are feeling uncertainty and upheaval, just like us parents. They miss school, their friends, and playing sports like they did before. For young children who don’t have the breadth of words to express their worries and fears, or older children who don’t have the emotional ability to get through tough moments, it can be overwhelming. As a result, our kids may be irritable or have more meltdowns and tantrums than usual. But rather than seeing children as uncooperative or insensible, parents can consider whether their behavior is simply an indication that they might be suffering, too. Instead of being mad with them, show them compassion so they can heal.

Hope

This is one of the important gifts your kids need for their healthy mental and emotional growth. Hope is knowing and believing that things will get better and improve. It contributes to our well-being and happiness, and motivates positive action. Hopeful people believe they can influence their goals, that their efforts can have a positive result.

When your child is struggling, they need you to give them hope because it creates strength, endurance, and optimism, and it keeps them going during the difficult moments of their lives. So, when your kids are dealing with disappointments, tell them that it’s not the end of the world, and better days are coming ahead. It will help them be persistent and not give up easily.

These are the most precious gifts your kids need from you that only you can give. Of course, none of these gifts are for sale in the stores, and that makes them so much more meaningful.