gabor on parent love ness
gabor maté on parent love ness
via tweet [https://x.com/newstart_2024/status/2020410783755067657?s=20]:
Gabor Maté cuts straight to the heart of parenting: Parents almost always love their kids deeply—but what the child actually receives isn’t the feeling of love.
It’s the quality of presence.
Calm? Attuned? Emotionally available? Or distracted, stressed, depressed, traumatized, overworked?
Any of those block the full experience of love, even when the intention is pure and the effort is everything they had.
You can know in your head your parent loved you… yet still carry the ache of not feeling fully seen or held in real time.
This isn’t blame—it’s biology and attachment truth. Kids don’t register abstract affection; they register nervous system safety through moment-to-moment connection.
In a world that glorifies hustle over presence, this distinction changes everything—for healing our own wounds and breaking cycles with the next generation.
Which lands harder: knowing the love was there, or feeling the absence of presence?
notes/quotes from 1 min clip:
i never doubt that parents love their kids or that there’s at least an impulse in them to do so.. but the love that the parent feels is not the love the child receives.. what the child receives is the quality of the parent’s presence.. are they calm/attuned/emotionally-present.. or are they preoccupied/stressed/depressed/traumatized/over-worked..whatever.. any of those conditions.. the child does not experience the love in its whole sense.. but even though you might know your mother loved you and i’m sure she did in her own way and she did her very best.. but she was not able to give you those qualities that you would view in your heart experience of love
maté parenting law.. parents are the first ness.. gabor on parenting.. et al
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be you. 