It s a mystery. None the less it s a reality. A reality that profoundly impacts all facets of our existence, including the way we parent. All children have basic needs. There are, for example, basic physical needs.
All children require food, air, water and shelter.
In addition, children have basic emotional needs. These include the need for nurturance and attention. Through the mechanism of parental attention, children derive their sense of being cared for. Recent bad news stories on children raised in Romanian orphanages attest to the devastating impact of insufficient caretaker attention on social and emotional development. Infants and young children who are persistently denied caretaker attention, invariably develop emotional difficulties and abnormal behavior patterns.