Teaching Children to Love

09 November, 2026

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EduFamilia

Voices

12 September, 2025

6 min

Teaching Children to Love

Education is teaching children to love and to put any other achievement at the service of love

The sole and radical objective of education: to teach how to love

The most perfect and perfecting activity

As we saw in the previous article, the fundamental principle of education is that parents love each other and, as a result of that love, truly love their children (which is already a tremendously profound and effective way of teaching love, the ultimate goal of raising children).

Indeed, the end or goal of this education is that the children, in turn, learn to love, because that is the most proper activity and the one that most improves any person and, as a consequence, the only one that will give them happiness.

Also in the educational field

Interestingly, then, and very briefly:

to educate is to love;
and to love is to teach how to love, how to love:

◊, therefore, the destiny of the human being and the key to his happiness is none other than love.

Therefore, to educate is to teach how to love, to teach how to love.

It is worthwhile to consider this conclusion slowly, as it summarizes the ultimate objective of all educational work: its ultimate and definitive purpose or goal.

To educate is nothing more than to teach how to love,
to teach how to love:
let us never forget this fundamental principle!

Man, a being-for-love

A) Philippe

According to Philippe,

“On the psychological and spiritual level, man’s deepest need is love: to love and be loved.”

B) Singer

To which C. Singer adds:

“Love is what remains when nothing else remains.”

And he immediately adds:

«Deep within us, we all remember when—beyond our failures, our separations, the words we survived—
From the darkness of the night rises, like a barely audible song, the certainty that,
above the disasters of our biographies, beyond even joy, sorrow, birth, death,
There is a space that no one threatens, that no one has ever threatened, and that is in no danger of being destroyed:
an intact space which is that of the love that created our being (that is, the reciprocal love of our parents, acting in close collaboration with the infinite creative Love of God).

C) Boiler

And, in a way, as a summary, Rafael Tomás Caldera explains:

«The true greatness of man, his perfection, therefore, his mission or task, is love.
Everything else—professional ability, prestige, wealth, a longer or shorter life, intellectual development—has to converge in love or, ultimately, it is meaningless.

And even if it is not directed towards love, it could be harmful.

From all of the above, we could conclude that the greatest thing we can do in life, for and to anyone, is to teach them to love.

The only thing that perfects a human being as a person
is his capacity to love, expressed in actions.

And happiness as a consequence!

The only activity that perfects

Ultimately, all the educational efforts of parents must be directed towards teaching each child to love and avoiding anything that makes them more selfish, more closed and self-absorbed, less capable of discovering, harmonizing with, loving, pursuing and achieving the good of others.

Only then will they effectively contribute to making them happy.

And it breeds happiness

Why only love and everything for love?

Because only from love come fulfilment and happiness.

As demonstrated by everyone from the most renowned classical philosophers to the most astute contemporary psychiatrists, and by the sincere experience of each of us, happiness is nothing more than the unintended effect of self-enhancement, of progressive improvement.

And this can only be achieved by loving more and better, expanding the boundaries of one’s own heart.

To achieve this, one certainly needs the best professional training one can obtain, given one’s circumstances. And providing the means to provide it to one’s children is an inescapable duty of parents.
But it is very clear that all this development is ultimately in vain if we do not teach ourselves to put it at the service of others, for love and with love:
which is, again, teaching to love.

All human and professional achievements
contribute nothing
to truly human perfection,
except to the extent that they are placed at the service of love.

Love and happiness

In other words: despite appearances to the contrary and the culturally increased tendency today to think and focus on oneself, happiness is directly and exclusively proportional to each person’s capacity to love, expressed in actions.

He who loves a lot is very happy.
He who has a mediocre love will never achieve complete happiness.
And those who do not know how to love or do not want to love, no matter how successful they may be in the other aspects of human existence, will be truly miserable, even if they sometimes try to hide it or deny it: how many famous and apparently successful people end up admitting that they lead an unbearable life, which they often end with suicide!

Learning and teaching to love are the two most profitable activities in human life: and the expression “teaching to love” aptly sums up the entire educational activity of parents.

Happiness is directly and exclusively proportional
to the real love of each person.

The most common mistake

“Forgetting” about love

Hence, Saint John of the Cross could maintain the well-known phrase:

“At dusk you will be tested on love” and nothing else!

What else should we seek, then, for our children, but that they truly know how to love?

Isn’t the whole educational task reduced to teaching how to love?

To educate, in short
=
to teach loving

Encouraged by the parents themselves

How often, however, do we lose sight of this goal: to love more and better, to serve others!

How many of us want to turn our children into some kind of gifted genius, focused exclusively on their own meagre individual success, drastically competitive, incapable of reaching out to others or even of noticing the most obvious needs of others!

How often, therefore, without intending to and without realizing it, we contribute powerfully to the unhappiness and disillusionment —which sometimes surfaces many years later—of those same children for whom we would sincerely be willing to give our lives!

And how many times the root cause of all of the above is that we ourselves, probably without being fully aware of it, make triumph— and not love —the supreme goal of our existence!

In the evening of our existence
we will only be examined for love.

And the most definitive

With the best intentions, but with a deep inconsistency and not always without guilt, we are doing everything possible to turn them into truly miserable people, to whom we could apply the famous words of Kierkegaard:

“To be deceived about love is the most terrible loss, it is an eternal loss, for which there is no compensation in time or eternity.”

This error, which leads to confusing the ultimate and radical objective, is the most common and the most serious in current education: teaching how to be successful instead of teaching how to love (which is the only way to achieve—derivatively, as an unintended consequence—authentic success, happiness).

“To deceive oneself about love is an eternal loss,
for which there is no compensation
in time or eternity.”

(Continue to)

Tomás Melendo
President of Edufamilia
http://www.edufamilia.com
[email protected]

EduFamilia

Edufamilia es una asociación sin ánimo de lucro, nacida en el año 2005. Su fundador, Tomás Melendo, advirtió que una mejora en la calidad de las familias facilitaría la resolución de bastantes de los problemas que aquejan a la sociedad de hoy. Y, apoyado siempre por su mujer, decidió lanzarse a esta aventura que cuenta con casi veinte años de vida y con múltiples ediciones de los distintos cursos formativos: Másteres y Maestrías, Expertos, cursos más breves, conferencias, ciclos culturales, seminarios y otros programas educativos. Aunque las primeras ediciones tuvieron carácter presencial, actualmente se ha hecho un gran esfuerzo por promover la infraestructura virtual para adaptarse a los nuevos tiempos y que la formación en torno a la familia alcance al mundo entero.