Unconditional Positive Regard: Why It Matters for Kids

I have a lot of work to do on myself. If I don’t, I’m at risk of passing along my issues and my trauma to others. Several times a day I think: “I’m too messed up to be a good parent! I’m messing up my kids!” Or I think, “I haven’t done enough self-work to be the kind of leader my team deserves.” In those moments, I take a deep and try to remind myself that we are all on a journey. We are all doing our best. One of the things I am trying to work on the most is unconditional positive regard.

Unconditional positive regard comes from the Humanistic Psychology movement and is specifically attributed to Carl Rogers.

What is unconditional positive regard?

Unconditional positive regard refers to accepting and supporting another exactly as they are, without evaluating or judging them.

From the Harley Counseling Therapy Blog

Unconditional positive regard is so hard for me to bestow upon others because I don’t bestow it upon myself. I don’t bestow it upon myself for a couple reasons. First, my father never wanted anything to do with me, which left me with a deep feeling of unworthiness. Second, the women in my family didn’t model unconditional positive regard for themselves either.

Unconditional positive regard is such an important part of raising children in a healthy way. They need to feel like you love and support them no matter which choices they make for themselves or which mistakes they make.

And this is so hard for me to figure out! How can I let my child feel supported and loved when he’s calling his brother “fat”? How do I hold high expectations for how we treat each other in a way that still feels like mistakes are okay? And that we are still fundamentally good humans?

I wrote about how Matt and I try to “parent in the middle” by being authoritative rather than permissive or authoritarian. Being an authoritative parent is about high levels of connection/empathy/understanding, but it’s also about high expectations. So how do I enforce expectations in a way that doesn’t make my children feel like I’m judging or evaluating them? I seriously feel stuck.

Why does it matter for children?

These two contrasting examples highlight the important of unconditional positive regard for children:

If you were lucky enough to have had a healthy childhood and good parenting, your parent or guardian loved and accepted you regardless of how you behaved or what you did. If you made mistakes, or had a temper tantrum, it was okay. When you were a teenager with wildly different opinions to your parent, that was entirely acceptable. You were trying out new things and discovering who you are, and you were offered unconditional positive regard.

If your childhood did not contain unconditional positive regard, you were shown disapproval if you did something that did not match what your parent wanted or if you disagreed with their idea of what was correct. You were only accepted if you fit into their wants and needs. Perhaps you were taught that some of your emotions were ‘bad’ and that you must learn to hide them and be more pleasing. You were shown conditional positive regard.

From the Harley Counseling Therapy Blog

It’s exciting to work on this! Matt and I are starting the Therapeutic Assessment process together this week, which I really think is going to support us on this journey. That’s the process I used last year to uncover a lot about myself.