Love as Essential to a Child's Growth

A tiny child needs not only food and shelter but something more -- much more -- a feeling of love, that someone cares for him, ready to die for him, that he is really loved, that he is important, precious. And, so he begins to live and begins to sense the value of his being. And, so it is that life rises in him and he grows in confidence in himself and in his possibilities of life and of creation.
- Jean Vanier, Tears of Silence, p.8