Things Children Absolutely Need (Which Usually Cost Nothing)

Children remind me of African violets, those small, touchy houseplants my mother's generation used to fuss over. A violet reacts to wherever you set it down, and a child reacts to the home you plant them in. There are records of babies in orphanages who were kept clean and fed and still died, because nobody held them or spoke to them with any warmth. And yet you can find adults who lavish more care on the violets on their windowsill than on the kids under their roof.

No two violets want the same amount of sun or water, and no two children want the same amount of attention, affection, or backing. Deny a plant what it needs and it shrivels. A child does the same, sometimes on the inside where you can't see it right away. Get the care right, though, and what grows back pays you many times over.

You might lose a few violets along the way and shrug it off. You cannot shrug off losing a single child. Kids are tougher than we give them credit for, but toughness has a limit, and a badly damaged child can end up unable to help themselves, let alone contribute to the people around them.

A violet needs soil, water, light, maybe a little fertilizer. What does a child need to grow in a good direction? Love, backing, attention, and the kind of love that holds steady no matter what. Those seem to be the non-negotiables.

A parent can't pour everything into one child and leave another running on empty. I've watched it happen in families where one kid is seriously sick. The urgent case gets all the energy, which makes sense, but the other children in that house still need somebody to notice them.

It doesn't take an illness, either. Some kids are simply easier for a parent to adore. Think about how much weight a mother or father puts on having the athlete, the gymnast, the beauty queen, the honor student, versus the quiet one in the corner, the awkward one, the kid who isn't especially talented or good-looking. That preference leaves marks.

Then there are people who probably shouldn't be raising children at all. (For the record, I'm not making an argument for abortion here; I'm a strong believer in adoption when a situation calls for it.) And the way some welfare systems are set up doesn't always nudge parents toward actually showing up for the job of raising a kid well.

Money isn't the deciding factor in any of this. The things a child really needs usually can't be purchased. They cost hours more than they cost dollars. At the top of the list sits unconditional love, the kind one person keeps handing another regardless of what that person does or says.

Support matters too, and not only the roof-and-dinner kind. A kid can pull off something real and have it slide past the family without a word of encouragement. When effort goes unseen and no one lifts a finger to help, the child starts thinking, what's the point, and stops trying.

A blue ribbon at the county fair can go unmentioned. Making the team, or getting cut from it, landing the part in the play, or losing it, all of that can vanish without comment at home. "You did what?" is the tell: it means a whole slice of the kid's life slipped by unwatched. Worse is when a child is hurt or ill and nobody clocks it until things have turned genuinely dangerous.

Unmet psychological needs do real damage to some children. The ones who come through it can be remarkably resilient. The ones who don't are lost, and that loss ripples outward. Compounding the problem, the adults deciding these children's fates are often not up to the task. A judge in my own family put it bluntly: in his courtroom, custody tends to land with whoever is least equipped to decide.

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