Love & Rage Review: Understanding the Emotional World of Children
Rajkumari Sharma Tankha
Love & Rage: The Inner World of Children by child psychotherapist Nupur Dhingra Paiva (Yoda Press, 235 pages, Rs 450) explores the emotional world of children—most of whom she has counselled over the years and whose stories she shares with permission. “By sharing these stories, I want to start conversations in people’s heads, between the child in them and the adult exterior and between generations in families, even if it is only a silent conversation with one participant,” the author writes in her preface.
But this book is not just about understanding children’s emotions; it is equally about understanding parenting challenges in today’s world. As the back cover mentions, “The book also takes a reader on a journey into their inner world of intense raging emotions which often goes unheeded by the outside world.”
Understanding the Emotional Challenges of Modern Childhood
No one can deny that these are difficult times for children. With both parents working, rising crime rates and unlimited access to information through the internet, the emotional challenges children face today are immense. Their daily struggle with two equally strong emotions—love and rage—often pushes them towards peers for answers when emotionally involved parenting is absent. Not ideal, but increasingly common.
Most adults—parents, relatives, teachers and even doctors—focus heavily on a child’s physical and cognitive development. Social development comes next, but emotional development often remains neglected, says the author. Sadly, most parent-child interactions revolve around studies, instructions, advice and expectations. While a mother may quickly respond to a child’s physical discomfort, she is often slower to recognise emotional distress, points out Paiva.
Parenting, Emotional Neglect and Family Dynamics
Drawing from real counselling cases from her professional career, Paiva discusses crucial parenting and child psychology issues such as sibling rivalry, behavioural problems caused by emotional neglect, and the impact of absent fathers and troubled adult relationships on children’s mental health.
In many Indian households, fathers continue to play a limited role in child-rearing. The importance of a father’s emotional involvement in a child’s life rarely receives the attention it deserves. This is one of the key concerns Love & Rage addresses, and Paiva deserves appreciation for highlighting this often-overlooked issue.
The author also examines seemingly harmless everyday incidents that can leave deep and lasting emotional scars on children.
Valuable Lessons for Parents and Caregivers
Through the book, Paiva offers several important insights, perhaps the most significant being the importance of self-worth and emotional self-care. Drawing from her own life experiences, she writes that being undemanding, restrained and self-effacing is not a healthy path to self-worth. Resourcefulness born only out of frustration may reflect grit, but not necessarily emotional well-being.
She also offers strong words of caution for parents: our earliest relationships become our emotional blueprints. We often treat others the way we were treated as children. Her message is clear—treat your children with emotional sensitivity and care for their inner needs.
This book helps readers understand both their children and the child within themselves. It sheds light on children’s emotional needs and the consequences of neglecting them. Love & Rage offers deep insights into child emotional development and serves as an essential read for parents, educators and caregivers. As Paiva rightly points out, children need far more than food, clothes and education—it is high time parents recognised their emotional needs too.
