I agree with what Brazleton says throughout most of the chapter. However, he and I diverge at the very end where he says that discipline is showing your love by telling the child they've gone too far.
While I absolutely agree that discipline is an act of love, there is a lot more to love than this chapter covers.
As Brazleton correctly states, parents and children establish love by the parent cuddling, touching, cooing, etc. and the baby showing her love in response by smiling. Babies do indeed recognize that Mommy shows her love in a certain way, Daddy shows his love in a different way and a friend of the family shows their love in a still different manner.
However, as the baby grows older she will of course start to understand more the complexities of everyday life. A loving parent wants their child to eat a balanced diet and wants them to have room to be able to eat the said healthy food they have prepared for dinner. A little girl comes to her mother and asks for a cookie just before dinner. Out of loving mindfulness of the child's eating habits, the mother tells the little girl she can't have a cookie because it is too close to dinnertime. The daughter, however, does not see the situation this way. She feels slighted because Mommy has always let her have cookies before. Therefore, if her mother is not letting the little girl have a cookie at this time of the day just before dinner, the little girl surmises the mother doesn't love her anymore because of the disruption in the giving out of cookies. Thus, the little girl begins to resent her mother.
God is love. Hence, without Jesus Christ, we cannot truly love.
Often as children mature and begin to understand the world around them more, they will interpret their parents' love as something deserved by the child because she is such a precious, cute, lovely little girl. After all, that's what everybody always says. If she has these traits, then, the little girl can come to the conclusion that she is the best thing in the world and that everyone should cater to her. She begins to see people merely as a means of getting what she wants. If this pattern of thinking continues in this child, she will grow up to be like most adults, with no true ability to love others; only a user of her fellow human beings.
Though it is vitally important to establish love in your baby by methods such as Brazleton describes, a parent needs to move on from establishing this basic level of love to eventually instilling the fullness of love within their child.
1 Corinthians 13 is the famous love chapter of the Bible. Most translations other than the King James use the word love in this passage. However, the correct word to be used is the one the King James translators chose: charity.
There are four different kinds of love. Though two or more of these are often intertwined in various relationships among people, for the sake of clarity we will examine each of them separately.
Affection (phelia) is the love such as parents and children have with one and other, or felial love. This is the type on a basic level which Brazleton describes in Chapter Two of the book currently being discussed.
Friendship (agape) is the love friends share with one another. Most Christians think this is the type of love Paul is talking about in 1 Corinthians 13.
Eros is sexual love. Under God's plan, it is meant to be shared with only one person in and of it's deepest expression, i.e. through sexual intercourse. Sexual intercourse is meant to be engaged in by one man and one woman united under a covenant of marriage. The coital coupling is the most intimate act two humans can participate in together and is thus meant only for two wedded life partners of oposite genders.
Sexual love can be expressed by two people of the oposite sex who aren't married in lesser ways such as kissing and touching, but still, one shouldn't just let anyone do these types of things to them in a sexual way.
Finally, charity is the love which Paul is describing in the Biblical passage in question. Charity is encapsulated in the two great commandments: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, soul, mind, and strength"* and "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself."*
* Above passages in quotation marks are paraphrases.
* It is not wrong to love oneself. Otherwise, it would be impossible to disobey this second commandment.
The church has distorted love by mistaking charity for friendship. We are not to have friendship with literally everyone in the world, i.e. with those who will just use and abuse us over and over again, take us for all we are worth and come back for more.
God's people are, however, to treat everyone we meet as fellow human beings with intrinsic value.
The world (meaning the unsaved) have distorted love into something which entails approving of whatever someone does. However, whereas I love my child, I will discipline her when she does wrong. Whereas I love homosexuals as human beings with value because they are human beings, I will speak out against the lifestyle (really a deathstyle) that they lead. Whereas I love the intrinsically valuable human being yet to be born, I will speak out against abortion and those "lawmakers" and lobby groups trying to make it easier and more permissible under the law to obtain. Whereas I love my God and His people, I will speak out against those who speak against Him and break His laws.
Thus we see that a parent needs to teach their child about these four kinds of love. Instruction and teaching are also needed with regard to the fact of the value of a human being precisely because they are a human being created by the Lord God in His image.
The above can only be taught if the parent has a right, proper relationship with Jesus Christ, the Son of God. (See Acts 2 38)
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