The Three Loves Your Child Needs — And How Too Many Families Lose One
The school called at 2 PM.
"Come pick up your son. We have a safety situation."
It was the fourth call that month. The middle of winter.
What Jerry Did
The fire drill alarm went off and the class was told to line up, leave immediately, follow the adult, no exceptions. Jerry didn't want to go. He wanted to get his coat first. They said no. So he took off — on his own, through the building, got his coat, came back. By then the school had people searching every hallway. The fire department was being notified. The principal was on the phone.
Jerry was eight years old and he thought the rule was stupid. He wasn't wrong about that, actually. But that wasn't the point.
His father came to get him. He sat in the principal's office and listened patiently to everything — the seriousness of the situation, the protocol, the fire department involvement, all of it. His arm was around his son the whole time. Jerry stared at the floor and said nothing.
When it was over, they walked to the car. The father looked at his son.
"You want to go home, or Dunkin' Donuts?"
Jerry answered immediately: "Dunkin' Donuts."
What Happened in the Car
This is where the first love showed up.
The father didn't lecture. Didn't debrief. Didn't walk through the administrative nuances of fire drill protocol and the dangers of disobedience. He drove and he listened.
Jerry started talking the way you talk to your best friend.
"It was stupid, Dad. We had all the time in the world and they wanted us to go outside and stand in the cold. I just wanted to get my coat. They tried to stop me, so I took off and got it. It's so stupid."
And the father — instead of correcting, instead of reminding him of the principal's very reasonable points — entered his son's world.
"Why can't they let you get your coat? What kind of rule is that?"
Not sarcasm. Not manipulation. Genuine curiosity from someone who is actually on your side.
And Jerry opened up completely. Told his father everything — what happened in school that day, how he'd gotten in a fight with another kid, the game he was playing, the things that interested him, the things that bothered him. Everything a kid normally keeps locked away from a parent came pouring out. Because he wasn't talking to an authority figure. He was talking to a friend.
That's fraternal love. The friendship layer. The love that says: I am not above you right now. I am next to you. Tell me what's real.
The Lesson — Without a Lecture
Jerry still needed to understand fire drills. That was real. The father knew it. But he also knew that a lecture in the car would have shut Jerry down completely — and he would have learned nothing except how to avoid his father.
So the father made a call. He got connected to the assistant fire chief.
He told Jerry: "I arranged for us to visit the fire station and see how the trucks work and what the firemen do. We might as well understand the smart way to deal with fires and fire drills."
Jerry didn't argue. It made sense to him. It was framed like something a friend would propose — not a punishment, an adventure.
The visit was extraordinary.
They climbed on the fire trucks. Saw how the hoses worked, how the water came through, what the pressure felt like. They watched the training the firemen did every single day — pulling simulated victims from burning structures, navigating smoke, working under pressure. They saw the room where a dozen big men in comfortable recliners were watching a movie.
"They're spending the night," the chief explained. "You never know when a fire is going to show up."
Jerry took that in. These weren't bureaucrats with clipboards making stupid rules. These were serious men who slept at the station because fire doesn't make appointments.
Then came the pole.
They stood at the top and looked down. The drop was steep. Neither Jerry nor his father particularly wanted to go first. So the chief called one of his men over. The guy got up, smiled, grabbed the pole, those giant rubber boots already on, and disappeared down the hole. They followed by the stairs.
At the end, the chief sat them down for questions. The father asked — in front of his son, so Jerry could hear the answer — "What's the smartest way to handle a fire situation?"
The chief told them. Jerry listened to every word.
They went home with videos on how modern houses burn differently than old ones. Jerry watched them that night, completely captivated.
He said, at the end: "I'm an expert on fire now."
They played fire games after — how close can you get your fingers to a candle flame, reading the heat, understanding the edge. Jerry was fearless in the right way now. Not reckless. Informed.
That was the last fire drill problem that child ever had.
The Three Loves
I've worked with families for almost thirty years. I've seen every configuration of love — too much of one kind, none of another, love that looks right from the outside and feels wrong from the inside. And I've come to believe that a healthy family culture requires three distinct kinds of love running at the same time.
Too many families lose one of them — not because they don't love deeply, but because the traditional system never made room for all three. The culture they inherited only taught one. It isn't a failure of love. It's a failure of the system to show them what was available.
Familial love is the one everyone knows. The bond. The floor. We stay together no matter what. This is what was in that car before the father said a word — the fact that he showed up, that his arm went around his son, that he stayed present through the fourth call that month without withdrawing his love.
But familial love isn't just warmth. It includes the hard thing — the willingness to let a child suffer the consequences of their own choices because you love them enough to let the lesson land. Setting limits. Removing privileges. Holding the line even when it hurts both of you. Not because you enjoy it. Because the bond is strong enough to survive the discomfort, and the child needs to learn that their choices have weight. Familial love is what makes discipline possible without destroying the relationship. Without it, nothing else holds — and without its harder edge, it isn't complete.
But familial love alone produces duty. Obligation. A child who behaves because they have to, not because they want to. And for a significant portion of children — the ones who don't respond to authority the way the system expects — it produces resistance. They feel the bond, but they also feel the ceiling. The relationship is vertical, not horizontal. Parent above, child below. And they push back against the ceiling with everything they have.
Fraternal love is the love many families start with and lose along the way. The friendship layer. The equality. It gets lost not through indifference but through force — the slow accumulation of moments where a parent overrode a child's will, imposed their judgment, demanded compliance without consent. You can't force someone against their will repeatedly and keep the friendship alive. The authority survives. The bond survives. But the friend disappears.
When the father said "Why can't they let you get your coat? What kind of rule is that?" — he stepped off the parenting platform and stood next to his son. Not as an authority reviewing the situation. As a friend who was genuinely on his side.
This is not permissiveness. The father knew Jerry had to learn about fire drills. He never wavered on that. But he separated the bond of friendship from the enforcement of the lesson. First the friendship — fully, without agenda. Then the lesson, framed in the language of a friend proposing something worth doing.
When a child experiences fraternal love from a parent, something unlocks. The performance stops. The defense comes down. Jerry stopped being a kid in trouble and became a person talking to someone he trusted completely. Everything came out — the fight, the game, the real version of what happened, the things that mattered to him. That information is gold. You cannot get it with authority. You can only get it with friendship.
Forgiving love is the grace. The repair after the break. It's present in this story in what the father chose NOT to do — he didn't shame Jerry in the car, didn't make the Dunkin' Donuts conditional on an apology, didn't reference the three previous calls when Jerry already knew about them. He met his son where his son was, without requiring him to earn his way back to warmth first.
Forgiving love doesn't mean there are no consequences. Jerry absolutely learned what fire drills are for. The consequence was real — he spent an afternoon at the fire station instead of playing. But the consequence came wrapped in adventure and curiosity and a father who asked the chief the right question so his son could hear the answer. The lesson landed because the love was already there. It had nowhere to go but in.
When All Three Run Together
Here's what I want you to see in this story:
The father didn't choose between being Jerry's friend and being his father. He was both, at the same time, moving fluidly between them as the situation called for it.
In the car — fraternal. Next to him. On his side. Why can't they let you get your coat?
Through the month of calls — familial. I'm here. I keep showing up. The bond doesn't break because the school called again.
At Dunkin' Donuts, at the fire station, in the question to the chief — forgiving. No score being kept. No "this is the fourth time." Just: what does this kid need to learn, and what's the most interesting way to teach it?
The cascade that followed was natural. Jerry left that fire station as an expert. He had respect for what firemen do — real respect, earned through seeing it firsthand, not imposed through a lecture. He had a story to tell. He had knowledge nobody in his class had. His fire became fuel for something.
And his father? He left that fire station as his son's best friend.
That's the 4 LAWS culture. Not a perfect house. Not a compliant child. A relationship that can hold friendship and structure and grace at the same time — and a child who learns not because he's forced to, but because the person he loves most made learning feel like the obvious thing to do.
For the Parent Who's Getting the Calls
If your phone rings from school and it's the fourth time this month — I'm not here to tell you it's easy. It isn't. The calls are real. The school's concerns are real. The exhaustion is real.
But I want you to consider something before you get in the car.
Which love are you bringing?
If you bring familial love alone — the authority, the structure, the "we've talked about this" — you will get compliance at best and resentment at its worst. The behavior may change. The connection won't grow.
If you add fraternal love — even just for the drive to Dunkin' Donuts — everything opens. Not because you're giving up your authority. Because you're earning something authority can't buy: the truth of who your child is and what they actually need.
And if you can find the forgiving love somewhere in there — the grace that doesn't require them to earn their way back to warmth — you won't just solve the fire drill problem.
You'll become the person they want to talk to. About everything. For the rest of their life.
That's what was available in that car. Jerry's father took it.
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Dr. Eduardo M. Bustamante is a Licensed Clinical Psychologist (MA PSY3644) with 35+ years of experience specializing in children's behavioral health. He is the creator of the 4 LAWS of Trust and Talent and founder of 4 LAWS Academy. Learn more at 4lawsacademy.com.