Love is a very important part child's life. In fact if a child is to grow up into a happy, healthy, successful, productive adult, he or she needs love and support, they must have a very nurturing and caring environment. Growing up without it, can be just as harmful and damaging to a child as being deprived of food and water.

Depriving your children of love, can have very serious long term mental, emotional phycological and even physical consequences. Of all the things that you give your children, love and affection are the most essential and vital for their well being. When a child is deprived of love, affection and human contact it has a huge detrimental emotional impact on them.

Children who are deprived or denied love when young, are often angrier and more aggressive. It affects their brain growth and development, it affects the way they interact with others as well as their behavior, they experience more social problems. They have poor coping and dealing skills, they are often more withdrawn, shy and timid.

The early years are some of the most important years of a Childs life, their brains are the most flexible. These are the years that sets the foundation for the rest of his or her life. It is the most sensitive time for a child's development. This is the crucial time of life that helps to shape the development of the brain, and the over all health of their body's systems. It is the time when a child is the most vulnerable and at risk, it is the time when the brain is the most adaptable and pliable.

Being deprived and starved of love and affection especially at an early age, is just as harmful and damaging as physical starvation. Let's discuss What happens to your physical body when you are starving physically. What does a person experience during physical starvation?

I don't know how many times I've said or have heard other people say; I'm so hungry I could eat a horse. The hungrier we are, the bigger our appetites gets, so when we are really hungry, instead saying; I'm so hungry I could eat a horse, we might say; I'm so hungry I could eat an elephant. Most of us have felt that way before, but very few of us have experienced extreme hunger or starvation.

Starvation is a severe deficiency of the nutrition that is needed to sustain your life.  When you are starving, your metabolism slows down, your body can no longer regulate your body's temperature. Your body can no longer supply the essential nutrients to your vital organs, your heart, lungs and other organs begin to shrink. Your body begins to feed on itself. You begin to feel weak and fatigued. You can no longer think straight or concentrate. Your body and it's tissue begin to waste away, until eventually death occurs.

The same way we experience physical starvation, our bodies can also experience and suffer from emotional starvation and hunger. The side effects of emotional starvation can be just as devastating and harmful as physical starvation. In fact, emotional nourishment is just as crucial as physical nourishment, it is an essential element to our overall health and well being. 

Being deprived of love and affection, can have very serious consequences, it can cause low self esteem, it can cause us to have a poor self-image, it can even cause us to become self-destructive. A deficiency of love, often leads to feelings of emptiness, feelings worthless and loneliness. Without love, we may feel a huge void or a gapping hole in our hearts and in our life that we can never seem to fill. The lack of love can lead to severe emotional damage and trauma, it can also cause catastrophic emotional and phycological  failure.

Everyone has a internal hunger, a longing and a need to be loved, to feel wanted and accepted, we want to know that we matter and that our life matters. If those needs and desires are not satisfied, our hearts feel empty and unsettled, we become captive to our fears and doubts, our insecurities can overwhelm us and become the masters of our lives, while our hopes and dreams begins to fade. When we are starved of love, our heart's aches and yearns to find something to fill the emptiness inside.

If a person is denied love and affection as a child, it can have both short term and long term harmful consequences, it can rob a child of  their youth and their innocence. It can prevent them from blossoming into stable, self-confident, independent, self-reliant adults. It can prevent them from reaching their full potential, and it greatly reduces their chances of recognizing true unconditional love and happiness. Children who are deprived of love are less likely to build and maintain happy successful relationships in the future.

When a person experiences physical starvation, the stomach begins to churn and growl, there is a gnawing empty sensation in the stomach. The body begins to release stomach acids that begins to attack the lining of the stomach which causes stomach pains that often become more acute and intense the longer you go without food. This is your body's way of trying tell you that it needs food now. The longer you go without food, the more your hunger and your cravings increases. It is much the same with emotional starvation, the longer we go without having our emotional needs satisfied, the more acute and intense, our cravings and hunger become, until eventually it overwhelming us. 

If a person was deprived of love as a child, it does not mean that they are condemned eternally to live a loveless, miserable, sad, lonely, empty life. Some who have experienced a deprivation of love and affection have learned to treasure and cherish it all the more, when they do find it. It may even make them more open and receptive to love. They will value it more and not take it for granted because they realize how precious it is. They will be willing to completely surrender themselves to love unconditionally, because they know what it's  like to live without love.

 Going hungry from time to time, is nothing compared to the emotional starvation and the loneliness that a child experiences when they are emotionally neglected and deprived. Physical starvation is probably easier to bounce back from and recover from, then emotion starvation.