Unconditional Love

Unconditional love is: not needing a condition to change in order to feel love (which is who you really are: a person who loves).

If you were to say to your mate: "You are not responsible for my happiness.  I am."
That's unconditional love.

If you were to say to your kids: "You don't have to (behave in a certain way) for me to feel better."  That is unconditional love. 

Consequently, what happens when kids (and mates) feel unconditional love is a magical demonstration of who they really are: Loving, kind, thoughtful, cooperative, eager to please (and to love), and also you get to see the uninhibited releasing of their unique intelligence (not regurgitated learning) that adds to the world.   (see my examples in other posts). 
They behave that way not to please you, but because it feels good to be that way.

What if your mate did something that made you uncomfortable (or sad or mad or afraid)?  Is it your job to talk your mate into changing his behavior?  Nope. That's conditional love.  ("I need this condition to change in order for me to feel better")  See Law of Attraction and Tools.

When you are responsible for your own happiness, and you understand that happiness is based simply on what you think, you can let go of controlling anyone else's behavior (because you have no control over it anyway) and you can let go of needing approval from anyone else (because their approval is fickle and arbitrary in that it is given only when they feel good about themselves, which may be fleeting...).

    1.What if you believed in your own current and future well-being? (because it is assured. See the Reading List)
    2.What if you believed in a perfect relationship for yourself? (because you've created what you want, See Ask and It Is Given in the Reading List)
    3.What if you believed in your kids' well-being? (because they have created what they want. (see above)

We've been taught to believe that relationship means 'sacrifice' and 'compromise,'
and kids mean 'control,' and 'teaching', and 'protection from harm,' and 'sacrifice'.
If you are willing to question all those beliefs, here is what happens:

Relationship is not limiting each other, nor making each other whole, rather, you benefit each other.  Loving unconditionally means each person gets to be who they really are: 
You don't give up your opinion, you don't give up your preferences, you don't give up your free time.

Ironically, the awareness of having unlimited freedom makes you feel utterly free to give your time freely.

When you approach 'relationship' with the understanding that you are each responsible for your own happiness, you free each other to be completely who you really are, without 'sacrifice'.

When you are with someone who feels free to be his or her self, someone who puts her own happiness first, he or she is exciting and fun and inspiring to be with. She is loving and kind and generous and feels good about herself.  And about you.

Someone who is free to be herself does not do things out of obligation, or to make someone else feel better.  She does things out of love and inspiration. Someone who feels good about herself knows that others are perfectly capable of making themselves feel better, and she inspires them to do so.

When you approach child rearing as a learning experience, rather than a teaching experience, it changes the whole dynamic.

The kid you have is a perfect match to what you need to learn.

Also, when you give your child freedom; to explore, to do things at his own pace, to 'buck the system,' he becomes the easy catalyst to new, unexpected, amazing experiences that benefit you and him and everyone around him. 
That's unconditional love.