What’s Your Child’s Love Language?
I’m very familiar with the #1 New York Times Best Selling book “The 5 Love Languages” written by Gary Chapman, so when I heard about “The 5 Love Languages of Children”, I didn’t think I really needed to read it. Besides, how hard could it be to figure out my child’s love language: physical touch, words of affirmation, quality time, gifts, or acts of service - right?
Well, as our lives got more and more hectic, I saw frustration levels rise and screaming (and not just the kids) becoming too common. So I bit the bullet and carved out some time to read the book and I was super glad I did. I realized that even if you know WHAT the 5 love languages are, you need actual examples and more details on HOW to apply them in your life, with your children. For those of you who would like to become better parents, I highly recommend picking up the book. The most important thing we can do as parents is to show our kids that we love them and the best way to do that, is to do it in their language, whatever that love language happens to be.
In this blog entry, I’ll share with you what I liked about the book, the biggest insights I had as a parent and my most important takeaway from each love language.
WHAT I LIKED ABOUT THE BOOK:
1. 360 Degree View - It not only explains each love language thoroughly, but it also has helpful additional chapters such as:
Love is the Foundation
How to Discover Your Child’s Love Language
Discipline and the Love Languages
Learning and the Love Languages
Anger and Love
Speaking the Love Languages in Single-parent Families
Speaking the Love Languages in Marriage
2. Application for Children of All Ages - It gives stories, thoughts from kids, suggestions and application strategies for kids aged 5 all the way to teen.
3. Huge List of Ideas for Every Love Language - At the end of each love language chapter, the authors provide several suggestions on how parents can foster that love language with their children. This is especially useful because every child is different and will appreciate certain activities or actions more than others.
MY BIGGEST INSIGHTS AS A PARENT:
There are several quotes from the book which greatly impacted me and serve to remind me of how I can be a better parent. Here they are:
“When you are kind and firm with them, you can’t imagine how much they appreciate you and how thankful they are to have you as their parents!”
When I read this, I was reminded of how easy it is to be a “pushover” parent and give in to what our kids want, especially when they are kicking and screaming for it. But first, once you give in, they will expect you to always give in , after-all, it’s part of their growth to test our boundaries. Second, sometimes giving in to them can be detrimental like allowing a young child too much screen time before bed and then having them unable to sleep well past their bed time….have any of you experienced the crazy aftermath of a sleep deprived child before? I can tell you, it’s not so much fun.
So being firm is important but even more than this, being kind and respectful while we are firm is vital. When we act as dictators, we can push our kids away. However, when we are kind with our approach, it’s much easier to enlist their cooperation and we can forge stronger connections with them for now and the future.
“If I love them only when they meet my requirements or expectations, they will feel incompetent and will believe it’s pointless to do their best, since it is never enough. They will always be plagued by insecurity, anxiety, low self-esteem, and anger.”
My biggest realization from this quote is that we must give love even when our kids display poor behavior. When we provide unconditional love, our kids’ “emotional tanks are full” which then allows them to respond to our parenting and guidance more positively. Children will act like children and often, as adults, we will curb this behaviour or even reprimand for it. So if our kids are acting childish, as expected, the majority of the time and we act disapprovingly, we are acting disapprovingly the majority of the time. Therefore, even if we love our children unconditionally, they may not feel that way because our ratio of constructive criticism to encouragement is off. So now, I make a conscious effort to “let them be children” at least 70% of the time and taper my disappointment and lectures to 30% of the time or less, when it’s really warranted.
“All anger must come out either verbally or behaviorally. Most children are respectful more than 90% of the time so the times they speak out in anger doesn’t necessarily mean they are being disrespectful.”
Reading this changed the way I looked at all past situations where my kids “spoke out of turn” or exploded in anger. Whenever it happened, I’d “get them in trouble” for how they spoke or not being able to control themselves. Now I realize, I should have taken those times as opportunities to teach them how to deal with their anger in a healthy way, one that would benefit them all the way through to adulthood. I learned 3 important steps:
Accept our kids as people and let them know that we care to know how they feel, even when it’s bad.
Commend them for all the things they did right (e.g. not damaging the walls, not hurting siblings, etc.)
Request vs. prohibit what we would like from them. E.g. “Don’t ever hit your brother again.” vs. “From now on, please use your words with your brother, not your fists okay?”
“The enemy of encouraging our children is anger.”
This reminded me of how important it is to be aware or our own duress and stress levels so as not to take it out on our kids. If we harbour a lot of anger, it’ll come out in how we speak to our kids and what we say so it’s vitally important to dis-spell the anger from within ourselves. This might mean exercising, taking moments here and there for ourselves, asking for help from others, etc.
“When your son or daughter is a teen, rather than condemning your child’s friends who are making poor choices, it is far better to take a loving approach that expresses concern for them.”
This resonated with me in that we are always trying to teach our kids lessons based off of others’ mistakes in the hopes that they don’t have to make those same mistakes. But the lesson for me from this is that in addition to doing that, we should speak of these situations from a more compassionate viewpoint so that when our kids do make mistakes, they’ll expect a compassionate response from us vs. one of reprove.
IMPORTANT TAKE-AWAYS
Physical Touch - I grew up in a household where I never saw my parents hug, let alone kiss one another. They never hugged us, their kids, either. And though, I’ve hugged and kissed my kids since they were born, I didn’t realize until I read this book that one of my kids’ primary love languages is physical touch. She’s constantly running into me, jumping on me, grabbing my arms, legs and head and often when I’m busy working, cooking, etc. I realize now that it was her way to reach out and get attention. The times that I didn’t return her hugs because I was busy, it was as though I was withdrawing love from her. So now, even if it takes me more time to finish whatever it is I’m doing, I stop and reciprocate her love even for a brief moment.
Words of Affirmation - An important thing I learned in this book is that whatever your child’s love language is, you need to be careful not to punish them with that love language or else the effect of the punishment will be more detrimental. As parents, we can often be stressed and therefore short tempered, therefore we have to be extra careful with our words, as children often feel we believe what we say. For example, if a child’s love language is words of affirmation and as a parent, we are using cutting words, yelling or even speaking out of frustration, we can deeply hurt the child and even cause them to question whether we love them.
Quality Time -
“Don’t’ be a victim of the urgent. In the long run, much of what seems so pressing now won’t even matter. What you do with your children will matter forever.”
I think that most of us know that time is the most important thing we can give to our kids but alas, life always gets in the way doesn’t it? A few great suggestions the author gave:
Schedule focused time, even just a few hours a week with the kids just as you would for an appointment or a “date night”.
“Be present” and make eye contact, stop what you’re doing when your kids are telling you something important.
Refresh yourself (listen to music you like on the way home from work) so you have more to give your family.
Gifts - One of my kids absolutely loves to receive gifts, letters, almost anything. Whether she asked for it or not, whether it was new or old, whether it was sitting in an old trunk or just something we no longer used (e.g. like a hand mirror), she would beam with excitement and chatter incessantly about her “gift”. At the same time, she also spent a lot of time wrapping gifts from things in her room, drawing pictures and putting them in special envelopes and then deliver them to one of us, watching in anticipation as we opened her “gifts”. I realize now, this is my child’ love language. It also explains why she has always been so over-protective of her things. Her gifts were more than material things to her, and if moved, damaged or displaced, it deeply affects her because of the meaning they hold. I can now more easily explain to other members of our family, why extra care and attention is needed around our daughter’s “gifts”.
Acts of Service -
“Parents who are too busy to teach children how to do laundry, or too perfectionist to let them do it, are not loving those children but crippling them.”
I know a lot of parents who do for their kids what the kids can do for themselves. The issue with this is that rather than building independence, they are building reliance and potentially selfishness. In addition, as parents, we are here to help our kids when they need it but when they are ready to help themselves, we need to teach them to help themselves and eventually others too. This is how we create productive and giving citizens of the world.
To conclude, learning our children’s love languages seems simple enough to do, but using that love language each and every day requires effort and determination. From what I’ve seen, the rewards are well worth it - having a stronger connection with our children, fewer fights, greater understanding and co-operation, and children with “full emotional tanks”.