The Five Love Languages of Children and Everyone Else, Too

As I was reading reviews on the book “The Five Love Languages of Children,” I saw one extreme to the next. One man said that you didn’t need to read the book unless you had just fallen off the turnip truck. Ok fair enough, we all have our opinions I thought. Then I saw that many of the other reviews were positive.

 

I have to agree with the people saying the latter. Not all children just run up and give everyone they love a big ol’ hug and say I love you.   Children like adults can have trouble with intimacy and letting us know how they feel in the traditional sense.

Here are the five languages from the book The Five Love Languages of Children written by Gary Chapman and Ross Campbell, M.D.

·     Quality time

·     Words of affirmation

·     Gifts

·     Acts of service

·     Physical touch

Now these don’t only apply to children, they are his love languages for anyone and everyone. So it is a great tool to use in finding your own love language as well as your kids (and partners too!)

My personal opinion is that we all need and hopefully show some of these 5 languages. I like spending time with those I love, good time, not just being in the same room, but engaging in positive actions.   I need encouragement and praise.   I like getting things from people, especially people I care about, not that it has to be a diamond necklace. I would be just as happy with a bookmark or a flower picked from the yard, it shows that person took time to think about you and wanted to make you smile.    I really appreciate when someone does something to make my load lighter even more so being a new mom.   And I definitely can’t live without the warmth of a hug.

But as I look a little deeper, I see in myself that I do speak and hear some of these languages more then others. It has a lot to do with what is happening in my world and who it’s happening with. But I would have to say that quality time is my big one. Maybe that is true for most people, I know it is a huge one with kids. Well younger kids that is. I recall being a teenager and what a tough age it is for many of us.   Back then, words of affirmation would have been on the top of my list from my family since at fifteen I mainly wanted to spend time in my room on the phone talking about boys.     With my 9-month-old son, I see he has a top three: quality time, words of affirmation and physical touch.   Give him a year and gifts will be right up there! A   cts of service takes time to appreciate and most kids don’t get that until they are older.

This is the kind of book that can help any parent not just someone with a ‘difficult’ child (since they are all difficult at some point). We should all take more time to listen to what our kids are saying and find their love languages.

Not all children like to run around hugging and saying I love you. I know some that do and I know some that don’t. And that is okay.   You can have two kids growing up in the same home and yet they have personalities that are night and day. It is that nature vs. nurture debate, which I full heartedly believe. We are born with certain traits and we learn others from our families and surroundings. Even a newborn baby has a personality all their own, something I did not believe until I had my own.

As a parent, caregiver, relative, etc. learning how kids express their love and how they are most receptive to it is an invaluable gift. What relationship couldn’t stand some improvement? As children grow, our relationships with them change so we need to be present and alert to how we can grow and adapt with them.  Just think, reading a book like this is a great act of service to start with!