The Month of Love is the time for Valentine’s Day and remembering love – emphasizing the importance of love in our lives. Whether for a partner, friends, or children, the idea of love and appreciation is shown in lots of different ways. If you’ve never heard of love languages, especially love languages for children, this should be helpful so your message is heard the way you intend it.
Love is a language all its own and if you aren’t speaking the same language with your intended recipient, the message gets lost or completely misunderstood. Have you ever planned an elaborate display of affection, only for it to fall flat and not be received the way you expected? If so, it is likely that you were speaking the wrong love language.
According to 5 Love Languages Of Children: The Secret To Loving Children Effectively by Gary Chapman, the five love languages are the different ways of expressing and receiving love. These Love Languages have been adapted for partners, singles, teens, children, even for showing appreciation in the workplace.
The Love Languages include:
- Words of affirmation
- Quality time
- Receiving gifts
- Acts of service
- Physical touch
My child’s therapist sent a quiz home for us both to take. I had taken the couples quiz a long time ago in my marriage but never thought about applying it to other relationships. I found that my love language is Acts of Service. I like doing things for others and love when others do things to help me. My child, on the other hand, loves receiving gifts. So, while a clean room and doing the dishes makes me happy, it does nothing for my child. It is just a meaningless chore.
Not only is it important to know your own love language, it’s important to know how to show appreciation to the people in your life. If you speak in different love languages, you are not both going to feel the same way about an act of appreciation. So, it is especially important to show your love in the way they will feel it. I have to be intentional in getting surprises and little gifts to give my child to express my love, even though, as a mom, I feel like we really don’t need more stuff in the house, but I’m learning that is how to express my love so it is heard.
A great place to start is with these quick quizzes to find out your love language.
https://www.5lovelanguages.com/quizzes/
Find out your love language and the language for your partner and children so you can grow closer having your acts of appreciation mean more to each recipient.
