My Children’s Love Languages
I wrote earlier this week about the book The 5 Love Languages about how different people have different ways of feeling loved, through:
1.Receiving words of affirmation
2. Quality time
3. Receiving gifts
4. Acts of Service
5. Physical Touch
After I finished the book, my first project was to figure out my personal primary love language as well as the love language of my husband.
With that behind me, yesterday I went to work figuring out the love languages of my children–so that I can help each one feel as loved as possible.
This is really important to me, cause, for example, if I have a child whose love language is quality time, and I am attempting to express my love with a different love language (for example, through physical touch), no matter how many hugs and kisses that child receives, she will not feel really loved. And visa versa, for the Physical Touch child who spends a lot of non-touching quality time with mom. She assumes she is making her daughter feel loved with their one-on-one outings, but in reality the daughter’s “love tank” is low.
If you are also interested in figuring out your children’s love language, here’s what you do:
1. For children ages 4 and under, just try using all 5 love languages, since they are too tiny to verbalize their love language.
2. For ages 5-9, try asking them how parents show they love their children. They could also draw a picture.
3. For age 9-12, you can have them answer the questions in the Love Language Profile at this link.
4. Teens can fill out the Love Language Profile at this link.
My kids have been cooperative with this process, and they seem to be curious about it and about the love languages in general.
And today I had my first Love Language victory!
This morning, before I took him to gan, I hugged and kissed my son, whose love language is physical touch.
He then called out with glee, “SO MANY PEOPLE LOVE ME!”
**The Jewish Marriage Initiative together with Gary Chapman created a version of “The Five Love Languages” for the Jewish community. The original version contains a reference to Christian sources.
Enjoy!
That last link didn’t work. What is the Jewish site?
sorry, I fixed it
how sweet and encouraging! you should enjoy many more confirmations of your children feeling loved 🙂
Fantastic!