Every child has their own personal way of showing and expressing their love for their family and friends. Because of this, more and more parents are having a hard time keeping up with their child and understanding their behavior on certain situations. The common misunderstanding comes from differentiating how a child expresses love and the type of love they want to receive. As parents, you need to be able to distinguish between these two elements to be able to provide your kids the best type of love they need.
The best international schools in the Philippines aim to bridge this gap. Their educators invest time and effort to understand each student and hope to help their parents understand them as well. What parents should know is that they can do this in the even just on their own. All they have to do is be aware and master their child’s love languages.
There are five different ways people show and understand emotional love, which are:
- Physical Touch
- Words of Affirmation
- Quality Time
- Gifts
- Acts of Service
Now let’s discuss each of these love languages more thoroughly.
Physical Touch
This is love’s strongest voice and the easiest love language that you can use unconditionally. Extra hugs, kisses, snuggles, and cuddles are some of the perfect examples of physical touch. However, physical touch is not limited to hugs and kisses only. Playing games or sports and doing physical activities with your children together is also an excellent way for you to attain this love language.
But as your kids grow older, the element of physical touch may decrease. Parents may only touch their child or children only when necessary like when you are helping them with their clothes, hair, and food. Additionally, kids also crave more physical touch when they are sick, hurt, tired, and sad. These are the perfect opportunities to apply physical touch to your child or children, most especially when they are in their teens.
Words of Affirmation
Words of affirmation refers to any form of genuine verbal praise and affirmation about how much you love your child. Saying “I love you” on a regular basis is extremely important, however, the words of affirmation element is not confined to just this phrase. Telling your kids about how good you think they are doing in school and how proud you are to have them as your child are some of the phrases that can exercise your words of affirmation language. Encourage them by saying genuine words or phrases. This will ultimately have a positive effect on your child and decrease the chances of your child feeling taken for granted.
However, praising them frequently has its downsides too. When you praise or tell your child positive words excessively, it might come off as insincere on their end. This is why you should always take into consideration the right timing in exercising this language. Its best not to overdo it.
Quality Time
One of the more effective kinds of love language is spending quality time with each other. Quality time means that you give your whole focus and undivided attention to your child. In short, it is giving your child your presence. When you practice this, you are sure to be on your way to assisting in their physical and emotional development.
However, the absence of time can of course have a negative impact on your child’s growth and development while they are growing up. When your child feels alone or taken for granted, they will tend to misbehave in order to get a hold of your attention. In order to avoid this, do your best to spend quality time with your kids. Have daily conversations, cook together, go on dates, tell bedtime stories, and other activities that involve spending quality time together with your kids.
Gifts
Should this be your child’s love language, gifts do not just refer to the material things that you can buy for your kids such as clothes, gadgets, or video games. Yes, they are gifts but they are not symbols of love if you give them these gifts as a bribe or reward.
These gifts don’t have to be bought, it could be as simple as cooking their favorite meal or giving them a pebble you found outside.
There truly is nothing wrong with liking receiving gifts. What really means to them the most is the thoughtfulness behind it. Give gifts to let your child know that you are thinking of them because they are important to you.
Acts of Service
Acts of service is very selfless in nature, it requires you to put your child first and provide them what they need. Luckily as a parent you have the opportunity to do this daily and just by being with them every day is a great place to start.
Other examples of acts of service include happily driving them to their piano lessons, helping them out on their art project, or finding a lost toy are some of the things you can do to express your acts of service element to your kids. Overall, it is about making sure that you are there for them in every step of the way.
Key Takeaway
The best way to figure out the proper love languages to share with your children is by observing and spending more time with them. It may take more effort and understanding to perfectly communicate with your kids, but just remember that each kid has his own personal love language and as a parent you are called to accept and understand them. At the end of the day, it will be all be worth it to see how much you have gone much closer to one another.