Five love languages of Children (Part 1)

Love languages: (The concept is taken from Gary Chapman’s Five Love Language)

Five love languages of Children help us to understand the needs of our children better. We learn to identify the preferable love language of the children so that we can act accordingly to meet their need. The first two love languages are words of encouragement and gifts as ways to express love to children.

a) Words of Encouragement

Words of encouragement refer to affirmation, offering thanks, encouraging, and thoughtful statement. Affirm the child’s good characters e.g. responsible, caring, and considerate and so on. e.g. praising the child’s effort to tidy up a room. “You are very responsible because you tidy up a room.”

e.g.” You are very caring to your younger brother. You helped to remind him the importance of safety belt when he was taking a school bus.”

b) Gifts

Children love surprise gifts. However, this does not mean that you need to buy expensive gifts. Parents may consider giving their children hand-made art and crafts, stickers and cards which may mean more to the child. Other gifts could include stationery items and books are also ideal for young children. Parents can choose a variety of occasions to present a gift to their child. Parents can be creative and choose to give gifts on significant days of their child’s lives like the first day of a new term of school.

One of the important things to note is that we must be aware not to equate rewards with good academic performance. The child will like to have the reward rather than motivate by the learning itself. It will defeat the purpose of self-motivated learning. At the same time, expensive gifts may have the tendency to make our child more materialistic. A loving touch for a good deed is always more meaningful than a physical reward.

Words of encouragement and gifts are the first two love language of children. The other three love languages will be introduced in the next article. Love language helps us to understand the needs of the children so that we can meet their needs accordingly.

(With permission from Focus on The Family (Singapore) Ltd to use some material from Parenting with Confidence Workshop. For further information about workshop, you may visit http://www.family.org.sg )