Wellbeing - Building Strong Relationships
Five Love Languages of Children
Whilst ‘telling’ your children you love them is important, a book by Chapman & Campbell, called ‘The Five Love Languages of Children’, suggests that there are 5 primary methods to ‘show’ your children you love them. When properly informed and aware, we can use this information to help meet our children’s deepest emotional needs. Over the next few newsletter issues, we will discuss and provide information on each of the five love languages. We start this term by looking at the first love language - Physical Touch.
Physical Touch
The importance of physical touch in expressing unconditional love to our children can not be underestimated. Studies have indicated that many parents touch their children only when it is necessary (eg. Dressing and transporting), however, in actual fact physical touch is the easiest love language to use unconditionally to transfer love to the heart of a child. Importantly, physical touch is not confined to just kissing or hugging, but any parent is capable of a gentle touch on the back, arm or shoulder and games such as basketball, football & soccer all offer significant opportunities to build on the touch opportunities.
To further enhance the effects of physical touch, it is important to recognise the role of close and influential adults such as teachers, grandparents and other family members.
The importance of filling a child’s love tank is never as important as when they head off to school. This is highlighted by the authors of the book: ‘The Five Love Languages of Children’, when they state….
“Children are facing new experiences at school each day and they feel both positive and negative emotions towards teachers and peers. Therefore home should be a haven, the place where love is secure” and as a consequence “a hug given as they leave each morning may be the difference between emotional security and insecurity throughout the day. A hug when the child returns home may determine whether your child has a quiet evening of positive mental and physical activity…”
Fears of sexual abuse have certainly impacted on the willingness of adults to use physical touch to express love, but for the sake of our children, particularly those whose primary love language is physical touch, it is imperative that we find healthy ways to introduce touch into our interaction with our children.
Filling a child’s love tank is relatively easy during their early primary school years, however it does need frequent replenishing. Of course, we are all aware, that primary school, in many ways, is “just” emotional preparation for adolescence. If a child can head to high school with his/her love tank close to full, they will generally be much more assured of themselves and be confident of their place in the world. A self assured teenager, who is aware of and confident they are loved is less likely to look to others for acceptance and to fill their love tank.
Approaching adolescence is a crucial time when it comes to physical touch. Girls are developing physically and emotionally and boys are withdrawing and using fewer and fewer syllables to hold a conversation. For girls, in particular, the fear of sexual abuse and uneasiness with the developing body causes many fathers, to withdraw from physical contact. A girl’s ability to relate to the opposite sex is crucial to her progress and her standing amongst her peers. A healthy relationship with her father, or other significant males goes a long way to developing her identity and self esteem and as a result, a healthy ability to relate to her male peers. This will also play a significant role in creating stable female relationships as well. Therefore it is imperative that as fathers we find creative ways to express our love to our daughters using all five love languages, but in particular the language of physical touch.
Boys, also, come with their own challenge. Whilst many from the age of about 7 may begin to withdraw from affectionate expressions of touch, particularly in public, they are still in need of physical contact. In their case, they tend to be more responsive to vigorous forms of contact such as wrestling, jostling, playful hitting, high fives, and physical forms of sport such as football, basketball and soccer.
The primary method of identifying a child’s love language (or any person’s for that matter) is by watching the way they express their love to you and to other children. If physical forms of interaction are an integral part of his/her makeup then chances are they are just hanging out for you to grab them and squeeze them in a nice big warm and loving hug (at the appropriate time of course, without anyone seeing, and not for too long and don’t mess the clothes or the hair...!!).
Whilst Physical touch is one of the easier methods of expressing our love to our children, it is not the only way. Even if you determine that Physical touch is their primary language, it doesn’t mean that you ignore the other four languages. Next newsletter we will introduce the second language, Words of Affirmation.