How to Discover Your Child's Primary Love Language

[Selina Michelle May]

Hi Ladies!  There are several more chapters in the book, The Five Love Languages of Children, but I'd like for us to just do two more.  So just two more posts before we take a break for the holidays, okay?  The first one is on discovering your child's primary love language.

 

"Discovering your child's love language is a process; it takes time; especially when your child is young.  Young children are just beginning to learn how to receive and express love in the various languages.  This means that they will experiment with actions and responses that are satisfying to them.  That they engage in a particular response for a period of time does not mean that this is their primary love language.  In a few months, they may specialize in another one."

 

The book offers five things you can do to try to discover your child's love language....

1.  Observe how your child expresses love to you.

2.  Observe how your child expresses love to others.

3.  Listen to what your child requests most often.

4.  Notice what your child most frequently complains about.

5.  Give your child a choice between two options. (The author suggests giving at least 20 to 30 choices before you should be able to see a clear pattern emerging.)

 

If after doing the five things mentioned above, the book suggests an alternative method for discovering the love language.  It's called the 15 week experiment.  Basically, you focus on one of the love languages for two weeks, then take a break for a week, then focus on another love language, then take a break for a week, and so on and so forth until you've gone through all five love languages.  If your child complains about what you are doing, then you know you probably haven't found the primary love language.  But, if your child wonders why you stopped doing certain things because two weeks before you were doing what they liked, then you may be on to something!

 

At the end of the chapter, the book reminds us that whatever our child's primary love language is, we must remember that it's important to speak them all.  It makes them more well-rounded as individuals and teaches them how to love others.

 

So what are your thoughts?  Any other observations with your kiddos regarding the love languages?  After reading through all the posts on the love languages, care to take a stab at pinpointing your child's love language? 

[Selina Michelle May]

I think Gannon is still too young to say which love language is his primary one, as he still tends to express love to me and Ryan using all of the languages at times.  One thing that really stood out to me about this chapter, though, was number 4 on discovering your child's love language.  Gannon hasn't complained about anything in particular, but his behavior here lately was indicating that he was lacking love in some way.  You may or may not know, but we were gone the whole week before Thanksgiving (Charleston for a conference) and then we were gone for most of the next week...Thanksgiving week.  Even though we were together the whole time we were gone, I felt like G was needing some quality time from Mommy. Plus, I've been sick a lot lately so I've not been able to spend much quality time with him as I normally do.  So, I intervened.  The next week, we were home the whole week, so I took one whole day to just do stuff with G at home.  We didn't go anywhere and I didn't put anything on the agenda.  We just stayed home and played puzzles, blocks, hide and go seek.  Basically, anything he wanted to do, we did it together.  And that really made all the difference in the world.  I also made sure that I spent some quality time with him every day for the rest of the week.  And I must say, I saw a completely different little boy by the end of the week.  Oh he's still 3 and we still deal with issues, but his behavior dramtically improved!

[Charissa UpChurch]

I really like the encouragement to display all of the love languages as often as possible.  I think that is really helpful for me since they are still little and don't have a "firm" love language.  Even as an adult, I speak (and need) more than one love language, so it will definitely help them to be able to give and receive more than one way.  I know the things that they like and need, so I try to focus on those as much as possible.