The 5 Love Languages of Children

A couple weeks ago, I posted about how my husband and I read The 5 Love Languages and really enjoyed it. We are both working on speaking each other's love language. We've since decided that he is actually quality time, with an emphasis on quality activies and I am words of affirmation, with an emphasis on affirming words ("you did a good job"). Since then, I have read The 5 Love Languages of Children. I also enjoyed this book and learned a lot about my boys. J's language is also quality time with an emphasis on quality activities and M's language is physcial touch.

The books says that to help children focus better in school, respond better to discipline, and manage their anger better, they need to have a full love tank. They need to feel unconditional love, which every parent should give their children, and that happens from a full love tank. In order to fill the love tank, you need to speak their love language. Sounds pretty easy, right? Um, no. I'm really struggling with quality time, especially quality activities. That sounds like I never want to be with my kids, but that's not it. J seems to have a bottomless love tank and I never feel like I've put anything in it, much less filled it. I can't spend my entire day doing quality activities with him when I have another son, husband, and house to take care of. This sounds awful, but really, we need to eat dinner and have clean clothes, and darn it, I have to go to the bathroom sometimes! Plus, I'm a girl. I really don't enjoy playing endless hours of hero guys or soccer/basketball/baseball or hide in the box and then tickle me when I try to escape games. But this is when I try to remember that it's not the activity we are doing, it's the time we spend together doing the activity. He just wants me to play with him and spend time with him. So, I'm trying to make more of an effort to play things he wants to play. Especially during week days while daddy is at work. Daddy is way more fun to play with. I think that's because his language is also quality activities, so he finds it easier not to dwell on the actual activity, but the time spent together.

I also think this may be part of the night waking problem that I also posted about today. I think he actually does miss us and want to spend quality time with us. Which would be great, except that the middle of the night is not the time to want to hang out. We've yet to figure out how to convey to him that we do still love him, we will see him in the morning, and please don't come wake us up all night just because we're down the hall and not right next to you. Until we can make him understand that, I gave him a photo of us to look at in the middle of the night and we set his lamp on a timer so he knows he needs to stay his room until the lamp comes on. We used this method before we moved and it worked, so we're doing it again. Hopefully he'll stay in his room and SLEEP tonight!

On the other hand, I'm great at M's love language, because all he wants is hugs and kisses! He loves to sit on my lap while I read him stories or watch tv. Only when he wants up NOW when I'm trying to cook dinner or some other necessary task does it get a little tricky. :)