#RaiseAWarrior: Love Languages: A Secret to Finding a Happier Home Life

Hollywood is selling us a version of love that is a mushy, wonderful thing full of butterflies, romance, and exotic adventures without price tags. We love the idea of this love, but the older we get the more we realize that love, at least the true enduring kind, is more of an exercise of self discipline, sacrifice, and putting others first. Butterflies occur, but they are completely optional rather than a guarantee. Our children are also sold this same image of perfect love from an early age in the form of storybooks, movies, and music. We all want that fictitious, easy love regardless of age. That’s why we return to our favorite love stories and rom-coms like a favorite well worn t-shirt, they just fill us up in a way reality cannot match. As adults, we recognize this for a brief respite into a fictional world, but our children cannot yet separate the two.

As parents we love our children and then love them some more. We pour into them every spare second and dollar we have. So it is frustrating when we as parent’s come home from a work trip with a present that gets a lackluster response, or when returning home after an outing planned especially for our little one the whining and complaining begins almost instantaneously. This acting out isn’t fair. We just loved them so hard and our reward is being taken for granted or behavioral issues. So how do we make our home a happier, less contentious place? How do we get our children to see we love them the best we can? Especially when the majority of us, as parents, already feel stressed out and overwhelmed?? I mean there are only so many hours in a day. Social media is pushing in our faces the idea that we simply aren’t doing enough for our child and that if we do more the warzone in our home will cease and our child will suddenly become the little angel we all know they are at their core. Surprisingly it isn’t a matter of needing to do more for our kiddos, it is a simple matter of needing to do some things better.

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The answer lies in Gary Chapman’s theory of 5 love languages. A love language is how we prefer to show love to others and how we best understand expressions of love from someone else. For example presents are nice, but that doesn’t fill some of us up the way a sink of empty dishes or a sweet back rub does. When our love language actions don’t match the language of our child, we can love them to the best of our ability without them feeling much of anything at all. As such, our love actions should be intentionally geared towards filling up our child’s very individualized emotional love tanks.

Speaking from experience, it is easy to recognize times in our life when we felt emotionally low, running on empty from giving so much of ourselves to others. Our children are the same way. When our child’s love tank is nearing empty it is hard for them to be or do their best. They are more likely to get angry or act out. So the easiest thing we can do to fix our home life is to begin to recognize our child’s individual love language(s) so we can love them in a way that feels like true love to them.

Here at Raise a Warrior we believe that finding and learning to speak love in your child’s primary and secondary love language will go a long way towards avoiding miscommunications, preventing behavioral issues, and most importantly promoting healthy relationships as it helps them truly feel your love and the priority they are within your life. We hope that you take time to read the following article and start making plans to level up your parenting because after all everyone just wants and needs to be loved and appreciated a little more. Happy parenting!