The Five Love Languages of Children by Gary Chapman & Ross Campbell ★★★★☆

Love in Every Language

Non Fiction – Self Help - Parenting

224 pages

Publication Date:  May 28th 1995

A continuation of the series sparked by the best-selling The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman, this book focuses on your children and how to make sure you convey unconditional feelings of respect, affection and commitment in a way that will affect them the rest of their lives. 

As a proponent of always trying to improve my parenting I started this book having already bought into the idea of the five love languages and the “love tank”.  Years ago in the infancy of my husband and my relationship before we married we both read The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman (I would recommend this book as a must for any marriage relationship) and frankly it saved our relationship.  At the time R was exasperated and I was exhausted trying to fulfill each other’s love needs, but never actually doing it.  When we read this book we finally understood each other on a much deeper level and have spent the last 12 years trying to show each other love in manners that are meaningful for the other person. 

This series once again proved life changing for me.  The section on words of affirmation completely put in perspectives some horrible childhood trauma and sent me into a sobbing fit.  You know now, years later, I can’t even really remember specific incidents, but I can clearly remember the soul sucking pain and depression caused by misplaced words.  I will do whatever it takes to try and prevent my children from that kind of pain as I think would most parents.

Twelve years of “touching education” has prepared me for my two-year-old (trust me when I say this was not the easiest thing for me to learn, but now it comes more naturally through my years of effort and my husband’s patience), but I admit I am still working on quality time (my husband and older daughter’s main language).  I think something this book has definitely reminded me to do is purposeful parenting.  Not only to love my children, but to teach my children how to love others through my example.  I am not raising a child, but someone’s future spouse, future parent, and about a million other potential roles (trust me a fit thrown by a one-year-old maybe kind of cute, but at 21 or 31 it is just horrible) and with that in mind I always have to keep in mind the long term good of my child and not their or my momentary happiness.

I found it interesting when the authors classified “teaching moments”- such as learning to do laundry or cooking- under Acts of Service.  My goal as a parent has always to prepare my child to be a mature, responsible member of society who is able to take care of themselves.  I think all of us can relate to seeing what can happen when kids grow up and weren’t taught how to take care themselves or be considerate of others, especially when you think of those kids in college who didn’t know how to clean a toilet, wash a dish or had to go home for their mom to do their laundry.  They usually were forced by their less than tolerant peers/roommates to under go a huge learning curve.

This book not only fully explains the concepts and provides a means of identification, but also practical and useful common sense ways of showing love to your children in all five love languages.  There is also a further reading guide to help continue your education.  I personally do not agree with every concept brought up in this book, but I do agree with the overall theme.  I believe if all parents could make their children feel loved it would cut down on a lot of problems in our society.  This will be a continuing mainstay of my library and periodically be reread to remind me of the kind of parent I want to be and my children need.

ISBN  1881273652 (ISBN13: 9781881273653)