Book Summary: The Five Love Languages of Children

We’re just about ready to wrap up our first week of February. If you have time this weekend to put in some reading time and you want to learn ways to love your young children and teenagers, here’s a review of the book, The Five Love Languages of Children. Before you go crazy putting love notes all over your third grader’s bedroom, or trying to shower your teenager with hugs and compliments, consider reading this book to help you figure out your child’s “love language” so you can act accordingly.

There’s a slew of Five Love Languages books–one for teens, one for men, one for singles–but the “original recipe” is intended for married couples and makes a great segue way into next week’s posts about how to keep the romance alive when you’re surrounded by toddlers and/or teenagers.

You can get this book just about anywhere. It’s been very popular since it was first released in the 1990‘s. This following review was originally published on our website and  written by one of our Power of Moms authors, Laurie Brooks.

Authors: Gary Chapman, PhD and Ross Campbell, MD
Genre: Parenting

Brief Summary: This book is a wonderful resource for parents who want to raise emotionally healthy children. The authors explain specifically the ways children receive and perceive our love, and the book helps parents learn how to keep their children’s emotional love tanks full with unconditional love so that they can then train them and guide them more effectively. Chapman and Campbell explain no matter how the children act, if children feel genuinely loved by their parents they will be more responsive to parental guidance in all areas of their lives.

The premise of Chapman and Campbell’s book is that there are five love languages–physical touch, quality time, acts of service, gifts, and words of affirmation–through which children receive love. As parents, we need to communicate our love for each child through all five languages so that our children not only learn to love in all those ways, but so they have their love tanks filled. Each child has a primary love language that best communicates love to him or her, and when we identify a child’s primary love language and speak it often, we can best meet his or her deep emotional need for love.

The book ends with hope for all parents by explaining that even if the reader did not employ these techniques with their children when they were young, it’s never, ever too late to begin–even with adult children.

How This Book Made an Impact In My Life, Especially as a Mother (or why I just really liked it): Thanks to this book, I am now aware of emotional needs I may not have met in the past for my children, and I am now modifying some of my parenting techniques. I can see the difference in how my children respond to me. The principles in this book can also be applied to spouses and other loved ones. I highly recommend this book. It has really given me clarity on some of the parenting issues that used to challenge me.

QUESTION: Can you guess the “love languages” of your children?

CHALLENGE: Figure it out!