Love Languages: Words of Affirmation

There’s no particular order for the Five Love Languages, but let’s start where Dr. Chapman starts in the book, with Words of Affirmation.

The old saying, “Actions speak louder than words,” isn’t always true. For the child (or spouse) whose primary love language is Words of Affirmation, words will probably always speak louder than actions. Hearing positive, affirming, encouraging words is like gulping in emotional oxygen for a person with the love language of Words of Affirmation. But the opposite is true, too. When a Words of Affirmation person doesn’t hear these positive, affirming, encouraging words, it’s like someone’s standing on their oxygen line. Insults (even little ones) can leave them feeling deeply wounded, and can sometimes take a very long time to be forgotten.

But empty, fluffy positive, affirming and encouraging words won’t work, either. Insincere or meaningless affirmation is nothing more than flattery. And once a person discovers it’s only flattery, there’s nothing appealing about it. It will eventually become offensive to them. It’s like emotional cotton candy. There’s no substance to it. Just the initial happy taste. But when the taste is gone, there’s really nothing else left behind, except a hunger for something more. Most kids don’t know what that “something more” is. They can’t articulate that they feel it’s missing. Their subconscious emotional radar will stay up and active for what they think feels like something more, though. And when they come across it, they will be magnetically drawn to it, whether it’s really good for them or not.

Words of Affirmation that make a difference and feed a person’s soul are authentic and true. Hearing, “I love you,” is so important to every kid. But for the person who has Words of Affirmation as a primary love language, hearing why they are loved, or hearing what they are loved for can send them soaring.

If you discover that your kid is a Words of Affirmation person, here’s a suggestion: make a private list of “Ten Things I Love About You,” and work from that list every day, telling them why you love them. Things like, “I love your sense of humor. You crack me up!” Or “I love how you watch out for your little brother (or sister).” Or “I love that I don’t have to wonder what you’re thinking.”

You may sometimes have to really strain your brain to think of positive and encouraging things that are true about your kids. Let’s face it, there are seasons in a kid’s life when there just isn’t much positive happening. But if you’re willing to partner with God on this, He will help you see positive things that you might have missed. So ask Him for His help! It’s a request He wants to grant.

Notice that the suggestions I gave for Words of Affirmation aren’t huge things. I didn’t put, “I think you’ll one day be President of the United States,” on the list. Or, “Look out Michael Jordan! You’ll break his records.” The truth is, your kid isn’t likely to break Michel’s records, and they may not become a prominent political figure, let alone the President. Target character traits, not just behaviors for your list. This will help you tell your kid (and yourself) that your love for them isn’t conditional. In other words, you don’t love them only when they perform or behave in a certain way. You love them, period. Their behavior can’t ever change that. But when they demonstrate character development by their behavior, TELL THEM! Look for these character qualities in them, and encourage them by appreciating them. Do your best to find 10 things for this list, and then, over time, take it to 20 things, and work from it every day.

If you were raised in a home where compliments weren’t given, where the fear was that if people heard too many positive things about themselves, they’d get “the Big Head,” or become prideful, speaking your Words of Affirmation to your kids (and spouse) may be hard at first. Treat it like any other skill. You’ll get good at it by doing it. So do it, even if it sounds and feels odd at first. Trust God to help you grow in the skill of speaking Words of Affirmation.

Love Languages II

The biggest idea in the book is what I just shared – that people develop best when they know they’re loved, and that they know they’re loved when they hear it in language they understand.

Way back when I was a Youth Minister in Tulsa, OK, I was part of a team of youth guys who went to central Mexico with an organization called Christ In Youth, to be resource people for presentations at a Christian youth conference.  Before I left, I asked a girl in my youth group who was in Spanish III what would be a couple of Spanish phrases that I should know.  She gave me a couple, but the one I most remember was “¿Dónde está el baño,” which I’m sure you recognize as Spanish for “where is the bathroom?”

We got to the Mexico City Airport, and nature began to call.  Not shouting, just calling.  I thought, “Hey, this is a great time for me to try out my Spanish.”  So I went to a kiosk where an attractive young woman in an American Airlines uniform stood, waiting to help.  I stepped up and said, “¿Dónde está el baño?”  But you’d have to hear me say it in my thick Oklahoma accent to know why the American Airlines representative nearly fell down laughing before she spouted a clean and crisp Spanish reply to my question.  But her reply made no sense at all to me.  It was just a lot of rolled r’s and other staccato consonants that I couldn’t make any sense of. 

For some mysterious reason, the stress of this moment moved the simple call of nature up the scale to the urgent shout of nature.  “Oh, no,” I thought.  “I’m going to wet my pants in the Mexico City Airport…”

But the kind lady at the kiosk read the panic in my eyes and said in perfectly clear English, “Sir, the Men’s Room is just down the corridor and to your right.”  She was like an angel speaking in that moment.

If she had kept speaking in Spanish, I was toast (soggy toast).  She could have said it louder, or slower, or used more gestures.  She could have even chosen different words to communicate the location of the Men’s Room.  But as long as she said it in Spanish, it wouldn’t have mattered.  I was going to have my own personal international incident at the American Airlines kiosk as long as she kept telling me the Men’s Room location in Spanish. 

It wasn’t an intelligence issue, really.  She was obviously an intelligent enough young lady.  I’m a smart enough guy.  But as long as she spoke Spanish, I was going to wet my britches.  When she spoke a language I understood, I was bright enough to find the Men’s Room. 

Now, I hope you see the correlation between my experience at the Mexico City Airport and your attempts to communicate your love to your kids.  You can have all the love in your heart that a parent can have for their kid, but if your love language isn’t the same as your kid’s, and you keep speaking your own language, all they’re likely to hear is, “Blah, blah, blah.”  If that’s what they’re hearing, they won’t feel as loved as you want them to feel.  And when that happens, they won’t thrive.  People only thrive when they feel loved.  That’s just a rule of life. 

The problem is that most parents assume their kids have the same love language they have.  So they keep speaking in a love language that makes sense to them, but probably doesn’t connect with the kid(s).  The more they communicate in this love language, the less the kid seems to get it.  Frustration sets in for both the parent and the kid.  The result is anything but love growing.  In fact, it’s usually some kind of alienation.

But the other side of this coin is that when you know your kids’ love language, you can communicate your love to them in terms that they understand.  And when that happens, a host of good things will come out of it, including feelings of security and confidence (for both you and your kid), a more consistent sense of happiness, less conflict, and generally movement toward health and maturity in your relationship with them.

So every parent ought to be very interested in getting some kind of help figuring out what their kids’ love languages are.  And, by the way, if you go to work on this, in the process, you’ll learn what your spouse’s and your own love language is, too, which will produce some really powerful and positive results in your marriage.

A New Blog Series from Steve Thomas on The Five Love Languages

The Bible’s the only book that can totally change your life, but there are some other books with great biblical roots and godly principles that can have a profound effect on your life and the legacy of your family life. For my wife and me, The Five Love Languages fits on that bookshelf. Aside from the Bible, no book helped us parent our three girls well as much as Dr. Gary Chapman’s The Five Love Languages. We both wish we’d have known about the Love Languages when our kids were young, but we didn’t come across it until all three of our daughters were in high school.

One of the things that makes this book so good is its simplicity. As Debbie and I read through it, we realized this isn’t rocket science. It’s common sense, in language we could easily understand, with concepts simple enough that we could do something with them immediately. I call this “putting the cookies on the bottom shelf.” And believe me, finding these great cookies on the bottom shelf was a very big gift from God to us. And I think it will be to you, too.

Since the publication of the original book, other editions have been produced, including The Five Love Languages for Children, The Five Love Languages for Teenagers, and The Five Love Languages Singles Edition, and several other editions. Each of these succeeding editions flesh out the main principles of the original book and make interesting specific applications to a target group. The original book is still on the New York Times Bestseller list, which is no small thing, since it was first published in 1992. Millions of people have been influenced by Dr. Chapman’s simple concept that people develop best when they know they’re loved, and that they know they’re loved when they hear it in language they understand. You can order the book from the link below.

http://www.canyonechobookstore.com/product.asp?sku=9780802473158