Children's Love Languages and How to Nourish Them
Raising well-adjusted kids can be hard, but understanding their love language can make it easier. To figure out your child’s love language, you need to observe how your child tries to show you their love for you. People, even children, tend to express their love the way they wish they would receive love from others. And so understanding how your child tries to showcase their affection is a clear indicator of what makes your child feel truly loved.
Does your child always tell you how much they love you? Their love language is likely words of affirmation. Is your child cleaning up their room or their toys unprompted? They most likely need acts of service. Do they come over and give you hugs constantly throughout the day? Their love language is probably physical touch. Does your child spontaneously make drawings and subsequently give them to you? Sounds like they respond well to gifts. How about a child who is demanding of your time and yells at you to get off your phone so they can tell you something inane like a new trick they taught the family dog? They might need quality time.
Here are the five love languages and our tips on how to implement them with your child:
Words of Affirmation: for the child who craves compliments and positive attention, shower them with praise. At Tiny Organics, our meals can be packed into your little one’s lunchbox with a handwritten note listing all the things your child is amazing at. Or maybe your child has a test that they spent the last week studying for, and you know they’re nervous, so that note can affirm how proud you are of them and praise their tenacity while reassuring them that eating their healthy lunch will help their brains function so they can do their best.
Acts of Service: The kids who thrive on acts of service just need assistance with their everyday needs to make them feel loved. For these kids, the simple act of parenting is enough to satisfy their need for affection. And making them nourishing meals is a key part of this love language. With Tiny Organics, you don’t have to spend hours prepping healthy and delicious meals for your little one, since it gets delivered already prepared and ready to go except for a simple heating-up process.
Physical Touch: Kids with physical touch as their main love language just want to be held. So finding ways to touch them in a loving way is key to providing them with the affection they crave. And while food isn’t the first idea to come to mind regarding a child’s need to be physically touched, there are so many ways to incorporate touch into the daily act of eating a meal together as a family. You can help your child prepare for dinner by holding their hands as they perform meal prep tasks such as cutting vegetables or kneading some dough with them (which has the added benefit of giving them that sensory feedback kids with physical touch as their love language crave). You can do other physical things to shower your physical touch child with love at dinner, like hugging them after they’ve done a good job helping clean up.
Gifts: All kids love gifts, but kids whose love language is being given gifts don’t just enjoy it, it makes them feel special. They don’t just want presents on their birthday, they want gifts of all forms: toys for doing their chores, treats for behaving at grandma’s house. Because we introduce healthy habits at a young age, kids crave our delicious meals. And giving them a “gift” of our Bananas Foster breakfast bowl as a reward for good behavior is the perfect expression of this gift love language.
Quality Time: A kid whose love language is quality time just wants your undivided attention. Device-free family dinners are an ideal way to spend quality time with your child. You can talk about school, any problems bothering your child at the moment, discuss the future, their hopes and dreams. Nourishing your child with a healthy meal like our “The Wizard of Orzo” to eat during a quality time family dinner is the ideal way to express love to a child who craves your attention.