Have you ever heard of The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman? The theory states that people have different ways of giving and receiving love, and that in order to truly perform the act of loving someone, you should discover their “love language” and use that language in order to make them truly feel loved.
The five different identified love languages are gifts, words of affirmation, acts of service, quality time, and physical touch. So if someone’s love language is quality time, they feel most loved when someone intentionally spends quality time with them. It’s also probably how that person offers love to others. People often have more than one, but their is usually one that is dominant over the others.
The work was originally designed for couples, but one of my favorite applications is with children. Do you know the language in which your child gives and receives love? Do you make it a point to speak that language?
Lexi’s love language is words of affirmation. She’s always been very verbally inclined, and she likes to talk about being loved and being praised. Her second would be gifts. It’s common for her to bring “very special” trinkets… A sticker or a coin or a picture…and offer it as a sacred token of love.
Harper will be two weeks old tomorrow. One might think that more of a child’s personality might have to be discovered in order to truly pinpoint something like a love language, but with this kiddo it is more than clear. Her love language is physical touch.
Now, I get that that’s the case for many infants. Without an understanding of words or gifts or time, it’s almost the default. But this girl takes it to a whole new level. As soon as you run a gentle hand over her cheek or down her back, she instantly lets out a huge sign of relief and relaxes, head back and mouth open, into a state of bliss.
As I was sitting here tonight snuggling her and giving her a mini back rub, it occurred to me that one of the unique things about my pregnancy with her was how often I was compelled to rub my belly. Every time a little foot or rump would poke out of my side, I run my hands over my belly. My mom even commented how much more I was doing it than I had when I was pregnant with Lexi.
Maybe it’s that I’m older, that I was more capable of appreciating the miracle happening inside me. Maybe she remembers all my belly rubbing and that’s why she loves it so much. Or maybe she craved it even before she was born and mommy instinct kicked in. Like the way you crave milk when your body needs calcium or you get thirsty when your body needs hydrated. Wouldn’t that be a miracle? To consider that the connection between mom and baby could even be so strong before birth that I am compelled to do the thing she craves?
Who knows what it could be. But I know that two single cells inside my body transformed into sweet little tufts of dark hair and two bright blue eyes and ten tiny fingers that wrapped around one of mine just minutes after she was born. I created a life. I brought a soul into this world. And when you think about it like that, it’s hard not to see everything as a miracle.