The question is not: “Do you as a single parent love your children?” The question is: “Do your children feel loved?” Parental sincerity is not enough. We must learn to speak the child’s primary love language. I am convinced that much of the misbehavior of children is rooted in an empty love tank. Each child has a primary love language—the language that speaks most deeply to his soul and meets his emotional need to feel loved. If parents fail to discover and speak the child’s primary love language, the he may feel unloved even though the parent is speaking other languages.

Let me briefly review the five love languages, and let’s focus on seeking to apply them to your child.

...Through Words of Affirmation
This language lets you affirm your child’s worth through verbal expression. “I love you. You look nice in that dress. You did a good job making your bed. Great catch! Thanks for helping me wash the car. I’m proud of you.” These are words of affirmation.

The simple words “I love you” can be like gentle rain falling on the soul of the child. In contrast, harsh or cutting words, spoken out of anger, can damage a child’s self-esteem and be remembered for a lifetime.

Ten-year-old Tyler demonstrated that words of affirmation was his primary love language when he said, “I guess she loves me, but I wish she wouldn’t criticize me so much.” Tyler was also demonstrating another reality—that when you use a child’s primary love language in a negative way, it hurts that child more deeply than it would hurt another child. Since Tyler’s primary love language was words of affirmation, his mother’s negative words cut more deeply into his heart.

...Through Gifts
A gift says, “Someone was thinking about me. Look what they got for me.” Gifts need not be expensive. They can be as simple as a stone you picked up walking down the street or a flower you picked in the front yard. To make the most of gifts as an expression of love, wrap them up and present them. Even school clothes offered this way can become gifts from a single parent.

A gift is never given because a child made his bed or cleaned his room. Such a gift is payment for services rendered, not a true gift at all. Gifts are given because the single parent loves, not because a child deserves.

If you return from a trip and bring your two daughters a teddy bear, don’t be surprised if one jumps up and down and says, “Thank you, thank you,” gives the teddy bear a name, and places it in a special place in her room, while the other one says, “Thank you,” tosses her bear on the couch, and starts asking you about your trip. The second daughter is demonstrating her primary love language: quality time. She is more interested in your attention than in your gift, while the first child definitely has the primary love language of gifts.

...Through Acts of Service
Doing things for a child that the child cannot do for himself is an expression of love. We speak this language early by changing diapers, feeding, and responding to the infant’s physical needs. Over the next eighteen years, life is filled with preparing meals, washing clothes, putting on Band-Aids, repairing bicycles, and a thousand other acts of service. If done in a spirit of kindness, these are emotional expressions of love.

As children get older, we serve them by teaching them the skills necessary to take care of themselves: cooking meals gives way to teaching them to prepare meals.

Acts of service are a powerful way of communicating emotional love to children. Mandy, age ten, said, “I know my mother loves me because she helps me with my homework, especially my math.”

...Through Quality Time
Quality time is giving your child your undivided attention. With a small child, it is sitting on the floor, rolling a ball back and forth, or sitting on the couch while reading a book. With an older child, it may be taking a walk through the woods, where the two of you look, listen, and talk. Because children are at different levels of maturation, if we are to spend quality time with them, we must go where they are. We must discover their interests and enter into their worlds.

Physical proximity does not equal quality time. A father and a son watching a football game is quality time only if the child senses that he is the focus of his father’s attention. If the father’s attention is on the game, the son may feel rejected, as Matt demonstrated earlier. He and his father did activities together, but Matt came away emotionally empty, “because he never talks to me about what I’m thinking and feeling.”

...Through Physical Touch
Physical touch includes hugs and kisses, but it also involves a pat on the back, a hand on the shoulder, holding hands as you cross the street, or even wrestling on the floor.

I asked eleven-year-old Jason, “On a scale of zero to ten, how much does your father love you?”
Without blinking an eye, he answered, “Ten!”

When I asked why he felt so strongly, he said, “Dad is always bumping me when he walks by, and we wrestle on the floor.”

Remember, physical touch is a powerful communicator of emotional love.

At the end of the day the question is not: “Do you love your children?” The question is: “Do your children feel loved?”  Is there something you can do today to help your children feel loved?

*For more information and tips on parenting be sure to pick up a copy of Dr.Chapman's book The Five Love Languages of Children.