So, I've been working on notes for a
totally different topic, but I want to write something of a follow-up
to a post shared by another blogger. My friend Angela posted about
cyberbullying, particularly in a context of middle school. In
discussing how we adults (but particularly parents) can respond to
these situations, she says, “First, we need to let our middle
schooler know they are loved. We need to remind them of their
self-worth; their worth in the eyes of Jesus.” You can read the
whole post here.
I really want to expand on this point a
bit. Parents and mentors often think they are doing this and doing
it well. The problem may not be that you're not communicating that
your child is loved, but whether or not they're able to hear it.
Too often, I have heard parallel
stories from students and parents about the same events, but with
very different perceptions of those events. A parent will be
celebrating an amazing time they had with their kid, and the kid
walked away from the same even feeling unloved. Sometimes it's
practically the opposite. A student comes in gushing about this
amazing thing his parents did for him, but when I ask the parents
about it, they barely remember what the kid is talking about.
Let's face, even with the large number
of middle school students facing some sort of bullying situation
(cyber- or otherwise), the reality is that most middle schoolers
struggle with feeling loved and having an awareness of their worth.
If a key aspect of mitigating this somewhat is to communicate love
and value to them regularly, but they may be unable to hear or accept
it, what do we do?
I'd like to toss out Dr. Gary Chapman's
concept of the “Five Love Languages” as a tool that might help.
I'm not claiming that his ideas are amazing science, nor that he's
pulled them straight from the Bible. What I would say is that his
general concept seems to be a helpful tool for a lot of people to
understand these gaps in any of their relationships—when someone
believes they are communicating love, but the other person doesn't
perceive it.
The short version of Chapman's idea is
that people give and receive love in different ways, and while all
the major ways he identifies are valuable to all people, most people
operate out of a primary love language, and understanding a person's
love language will allow you to communicate love to them in a way
they hear and understand. The five he delineates are gifts, quality
time, words of affirmation, acts of service, and physical touch.
The idea is that you should be able to
pay attention to what your child does respond to. They may not feel
that you love them if you “only” say it in words, but they might
react positively to you baking cookies for them, or to you putting
away your phone and computer for some one-on-one time with them. You
may have another child who you do things for every day, but the
complain that their parents don't tell them that they love them!
I only recently figured out (I think?)
that my dad is a “gifts” guy. I frankly have never really
perceived much in the way of love coming from my dad, but I've
recently noticed that he picks out small things that I need and picks
them up on occasion when he's out—a calendar, some storage
containers, etc. (If you're worried about whether your kid is a
“gifts” kid, and you don't have money, don't worry. . . the
language of gifts doesn't necessarily mean spending lots of money.)
Basically, as an adult, I'm figuring out that it may well be that my
dad has tried to express love to me, but we were effectively speaking
different languages.
Make sure you're speaking the same
language as your kid when your trying to communicate love and
affirmation. This goes for parents and mentors. For those of us who
are not parents, but mentor other people's kids, this is one of the
reasons we need to spend time with the kids—so that we can make
sure we're affirming them in their own language. This is another
reason small group leaders and parents should regularly share their
wisdom with each other—so we can help each other out in the process
of loving and affirming these kids.
