
I recently had a student tell me that if i wanted to learn spanish i should watch Dora the explorer. It got me thinking cartoons back in the day had some significant teaching lessons. Like Winnie the Pooh. When Piglet says How do you spell love? and Pooh responds you dont spell it. You feel it. Each one of us have the desire to feel loved. I find it funny that just because we say I love you to someone doesn’t always mean that they will feel loved. If I sat down with your student and asked them “Do you feel like your parents love you?” What do you think their response would be?
Have you ever stopped to think about what makes us feel loved? In the book The 5 love languages by Gary Chapman he talks about how there are 5 different ways that people feel loved. Physical touch, words of affirmation, quality time, acts of service, gift giving and receiving. Let me give you a few examples of each one:
Physical Touch– When you walk by and pat them on the back, wrestle with them, hug them, run your hands thru their hair, when they are sitting at the table and you place your hands on their shoulder and look over shoulder.
Acts of Service- Filling their car with gas, helping them chores, helping on a school project, help clean out their car or clean their room with them, help them with laundry.
Words of Affirmation- After sporting event say i am proud of you, tell them they look sharp/handsome/beautiful, write a note in the lunch, leave them stick notes with encouraging words on them, shoot them an encouraging text.
Gift Giving- You buy them a Starbucks and surprise them with it, you order a pizza and drop it off at school for them, you go on a business a trip and pick them up something small and fun.
Quality Time- You take them to a Seahawks game, you set aside a time during the week where you guys hang out, you spend time doing something they like playing catch or hiking, take them on a short rode trip for the day, hang out watch a movie.
Love languages are like gas tanks. Each one of us needs our gas tank filled up and each one of us is fueled in different ways. More often than not we show others we love them by the way we want to feel loved. Do you know your students love language? What makes your student feel most loved? If you don’t know don’t worry…this is why we are talking about it here. I would encourage you to have them take the assessment found here Love Language Assessment or just watch and see how the show love to you and others around them. This is even a great teaching moment for future relationships and when they are looking to get married. Teaching your student to think what makes their spouse feel most loved. Hope this thougth shed some insight into maybe what you can do to best show love to your student.
Nate