Week Four: Personality and Love Languages

Welcome to Week 4

It is impossible for me to say just how important personality and speaking a person's love language are to the building of relationships. As you consider the real shift in your relationship with your teen from director to mentor understanding their personality and their love language are tools you can use to maintain your loving relationship and keep the roads of communication open and flowing free.

Personality

Many times we fail to take into account our own personality and how it effects the interaction we have with our children. If your child has the personality of Aunt Edna who you simply cannot stand. Then you could without meaning to distance yourself from your child because they are so much like her. This is where it becomes necessary to understand yourself and your teen better.

My sister is five years younger than I. While I am a very emotionally driven person she is far more practical. Which means how we approach the world is very different. Our parents needed to handle us differently. I was a strong-willed, hard-headed, emotional drama queen who was also the last in passive aggressive tendencies. My sister on the other hand was the even keeled, go with the flow, obedient child, who tended to excel in everything.  Though without a doubt our parents loved us equally they would have been very foolish to treat us the same. While my sister only got spanked maybe once. I was he poster girl for the child who needed to be spanked weekly!

I say all of this to show personality is extremely important when you consider interacting with your teen. Use what you know of their personality to guide them. One way to make this more of a two way street is for both of you to take a personality test and discuss what you find and how you thihk it will affect your relationship. This personality test has 16 different types of personalities. It will be a great conversation starter for you to use.

Love Languages

Dr. Gary Chapman and Ross Campbell co-authored a book called Love Languages for Teenagers the Secret to Loving Children Effectively this book will give you insights on not only the love languages with is important. It also ties in how to use them effectively with your teens. The love languages tell us that each person receives and recognizes love differently. There are five ;amguages they are: Acts of Service, Words of Affirmation, Giving of Gifts, Time Spent Together, and Physical Touch.What makes this important is people feel and recognize their own form of love, and fail to recogize and receive others.

This implies if you feel love by the giving of gifts that is wonderful. But, if you constantly give your teen gifts, and their love language is touch. You are constantly showing them your love, however they are not recognizing or receiving it as love. This is all about perspective. You may be doing all that you can to show your teen you love them, Yet, still not be speaking in a way where they can understand and  feel loved. There is also a test you can take on the love languages to help you get started on beginning to fulfill this need for your teen.

Exercises

1. Discuss with your child about taking the two online inventories above. Let them know you want to take the tests together. Explain you are hoping they will help you understand one another better. Then take the personality and the love lamguage test and discuss the results of them both.
2. Pick up or order a copy of the Love Language for Teenagers book and start reading.

Journal

Write about your conversation with your teen about the tests you took together. Write down the feelings you felt yourself and what you picked up from your teen. Do you actually understand one another better? If yes then write about how you can expand upon this connection. If not you may need some more direct help. If that is the case you can book a private talk with me. Use contact information listed on this site to reach me. I am betting 98% will not need to take the step of contacting me. Because, just letting your teen know that you want to connect with them better will go along way to making things better between you. 

The last thing I want you to journal about is your love language and your teens love language. Plan some ways to shower love on your teen by using their love language. Plan to do something several times a week. It will make you closer because at some point they will recognize you are doing what you are doing to show them your love.

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