When Your Child’s Primary Love Language Is Touch Is your child’s primary love language touch? Be sure to read chapter 7 to determine for sure. However, here are some clues.
For children who understand this love language, physical touch will communicate love more deeply than will the words “I love you,” or giving a present, fixing a bicycle, or spending time with them. Of course, they receive love in all the languages, but for them the one with the clearest and loudest voice is physical touch. Without hugs, kisses, pats on the back, and other physical expressions of love, their love tanks will remain less than full.
When you use physical touch with these children, your message of love will come through loud and clear. A tender hug communicates love to any child, but it shouts love to these children. Conversely, if you use physical touch as an expression of anger or hostility, you will hurt these children very deeply. A slap in the face is detrimental to any child, but it is devastating to children whose primary love language is touch.
Michelle didn’t learn about the five love languages until her son Jaden was twelve years old. At the end of a love languages seminar, she turned to a friend and said, “Now I finally understand Jaden. For years he has annoyed me by constantly picking at me. When I’m working at the computer,
he walks up behind me, puts his hands around my face and covers my eyes. If I walk past him, he reaches out and pinches my arm. If I walk through the room when he’s lying on the floor, he grabs my leg. Sometimes he pulls my arms behind me.
He used to run his hands through my hair when I was sitting on the couch, although he doesn’t anymore since I told him to keep his hands out of my hair. He does the same thing to his father, and the two of them usually end up in a wrestling match on the floor.
“Now I realize that Jaden’s primary love language is physical touch. All these years, he has been touching me because he wants to be touched. I admit that I’m not much of a toucher— my parents were not hugging people. I now realize that my husband has been loving Jaden with his wrestling, while I have been drawing back from his efforts to get love from me. How could I have missed it all this time—it seems so simple n ow.” That night Michelle talked with her husband about the seminar. William was somewhat surprised by what he heard. “I hadn’t thought of the wrestling as love, but that makes a lot of sense,” he told his wife. “I was just doing what came naturally for me. And you know, physical touch is my primary love language too.” When Michelle heard this, another light went on. No wonder William was always wanting to hug and kiss! Even when he wasn’t interested in sex, he was the “touchiest” person she had ever met. That night Michelle felt as if she had almost too many new things to think about, and yet she determined to learn to speak the love language of physical touch. She would start by simply responding to their touches.
The next time Jaden came by where she was sitting at the computer and put his hands over her eyes, she rose, turned,
and gave him a bear hug. Jaden was surprised, but he laughed.
And the next time William put his arms around her, she responded the way she did when they were dating. He smiled and said, “I’m going to send you to more seminars. This stuff really works!” Michelle persisted in her efforts to learn a new love language and, in due time, touching began to feel more comfortable for her. But long before she felt fully comfortable, William and Jaden were reaping the benefits of her physical touches and were responding to her by speaking her primary love language,
acts of service. Jaden was picking up after himself and William was vacuuming, and Michelle thought she’d gone to heaven.
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