Kateism

Since the weather around here has been pretty awesome in the evenings lately, the girls and I have started taking walks after dinner.  We typically walk over to a nearby neighborhood, walk through the neighborhood, and then turn around and go home.  As you come out of our road, there is an area where a ton of wild daisies are growing.  Lately, Kate has started picking the wildflowers and bringing them with us until we get to the neighborhood.  Then she has been leaving flowers on people mailboxes “to make people smile when they check their mail”. There were LOTS of mailboxes, so she made sure to just leave one flower on each box so that she could give them to as many people as possible.

Oh this girl. I love her sweet heart for others. 

The book called The Five Love Languages, by Gary Chapman, talks about the different ways that people really hear “I love you”.  There are many iterations of the book.  Some versions are written specifically for marriage relationships and one version is written specifically to children. However, in all versions, there are 5 different ways that people “show” and “hear” love:

• Words of Affirmation 
• Quality Time
• Receiving Gifts
• Acts of Service
• Physical Touch

Typically you know what your own love language is by the way you would naturally “show” someone that you love them.  For example, if my natural way to show Kate that I love her is through spending time with her (taking her to Target, watching TV with her, coloring with her, etc), then that would indicate that MY love language is Quality Time and that I would feel most loved/appreciated if others spent Quality Time with me.  Gary Chapman’s theory is that a person naturally gives love in the way they would prefer to receive love. The book is very interesting, and I do think it is very helpful to learn what type of love language those that are closest to you are, so you can know the best way to show them love and appreciation. 

Anyway, I said all of that to say that I’ve always thought that Kate’s love language is Receiving Gifts, and as she gets older, I definitely see this more and more.  Even as a toddler, she would pick a handful dandelions and joyfully present them to me. She is constantly drawing and coloring pictures for special people in her life. Judging by the way that she shows love/appreciation to others through giving gifts, my guess is that this is her love language. 🙂  

As a kid, you’re often very self-focused and completely wrapped up in your own world. This was definitely one of those proud mom moments, as I got to see Kate being a cheerful giver, and focus on bringing a smile to other’s faces.