Connect With Your Kids By Speaking Their 'Love Language'

If they're in the 5- to 8-year-old age group, a quiz isn't the way to go because they can't accurately verbalize their love language; instead, the 5 Love Languages website offers these tips :

Ask him or her to draw or call out some ways parents love their children. You should try not to guide their drawings or answers, limit their responses, or require more responses than what he or she is prepared to give at the time you ask.

Depending on the child's attention span and the time of day, you may get many answers, or you may get very few. If it seems like slow going, then you may want to secretly explore the subject of love with your child for a week or so until you can deduce what he or she perceives as love. You may find yourself reading books or watching programs with your child and asking the question, "How do you know that mommy or daddy loves that little boy or little girl?" Or you may intentionally experiment by expressing love in each of the 5 ways over a week's period of time. This will be a subjective measure, but the combination of all these suggestions-studying your child's answers or drawings, listening to their answers about other parents and children, and "measuring" their response to your expression of each of the five love languages-should be enough to help you accurately assess your child's primary love language.