WORDS OF AFFECTION

1. Expressing Our Love
The three words “I love you” have great power. Parents need to speak frequently of their love from the earliest months of their children’s lives all the way through the teenage years. The words “I love you” might be part of the bedtime ritual when they are younger, or the last words spoken to older children before they leave for school. They might be sent by text or written in a letter for a child to keep and read over again.

Teenagers long to hear their parents speak these three words to them more than their parents usually realise. As they pass through adolescence they are besieged by questions about their identity and value. They are undermined by their own unfavorable comparisons with their friends and siblings. Hearing they are loved can help provide the security and self-worth they need to carry them through.

Phrases like “I love being with you”, “I love playing with you”, “I really enjoy talking to you”, “I like watching you draw/seeing you play/watching the way you play with your siblings”, or “you’re wonderful”, “you’re so funny”, “you’re great fun” should become part of our regular vocabulary to express our affection.

Stay tuned, this topic will be explored further next week.

Q. What type of loving words do you find the hardest to say?

This week, let us consciously take time and opportunity to speak words of love to express our love to our children. God, our heavenly Father constantly does that to us everyday. Let us reflect the Heavenly Father to our children by expressing our love to them through our words.

PRAYER: Lord, help us as parents to constantly and consciously keep expressing our love through words of affection to our children, irrespective of what age they are. In Jesus’ name. Amen.