Then Do you ever get sick of nagging your child to do their chores?

I love my son Harry but his teen years are challenging.

Do you find it difficult to know how much of your child’s lack of follow-through is because of dyslexia or their other learning challenges, and how much is disobedience?

Children with dyslexia are often super sensitive.

School may be hard for them; their home should be their refuge. Even though I understand that yelling and nagging are not helpful strategies, I sometimes feel like an old vinyl record (yup, I’m showing my age) stuck on repeat as I bark out instructions to Harry to do his chores.

• Empty the dishwasher, please.
• I want the lawn cut before dinner.
• Clear the table, please. Ten minutes pause. Why haven’t you cleared the table?
  

These chores are not all on the same day. Few teens would do that much, but I expect Harry to help around the house. Now that he is a teen, he’s less compliant, and sometimes my nagging reaches world record levels. I worry it is damaging our parent/child bond, and I want to stay connected with him.

I decided to re-read a parenting book I recommend in Dyslexia Wrestling with an Octopus. This book by Gary Chapman and Ross Campbell is called The 5 Love Languages of Children. It isn’t new— my edition is dated 1997— but it is as relevant today as it was when they wrote it.

Drs Cloud and Townsend coined the idea of an ‘emotional tank.’ They suggest that when you use your child’s love language, you fill their emotional tank, and the child feels more connected to you. In this state, they are easier to discipline and train.

Here’s a video by Dr Gary Chapman explaining what’s in the book.

A child’s five love languages are:

• words of affirmation

• acts of service

• physical touch

• quality time

• gifts

Learn to speak your child’s love language

The theory is that each person feels love in different ways. If you try to show love to someone without using their love language, they may not feel loved. If you work out your child’s love language and use it, they will feel loved. But here’s the kicker: when the child enters their next stage of development, their love language may change.

Unconditional love is the foundation of good communication between a parent and a child. On p17 of my edition, the authors state:

‘We need to fill our children’s emotional tanks with unconditional love because genuine love is always unconditional. Unconditional love is a full love that accepts and affirms a child for who he is, not for what he does. No matter what he does (or does not do), the parent still loves him.’

The first chapter covers the importance of unconditional love and needs of a young child and an adolescent. The authors say the parent’s behaviour is the key because children are behaviourally motivated – they respond to their parent’s actions more than words.

Get to know your own love language

There’s a great website that goes alongside the book https://www.5lovelanguages.com/5-love-languages/.

It has online quizzes for couples, children, teens and singles to identify their love language preferences.

Quaking, I asked Harry to take the teen quiz. I picked my time carefully, checked he’d eaten and had spent half an hour chilling with YouTube. Then, I read the questions aloud to him. Harry suffers from slow processing speed. Here’s a blog post explaining what this means. Giving him ample of time to process the information helped him answer all the questions.

As mentioned earlier, love languages can change as a person gets older. Ten years ago, when I first read the book, I picked Harry’s love languages to be words of affirmation and physical touch. I was keen to see if they had changed.

Here’s what the web quiz revealed.

Sorry, I know that this image is blurry. Harry’s physical touch score had dropped to 10%, and quality time had moved into the number one spot at 30%. That gives me food for thought. Getting quality time with a teen who wants to be on his mountain bike or out with friends can be challenging.

I flicked through to the chapter Love Language #3: Quality Time to get some tips and discovered ‘Quality time is focused attention.’

An interesting observation in the book was that you need to go to your child’s physical/emotional level of development. If your child is crawling, you sit on the floor with them. As they get older, you follow their interests. If they are into sporting events, you go to watch.

Recently, Harry begged me to watch his mountain bike race. I wasn’t keen. Where would I stand on the treacherous course? I knew it would be hard slogging up a steep hill on foot to witness a few seconds of his racing.

I went begrudgingly, but I’m glad I did. At his next race, I’ll try to be more positive.

In the chapter on quality time, I also read that giving your child positive eye contact and doing activities together is essential. With this in mind, I asked Harry to help me cook dinner.

Finding quality time with a teen takes effort

Harry is seriously into music, so as he sat at the bench chopping onions, he put on his favourite tunes. I learned about the intricacies of Spotify, and he showed me how to build playlists. We had a good thirty minutes of quality time. After dinner, when I asked him if I could help him plan his homework, he agreed without the usual struggle, so there might be something in this love language concept.

The 5 Love languages of Children has chapters on each love language and ideas of how to show that language at every age. The authors stress that you should sprinkle other love languages in your interactions. Looking at Harry’s quiz results, I see that acts of service, words of affirmation and receiving gifts are all important to him on 20%. Undoubtedly, he still likes physical touch, but like most teens, he wants that from friends more than from his mother.

After the chapters on love languages, there is a chapter on discipline. The recommendation is not to use a form of punishment directly related to your child’s primary love language, i.e. for a child craving quality time, don’t use time out as a punishment.

Emotional maturity links to learning

On p132 of my edition, the authors stress the need to understand the link between learning and emotional maturity.

‘The most important fact to know about a child’s learning ability is this: For a child to be able to learn well at any age level, he must be at the emotional maturational level of that particular age level….the more mature the child is emotionally, the better he can learn.’

Many children with dyslexia are emotionally a few years behind their peers. No doubt, this lack of maturity also hinders their learning. The authors suggest that keeping a child’s love tank full is the best way to help them develop emotional maturity.

I wholeheartedly recommend this book and the website that goes with it. There are podcasts on the site if you prefer to learn in that way.

Re-reading The 5 Love Languages of Children has encouraged me to remember to speak Harry’s love language. We have some challenging teen years ahead, but I also recognise that they will fly by.

Decreasing my nagging will help me enjoy the time we have left to parent Harry. The tips in this book are an excellent place to start.

 I wonder if Harry has cleared the table yet.

What is your child’s love language?

Find out how to teach spelling and reading in 30 minutes a day here.

Speechify is an app that can help dyslexic children as it reads online text. Here is my affiliate link.