When I was in high school, I took four years of French.  When I went to college, since French wasn’t offered, I took Spanish.  Then, when my husband was in the military, we lived in Germany so I took a beginning German class.   Though I did learn some conversational skills, perhaps the greatest insight I gleaned through all of it was that once you know “how” to be skilled in a language, you have won half the battle. 

Dr. Gary Chapman, author of the best-selling Five Love Languages Series of books has identified the five special ways that love and appreciation is communicated to individuals.  He believes that each human being needs to experience all five ways but also that each person receives love best in one of the five ways.  His life’s work has been to train people how to identify their own “love language” and how to recognize it in those they love so they can cross the “language barriers” that cause relationship breakdowns.

If you live in a family, you know that conflicts are inevitable.  We are, after all, human beings who sin regularly.  As homeschoolers, the relationships take on an even greater dimension.  We add the “teacher/student” relationship and the “classmates” relationship to the already intense “parent/child” and “siblings” relationships.  As a husband and wife, you become more than spouses and parents; you become co-workers and mentors as the teachers of your children. And all of this is done under one roof and in large amounts of time spent together.  It is crucial that communication with and understanding of each other flows naturally throughout the household. And if one of the six traits of building a strong family is to express appreciation and affection for each other, it is even more important to know how best we can do that with each individual family member.

Let me give you an example.  One of my children has some special needs.  He does not look at life in the same way that the rest of us do.  He is extra sensitive and is easily offended because of the frustrations I know he feels as he struggles to learn things that come much easier to his siblings.  Teaching him has required an extra amount of patience and a willingness to not go by someone else’s time table or formula for learning.  But the whole family has learned a lot about ministering to one another through the process.  In fact, when this child was a toddler, our oldest son, while helping me take care of him, observed that our whole family had learned the character trait of “attentiveness” simply because of this one child and the care he needed.  As we all have learned how to express our care for this child, we have learned much about expressing care to each other.

So what are these love languages?  I will share them with you and discuss them individually as they relate to homeschoolers.  Briefly, the five languages are quality time, words of affirmation, gifts, acts of service, and physical touch. (I would highly recommend picking up a copy of Dr. Chapman’s books.  They are all in paperback form and can be purchased for a few dollars each through half.com or Amazon used books.) Next we will look at the love language of “quality time” and the unique ways that homeschoolers can be certain that everyone receives this important communiqué!

Copyright 2007