How Christian Parents Can Speak Their Child’s Love Language w/ Gary Chapman | Ep. 45, Pt. 2

Episode 45: Summary & Transcript

Disclaimer: Please note that this is an automatically generated transcript. Although the transcription is largely accurate, it may be incomplete or inaccurate in some cases due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.

Episode Summary

This is the second part of an interview with Dr. Gary Chapman, author of The Five Love Languages. Chapman shares his personal love languages, explains how individuals can learn to speak a love language that is not natural to them, and discusses the interplay between personality types and love languages. He also elaborates on his “love tank” metaphor for emotional well-being, the importance of being a good listener, and how parents risk their children not feeling loved if they don’t learn to speak their child’s primary love language. Additionally, the conversation touches on how God expresses all five love languages.

Episode Transcript

Dr. Matt Jones (00:00):
Well, welcome to part two of our great discussion with Gary Chapman, author of not just The Five Love Languages, but also his newest book, The Love Language That Matters Most: How to Personalize Love So They Really Feel It. We hope you’re rejoining us because he’s already given us some great insight and we are so blessed to have an opportunity for a little bit more. Gary, as we’ve talked about these love languages, we’re just curious, what is your personal love language, primary love language, the one that matters to you the most?

Dr. Gary Chapman (00:32):
Mine is words of affirmation. And in the early stages of our marriage, because we tend to speak our language. I gave my wife words of affirmation and words of affirmation because it’s just natural. Okay, but mine is words of affirmation.

Dr. Matt Jones (00:49):
All right. And what’s your secondary? Because you talk about the primary and secondary. What’s the other one?

Dr. Gary Chapman (00:54):
I think quality time.

Dr. Matt Jones (00:55):
Okay. All right, cool. So that means we can stay on the podcast with you longer.

Janel Greig (01:00):
That’s right.

Dr. Matt Jones (01:02):
I’m really good at this love language stuff, Gary.

Dr. Gary Chapman (01:05):
That’s good.

Dr. Matt Jones (01:05):
All right, good. Okay.

Janel Greig (01:08):
Matt, I’m curious, what’s your love language?

Dr. Matt Jones (01:11):
Mine’s physical affection. What’s it called? Physical affection, touch?

Dr. Gary Chapman (01:16):
Yeah.

Dr. Matt Jones (01:16):
Physical touch. Physical touch.

Dr. Gary Chapman (01:17):
Yeah.

Janel Greig (01:18):
Yeah. Okay. All right. We’ve got a variety here.

Dr. Matt Jones (01:21):
What’s yours, Janel? I guess I should show interest there.

Janel Greig (01:23):
Oh, acts of service all the way.

Dr. Matt Jones (01:25):
Acts of service. Okay. That’s great.

Janel Greig (01:26):
Yeah. Gary, and I think this goes for, I’m thinking spouse as well as kids, because our spousal relationship is so important in that family foundation. But what happens when a parent’s love language is very different from their child’s or spouses? How can as parents or spouses, we learn to bridge that gap and love our child or spouse in a way that doesn’t necessarily come natural to us?

Dr. Gary Chapman (01:51):
Yeah. I think this happens more than we would think. If the spouse’s primary love language is one that you did not receive growing up, it’s going to be a learning curve, but the good news is you can learn it.

I remember the husband who said to me, “Dr. Chapman, my wife and I read your book and we took the quiz and her language is words of affirmation.” And he said, “I’m ashamed to say this. I don’t know how to give those kinds of words. I never received positive words growing up. I was just told I was lazy. I’d never amount to anything and all kinds of other condemning words.” And he said, “I don’t know what to do.” I said, “Well, here’s the good news. You can learn to speak any language as an adult, even if you did not receive it growing up, since you understand how important it is.”

(02:42):
I said, “Can you give me three things your wife is good at?” He said, “Well, she’s a good cook and she’s a good school teacher and she’s a good mother.” I wrote those three words down and wrote three sentences out beside each one of them and I handed it to him. I said, “Here’s your assignment this week twice a day, get in a room by yourself and read these sentences out loud so you hear yourself saying them. And when you come back next week, I want you to say them to me without looking at your notes.”

Well, he was wondering if he can do this or not, but he came back and he did. I said, “Now here’s your assignment. The next three weeks, you give her one of these each week. I don’t care what day or what time of day.” I said, “Now, the first time you give her one, you may want to do it when she’s looking in another direction because the look into her eye may blow your mind trying to say positive words to her.” And I said, “You give her one each week for three weeks.” And he said, “Man, I hope I can do it.”

(03:41):
I said, “Listen, you said them to me. If you said them to me, you can say them to her.” He came back and he had done it. I said, “How’d your wife respond?” He said, “On the third week she said to me, What’s going on with you? I’ve never heard you give me so many compliments.” I said, “What did you say?” He said, “I just said, well, honey, you know we took that quiz and your language is words of affirmation, so I’m just trying to learn how to put my love into words because I do love you.” She said, “Honey, that’s so sweet.”

So you can learn how to speak these languages if you didn’t receive them. Here we’re back to attitude. If you understand how important it is and you want to meet their emotional need for love, you can learn how to speak them.

Dr. Matt Jones (04:21):
Yep. That’s a good point. But here’s where I kind of get stuck. I think hope is so important. What happens if you’ve lost hope that you can either express or learn that language?

Dr. Gary Chapman (04:34):
Well, that’s when you need help. You need outside help. I think a counselor and the help of God, because God can help us do things that we could never, ever do by ourselves. And if you’re just honest with God for whatever reason, your history and all that, God can help you because if you’re married, your responsibility is to reach out and seek to love that other person. If you have children, the same thing is true. It’s a part of being a parent. And so we don’t want to miss out on one of the most important aspects of parenting our marriage.

Dr. Matt Jones (05:09):
Great point. Thank you.

Janel Greig (05:11):
Yeah. One of the things that you talk about in your new book, Gary, that I really appreciate, and you talked about this a little bit in our first episode is how personality plays into love languages. And you draw out a number of those in the new book and how to understand the dichotomies such as extrovert versus introvert and those different personality types play into each love language. So can you give our listeners a little bit of a scope of that, of framing how that applies and plays in when approaching conversation with our loved ones?

Dr. Gary Chapman (05:42):
Yeah. Here’s a wife, her husband having a 30th birthday. So she tells him, “I’m going to drive tonight because I’m going to surprise you where I’m going to take you for dinner.” So she drives and they pull up in front of a house. He recognizes friends of theirs live there. He said, “What are we doing here?” She said, “They want us to come by for a few minutes.” They go in, there’s 30 people in there. He’s an introvert. She’s the extrovert. She thinks he’s hitting a home run. Now he’s going to be friendly and he’s going to make the most of the thing.

(06:21):
But in his mind he would much rather just her taking him out to a restaurant, just the two of them and spend time together. So if we understand the personality, then we’ll know better how to communicate our love to them or how not to communicate love to them. That’s just a simple example.

Janel Greig (06:44):
Yeah, no, that’s great. That’s a great practical application. Thank you.

Dr. Matt Jones (06:48):
So how would you respond to a parent or a spouse who tries all the love languages and it just doesn’t seem to deepen the connection between the parent and the child or the parent and the spouse?

Dr. Gary Chapman (07:01):
Well, I think with children or with the spouse, there is the possibility that there has been trauma or other things in their background that’s impacting whether or not they can receive love. If they’ve been hurt deeply or if they’ve never felt love growing up at all, they don’t even know what it feels like to feel loved. And in those kinds of situations, it’s going to take some outside help, with them trying to help them discover why they feel the way they feel.

And let’s face it, in our culture, there’s so many people that grow up in what I call just unhealthy families. And so there’s difficulties that we all have to work with. That’s why I’m so glad that in our culture today, it’s much easier for people to go see a counselor and get help than it was 50 years ago, when people, “Oh no, you don’t need a counselor.” Counselors are just people folks and they’re trained to help people who are struggling.

Dr. Matt Jones (08:06):
That’s great. Thank you.

Janel Greig (08:09):
Let’s talk a little bit about the love tank, Gary. You often talk about the love tank in your books. Can you tell our listeners what the love tank is and what it looks like in their kids’ life? And as parents, how do we tell if our kiddo’s love tank is full or empty?

Dr. Gary Chapman (08:26):
Well, I use the gasoline tank in a car as a metaphor. If the gasoline tank is full, you can go a long way, but if it’s getting close to empty, you better be looking for a gasoline station. And so I think every child has an emotional love tank and if that love tank is full, that is they genuinely feel loved by the parents. The child tends to grow up emotionally healthy.

But if the love tank is empty and they do not feel loved by the parents, they tend to grow up with many internal emotional struggles and often in the teenage years they go looking for love sometimes in the wrong places. So I think it’s extremely important and I think the metaphor helps you kind of picture that.

(09:13):
I encourage, if you have teenagers, let them read the book we wrote for teens, A Teen’s Guide to the Five Love Languages. Parents, you read the one written for parents. It’s called The Five Love Languages of Teenagers. They’re reading that, you’re reading that, you’re going to have some good discussions about this part of life and you’re going to be able to clarify things and they’re going to be able to communicate to you when they feel love and don’t feel love.

Of course, also, teenagers can manipulate you. And they can say, “Now, wait a minute now, you know that gifts is my secondary love language. If you really love me now, you would give me…” But parents still have to remember you don’t give teenagers everything they ask for. God doesn’t do that for us. I’m so thankful for that. Amen.

(10:04):
A girl broke up with me, I dated three years in high school and I was in love and she broke up with me and I prayed, “Oh God, change her mind.” I’m glad God didn’t answer that or I wouldn’t be married to the wonderful woman I’m married to now.

So we don’t give them everything they want. We give them what we think is best for them. And so you can say to a teenager, “I understand why you would ask for that, but I love you too much to do that.” And you tell them why. You can’t do that now. I will do it at a certain time, but I can’t do it right now because I just don’t think it would be good for you.

Dr. Matt Jones (10:40):
Well, I really like the metaphor of the love tank and what I think is difficult and correct me please, you’ve done this a lot longer than I have, but I find it’s tough for a kid to evaluate because you said, “Let’s evaluate or ask these questions.” And what if the kid, or even maybe a deeper question, what if the spouse says, “I don’t know, or I don’t like to evaluate those types of things.” How would you suggest a parent or a spouse respond in that situation?

Dr. Gary Chapman (11:11):
Well, to say, “I want you to feel love because I do love you and I’d love for you to be open and help me because I want to do it in a way that’s most meaningful to you.” I have asked sometimes, suggested sometimes to couples every two or three weeks, you just say to the other person, but the person may not respond as you’ve just said, “Honey, on a scale of zero to 10, how full is your love tank this week?” And if they say anything less than 10, you just say, “Well, what could I do this week that would be most meaningful in expressing my love to you?”

And it may not be their primary love language that week. There may be circumstances that another thing would really make them feel love. But the very fact that you ask the question communicates, “Honey, I want to keep your love tank full.” But if they say, “I don’t know how I feel.” Well, someday let’s talk about why you think you don’t know.

(12:12):
But again, it’s two people, I think. One is they just never felt loved, they don’t know what it’s supposed to feel like. And the other is they’ve always felt loved and they feel love now. Their parents spoke all five languages. They don’t know which one is most important. They just know they’ve always felt love and their spouses speak in all five. I’d say, “Don’t worry about it. If you feel love, don’t worry about it.”

Dr. Matt Jones (12:36):
That’s great.

Janel Greig (12:38):
Thank you. That’s good. What about a little bit looking and Matt’s this is looking back a little, but still worries that, but for me, this is looking forward to the launching phase of our teenagers. How as parents does a teen’s love language shape the way that they’re going to experience support during the launching phase? As a parent, how should we be aware to be approaching that for each kiddo?

Dr. Gary Chapman (13:02):
Yeah. Well, I think having a discussion with a teenager periodically, especially if they’ve read and have the concept, which I mentioned earlier and you’ve read the concept and you might also around the table, why don’t we each share on a scale of zero to 10, how full our love tank is.

And it can be a fun thing for the whole family and an individual, a father can do it to a son just as they’re talking, a mother can do it to a daughter or other way around for that matter, because that sense of the child, they really love me. They want me to feel loved. So I think communication about this whole concept is the way that we keep it on the front burner for the whole family.

Dr. Matt Jones (13:52):
Great. Well, you bring up communication. What do you think it means to be a good listener?

Dr. Gary Chapman (14:00):
A good listener is trying to understand what the other person is thinking and feeling. By nature, most of us are kind of geared to answering something. They say something and we’re going to give them an answer or give them a response rather than saying, “Tell me more about that. That’s interesting. Tell me more about that.” The listener has to be thinking in terms of, “I want to hear more. I want to hear more.”

And when you do that, you’re communicating to them, “What you have to say is valuable. I want to know what you’re thinking. I want to try to understand what you’re thinking and understand what you’re feeling.” And especially with teenagers, because they’re going to be saying things that you wonder, how in the world could they say that? And the tendency is to come back and say, “Well, now you know that’s not right.”

(14:51):
“Now, we’ve taught you better than this.” But far better to say, “That’s an interesting thought. Now, where did you come up with that?” And they tell you, “Well, we had a conversation in class, or I’ve been reading this book,” or whatever. And I said, “Tell me more about it. What’s your perspective on it?” And when they see that you’re interested and will listen to them, they already know what you’ve taught them. You’ve been teaching them for these years, they already know that. You don’t have to hit them over the head with it.

But if you show interest in that, you’re helping them think. I remember one question I used to ask my son, I said, “Yeah, it’s interesting because obviously people have come up to the conclusion that what you’re talking about. ” I said, “I wonder what would happen if everybody believed that?” And that opened up a discussion. If everybody did that, what would happen to the culture?

Dr. Matt Jones (15:43):
Yeah, the world would be a different place. I am curious, what would you consider your welcome to parenting moment? Oh my goodness, this is what parenting is or could be like. As you think back through that, what was that moment like for you or what was that moment?

Dr. Gary Chapman (16:03):
I think probably the most dramatic moment was the birth of our daughter because my wife, as I said, had told me before we got married that she wanted to have five boys and when our children were born, you didn’t know what there was going to be till they were born. And the husband’s father couldn’t even be in the room when the baby was being born. So they come out and got me and said, “You have a daughter.” And I walked in and my wife was still under some sedation and she said to me, “It’s a little girl, but I couldn’t help it.”

Janel Greig (16:37):
Welcome to parenting. Welcome to parenting.

Dr. Gary Chapman (16:40):
And the doctor said to her, “Don’t you worry, honey, she will have him wrapped around her little finger.” And he was right about that. But that was the most dramatic moment, I think, as I look back. We just have two children, a boy and a girl, and both of them were great, but they were very, very different. In my book on things I wish I’d known before we became parents, one of my chapters is, I wish I’d known that no two children are alike. Ours are radically different.

Our daughter, when she was eight years old, said, “When I grow up, I’m going to be a doctor.” And she never wavered. In high school, she took three years of chemistry, four years of Latin. And she went on through college pre-med and then four years of medical school and four years of residency, two years of specialty and she loves what she does. She delivers high risk babies. Our son always said about her, he said, “Shelly, she’s too focused. She’s going to miss out on a lot of life,” because he was just all over the map.

(17:37):
In college, he took three majors, philosophy, world religions and English. And then he did a master’s in expressive therapy. And then he said, “You know, dad, I think I’m helping people, but I began to realize if you don’t get them to Jesus, you really haven’t helped them. Maybe I should go to seminary.” We never, ever thought of that, but children are different and we have to celebrate the differences and not try to make them all alike because they’re not. They’re unique.

Janel Greig (18:09):
That’s good. That’s good. I’m curious about what you think, Gary. Scripture shows us about how God both gives and receives love. Can you speak to that a little bit?

Dr. Gary Chapman (18:21):
One of the questions I’ve been asked through the years is, what is God’s love language? And so I just decided to go through the whole Bible again looking. I found out God speaks all five languages fluently, Old Testament, New Testament, all five. I also found there seems to be a connection between a person’s coming to Christ and their love language.

Physical touch people, for example, have an experience similar to Saul on the road to Damascus. You remember? He was going to get Christians in jail. God touched him physically, knocked him off his animal and got his attention. And there are people that still have experiences like that. They say, “I was just sitting in church there and my body started shaking. I started crying. I felt God’s arms around me.” Not everybody has that kind of experience, but God knows our love language and many times there’s a parallel between how we came to him.

(19:18):
And then when we become believers, we tend to express our love to God and our language. Acts of service people are the first ones to volunteer to work in the soup kitchen. Words of affirmation people, these are the ones that pour out words of praise to God. Martin Luther, what do you do? Songs, he wrote songs, he wrote sermons, he wrote the 95 feces. I mean, it’s words, words, words. And so I use historical examples and contemporary examples. And I wrote the book, God Speaks Your Love Language.

Janel Greig (19:51):
That’s really good. I think that’s very, very insightful too. Matt, do you have another question?

Dr. Matt Jones (19:57):
Well, yes. What do you think parents are missing out on by not living and recognizing these kids’ love languages? Because I find great joy in connecting with my children and I have seen that connecting with these love languages has been really helpful. And so what do you think parents miss out on by not taking the time to say, “All right, what might be my kid’s love language?”

Dr. Gary Chapman (20:31):
I think they may wake up down the road and realize that their children did not feel loved growing up. I remember a 13-year-old young man in my office who had run away from home. He ended up in my office and he said to me after we had talked a while, “My parents don’t love me. They love my brother, but they don’t love me.” I knew his parents. I knew they loved him. The problem is they didn’t have this concept.

They didn’t realize that he had a love language so they weren’t speaking that love language. It’s not that they didn’t love him. And I say to parents, the question is not, do you love your children? We love our children by nature. The question is, do your children feel loved? And so if you don’t know the five love languages or you ignore the concept, you may well wake up one day to hear one of your children say, I just never felt loved. I’ve heard that many times.

Dr. Matt Jones (21:28):
And that’s rough for the kid and their future. And I think back to what you said regarding the five love languages that God creates, I mean, that God expresses all five. And if we’re image bearers who are to reflect God’s character and his priorities, if he’s capable of expressing those five love languages and in light of being image bearers, we’re capable of doing something extremely similar, not as well, but we’re capable.

And I think again, that hope that, man, I’ve just not created that way. I would say because you’re an image bearer, there are means by which, and correct me if I’m wrong, means by which you can learn words of affirmation, physical touch, giving gifts. That’s the one I struggle with the most because I’m so cheap. Oh man, it is an act, I don’t know how to describe it, where I say, “Oh, I got to give a gift here.” And that is hard for me, Gary. So thanks for giving me some hope today that, okay, because God’s a gift giver, the Holy Spirit can empower me to be a gift giver.

Dr. Gary Chapman (22:40):
Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah.

Janel Greig (22:42):
I think that pulls into what Gary draws out a little bit more in the new book of the personality types too, right? The frugality versus maybe overindulgence of gift givers, but lots of opportunity. Kind of on that, that was a great question, Matt. But maybe as a tag onto that for our final question, what Gary is one small step that a parent can take today to love their kids well given the framework of the five love languages.

Dr. Gary Chapman (23:07):
I’d say if they’ve never read the book, The Five Love Languages of Children, The Five Love Languages of Teenagers, to read the book.

Dr. Matt Jones (23:14):
They really are great, audience. If you’ve not read them, they really are great. I don’t usually read books more than once. This one I read one and a half times. So make sure that you, I’m just kidding. I actually have read the love languages twice.

Dr. Gary Chapman (23:27):
Yeah. I’ve had parents tell me, and I’ve had married couples tell me, the original five love language book, that book saved our marriage 20 years ago when we read it, when the lights came on and we took the quiz, we learned each other’s language and started speaking. It literally, literally saved our marriage.

And I’d say this, parents, recognize that your relationship with your spouse is a model to your children. Our model speaks more deeply than even our words do to our children. So we want to give them a model of a mom and dad that are loving each other. I know you’re not responsible for the other person’s love. I mean, they have to choose that, but you can love them even if they’re unlovely.

Because Romans chapter 5, verse 8 says, “The love of God is poured in our hearts by the Holy Spirit.” So you can love them with God’s love even though you don’t feel loved by them and you may not feel love for them, but you can love them and use the five love languages and you’re making the most positive influence you could ever make on your spouse when you do that.

Janel Greig (24:36):
Yeah, that’s fantastic. Dr. Chapman, thank you so much for being with us and for all of what you’ve shared today, for all the books and resources you’ve written. Listeners, I encourage you to go out, maybe it’s the original Five Love Languages book. Maybe it’s one specific for your teenagers, but pick one of those up, read it. And then Dr. Gary’s newest book, The Love Language that Matters Most, is a beautiful add-on to that.

So Dr. Chapman, thank you for being here. Matt, thanks for being here co-hosting again on this part two. It was a great session. Listeners, thanks for listening to this part two. If you missed part one of our interview with Dr. Gary Chapman, go back and listen to that one because there was great content there that front loaded and framed our conversation today.

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