Kids

Parents Should Show How They Love Each Other to Their Kids

by Kevyn Gohu
June 9, 2023

Kids learn how to love by watching how their parents show their love from one another.

Kids are like sponges; they absorb everything they perceive. Including the way we, their parents, show how we love each other. While we often shy away from public displays of affection in and out of the home, showing the kids how we love our partners does a lot more good for them in the long run. Here are reasons why parents need to show how they love each other in front of their kids.

1. Our relationship is the standard they’ll use for their relationship.

Maybe not when they’re toddlers, but when they become tweens and teens, they’ll get curious about what it’s like to be in a relationship. While there are some romance, drama, and slice-of-life novels to offer an overview, most of our kids’ knowledge of what a relationship is supposed to be like will be based on how we treat each other as partners at home and outside.

If they see their dad screaming at their mom, daughters will think it’s okay to be screamed at and sons will think it’s okay to scream at people. But, if they see their dad give flowers to their mom even on ordinary days, then daughters will expect their men to do the same and sons will do that for their women.

2. Our relationship will help them create their boundaries.

One of the most painstaking and stressful parts of maintaining a relationship is knowing what boundaries to keep and which ones to adjust. And a lot of times, kids will look to their parents and see how they compromise or negotiate those boundaries. When a mom nags a dad for having some me-time, daughters will think it’s okay to ignore that dads need me-time.

3. It helps them figure out their love language as well.

Brian Ball revealed an interesting insight: “Your Love Language Is Likely Whatever You Didn’t Get as a Child.” And it makes sense, most especially when we’re relying on the premise of “what goes around, comes around.” Filipinos, or Asian families, are more known to give gifts such as food to show their love (Pratiwi and Marfathonah, 2023), making them more starved for other things such as words of affirmation, physical touch, and more.

4. When parents show how they love each other, kids learn that’s how they can connect with others as well.

Kids learn how to communicate and connect with the world by following their parents’ examples. When parents roll their eyes at each other, and passive-aggressively jab each other, kids will do the same to others. Although parents can say that they didn’t explicitly teach their kids to be that way, they can’t say for sure that their kids didn’t see them do it.

Kids learn about love through their parents!

Unfortunately, discipline is where defining love gets problematic. Yelling is a sign of anger, but many of us are quick to rationalize our anger as a manifestation of love which, unfortunately, can hurt our kids in the long run. They’ll trigger fights on purpose, hoping to get the same angry reaction because they see it as love. But when they see a gentle and affectionate kind of love, they’ll show others that same kind of love and hopefully, receive it in return.

Reference

Pratiwi, R. D., & Marfathonah, U. (2023). Food is the Asian Way of Showing Love: a Semiotic Analysis. JSSH (Jurnal Sains Sosial dan Humaniora), 7(1), 33-39.

Surijah, E. A., & Kirana, C. T. (2020). Five Love Languages scale factor analysis. Makara Human Behavior Studies in Asia, 24(1), 56-72.