● 1 Relationship with Your Teen

● 3 Things that May be Blocking Your Love

● 5 Reasons Why Parent-Child Love is Critical

● 7 Ways to Express Love

● A Bunch of Positive Adjectives for Words of Affirmation

You Only Have 1 Relationship With Your Teen

We do so much for our kids that it’s easy to become complacent about communicating our love for them. Often, daily life can put us in a negative spiral of nagging and lecturing. We may find that rather than pointing out their gifts and skills, we spend most of our time pointing out all the things they're forgetting, not doing, or not doing well enough.

If we’re completely honest, some of us might have developed some pretty big blocks to loving our children.

3 Blocks to Love

1) You are operating from a deficit.

Deficits can come in many forms - emotional, physical, mental, spiritual, from a time perspective, or financial. You will feel blocked if you constantly give for and on behalf of your kid(s) without consistently filling your buckets.

2) Your relationship is filled with more negatives than positives.

Did you know it takes 5 positives to overcome 1 negative? Dr. John Gottman talks about “The Four Horsemen” of relationships: criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling. These negative and toxic patterns need repair efforts to offset the damage.

3) You are doing what you know.

People subconsciously repeat their past, so you likely love your children the way others loved you. (*Sometimes people love the opposite to offset their childhood experiences.)

Fortunately, these blocks don’t have to mean you can’t learn to love your teens well. Sometimes, we need to find practical ways to express our love. Like any muscle, we need to work out showing our love to make it more natural!

5 Big Reasons to Express your Love

1) Love Provides Security

The life of a teenager is challenging and full of ups and downs. Love is like a shield of protection. Teens can withstand life challenges much better when they feel loved and safe. Your love should be the one thing they can always count on.

2) Love Encourages Them to Develop Trust

Many teenagers claim that if they feel trusted, their chances of making a wise choice in any circumstance increase. They hope that even if they choose poorly, you will still love them despite their mistake. Knowing they are loved makes it easier for them to develop safe and trusting relationships in their adult lives.

3) Love Builds Self-Confidence

Teenagers who feel loved have less fear of making errors. They feel more confident in taking healthy risks since they know you will still love them if they fail. And as they grow in confidence, they will continue to discover their own talents and skills without fear.

4) Love Instills Self-Love in Them

When you demonstrate your love for your teen, they learn to love themselves. In other words, you teach your kids that they deserve love, which will benefit them for the rest of their lives. They will anticipate being respected and loved in partnerships and will be more likely to give love in return.

5) Love Shows Us What Love Looks Like

Plain and simple, love begets love. When you show love consistently, you can have faith that your teen will mature into an adult with better ties to family, friends, community, and the world. What better gift to give the world than a teen who is comfortable in their own skin?

7 Practical Acts of Love

So showing love is essential. But how can you do it every day? Here are some practical ways to show love to your teen that take only a moment a day!

1) Verbal Affirmation

The simplest approach to showing our affection is to simply say it! When we affirm our children in love, they will know they are loved without condition.

2) Protection

We safeguard them. We make our kids safer when we keep an eye on their behavior and establish firm moral and safety limits they cannot cross. One of the most important things we do for our children out of love is to ensure their safety.

3) Preparation

We get them ready each and every day. We are aware of how intricate the world is. There are many pulls and pushes, risks and opportunities in their world. Future protection comes from preparation, and we can demonstrate how much we care about our kids by helping them grow into their best selves. We can teach them how to navigate the world safely and sensibly.

4) Presence (in the moment and lifelong)

We all know how distracted we get with our electronics. Spend time with your teen, make direct eye contact, or go for a walk without any distractions.

We are available to them no matter the season. Connections come and go. Friendships are prone to change, particularly during adolescence. Years in school go by. We occasionally leave our villages. Sometimes it seems like the world is a dangerous, unreliable place. Our constant and dependable presence demonstrates our affection.

5) Service

To help them, we do. We work for a living to meet the needs of our kids as much as we can. We aid them in their academic work. Sometimes we take them to the places they need or want to go. We carry out those actions both out of obligation and as a sign of our intense love.

6) Physical Touch

Physical touch shows love and has the side benefit of calming a stressed, anxious or sad teen. Physical touch calms and stimulates the vagus nerve, especially when breathing is slows down, and activates the parasympathetic nervous system – which is responsible for relaxation.

7) Admiration

“Strength Spotting” - We admire their best qualities. Many people in the world base their opinions of us on how we act or what we produce. Adolescents may be particularly susceptible to this. They may feel anxious due to believing that their worth is primarily determined by their grades or test scores. They start thinking of themselves as a product. Love is the ability to view someone as they truly are without filtering them via their actions or the results of their labor.

Words of Caution

All of the acts of love we discussed benefit them, but it's also possible that some of the things we do for them out of love will be misunderstood or even backfire. For instance, "protection" can be mistakenly construed as "control.”

The tendency to overprotect our children can be interpreted as a lack of faith in their independence. It is possible to undervalue or take our care of our children for granted because it is "just" our job. Giving them the liberty to struggle and succeed could be viewed as showing little concern.

Sometimes it’s helpful to explain your motivations to them. To ensure your tweens and teens realize your behaviors are motivated by love, think about expressing one of the following statements in your own words:

● "I make rules for you because it's my responsibility to keep you safe. I care about you too much to let you be in danger.”

● "I’m helping prepare you for the world so that you may manage it on your own. I love you too much to let you just learn lessons through suffering. However, I have complete faith in your capacity to develop, evolve, and conquer challenges.”

● "I work hard. But it's all worthwhile since I can provide you with the great life. It means the world to me to provide you with a nice home and healthy meals.”

● “I'm giving you space to learn this lesson on your own. There is nothing that could ever change how much I love you. I want you to understand that challenges give us a chance to grow and try again.”

But most importantly, don't think showing your love has to be connected to anything. Simply express how you are feeling aloud.

Speaking it aloud is one of the most reliable ways to help your teen know how you feel and acquire a sense of self-worth that is invaluable for their growth and development.

Lots of Words of Affirmation:

Looking for some words you can start using to help affirm love in your teens? Here are some great words you can add to your daily conversation to keep showing the love!

accomplished, adventurous, affectionate, articulate, authentic, beautiful, brave, bright, capable, charismatic, charming, confident, courageous, creative, daring, determined, diligent, dynamic, energetic, fearless, friendly, funny, generous, giving, gregarious, happy, hardworking, helpful, independent, intelligent, kind, likable, loving, loyal, magnetic, patient, polite, positive, pretty, sincere, smart, strong, tough, unique, witty

Warmly,