touch

A day in the life of us with Eli....this is long, but if you are a parent it is worth the read.

If you are anywhere near the floor, you are completely vulnerable and unsafe. Eli will pounce like a lion playing with its food. He jumps right onto you with no notice or warning of any kind. He gives zerbert after zerbert on your belly, he will suck on your arm until you get a hickey. He will jump on your back, cover your eyes and propel himself over your head and onto your lap. And all of this occurs within the first minute you decide to pleasantly sit on the floor.

With Evie, he will try to gently put her on the ground (unsuccessfully gentle most of the time) and poke her in the nose. He will lay on top her and give her zerberts galore. He will put his arms around her and squeeze her tight. He likes to suck on her ears.

Eli needs to have someone in the room with him at all times, most importantly sitting next to him. And sitting next to Eli isn't in the form of him on one cushion of the couch and me on another. It is Eli and I both on half a cushion. His legs are intertwined with mine, he insists on a blanket to cover us and his hand is almost always on my nose.

Around 5 months old, I would nurse Eli to sleep and he would reach up and touch my nose. My nose was his 'lovey' to help him to fall asleep. To this day, we lay with him for him to go to sleep and he STILL touches our nose to fall asleep. He loves us to lay next to him and his face is so close to ours that we are breathing each other's carbon dioxide.

At any store, he feels compelled to touch EVERYTHING, as most children do. A dear friend of mine told me about the idea of having him only touch with one finger. I thought it was genius and it works for about 2 minutes. I know kids like to explore with their hands, but Eli is more unique. He stacks soup cans, butter, cheese; he takes the bottom apple holding the other 50 or so apples up and of course they all fall to the ground.


What is the common denominator in all of these stories? It would seem that Eli feels compelled to touch. Like it is ingrained in him. Like God made him that way. It is as if God graces us with a specific, strong desire/trait in which we give and receive love.

I am reading this book: The 5 Love Languages of Children. It is a MUST READ for parents. There are five main ways that children (and adults): physical touch, quality time, words of affirmation, acts of service and gift giving. This book has helped me understand that Eli's love language is (you guessed it): physical touch. He needs to be touched to feel the most loved. Of course we tell him we love him, spend quality time with him, etc., but he feels MOST loved AND gives love in these ways: hugs, kisses, wrestling, snuggling on the couch, touching our noses, wrestling and pestering Evie and tackling anyone brave enough to be on our floor.

The book also mentions something called a child's emotional tank or love tank. Here, the authors explain: "By speaking your child's love language, you can fill his emotional tank with love. When your child feels loved, he is much easier to discipline and train than when his emotional tank is running near empty. Every child has an emotional tank, a place of emotional strength that can fuel him through the challenging days of childhood and adolescence. Just as cars are powered by reserves in the gas tank, our children are fueled from their emotional tanks. We must fill our children's emotional tanks for them to operate as they should and reach their potential." The Five Love Languages of Children by Gary Chapman, M.D. and Ross Campbell, Ph.D

It also talks about how to discipline with your child's love language in mind, how to unconditionally love your children (unruly or not) and how to discover your child's love language to begin with. I am not even half way through this book and I have instituted a few of its methods. Eli seems to be really responding to these methods in certain areas, for example trying new things (namely food). Please read this book.