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Simplifying Parenting: Becoming a More Loving Family

By Tico+Tina

Last updated September 26, 2022


This entry is part 1 of 4 in the series Family Character Focus™

There are many things we wish we did better as a family, and this year we decided to simplify our process by doing one Family Character Focus™ each month, instead of trying to haphazardly work on 20 things at a time. Our theory is that we’ll feel less crazy that way and make better progress.

The goal of this focus is to arm you with resources to help you become a more loving family in 1 month. There is no wrong way to do it – just look through the ideas and choose the things that fit your family and schedule best.

Becoming a More Loving Family

The first focus we chose was “Love” because “the greatest of these…” and all that, not to mention that the month of Valentines is coming up and I’m all about multi-purposing!

Becoming a More Loving Family - activities, tips, printables, and more! | Family Character Focus™, Simplifying Intentional Parenting

Activities

1. Learn to Speak the Same Love Language

If you do nothing else this month, do this! If you’re not already familiar with your family’s love languages, this can help your interactions and communications so much. [Adult Test] [Child Test]

I believe the way kids best feel loved can shift over time, so I would recommend having (or helping) them take the test every couple years.

family love languages cheat sheet - the five love languages | Family Character Focus™

Download this love language chart to help you remember who appreciates what the most.

Use it for a family activity and have everyone draw in symbols or words to help them remember each member’s favorite languages or just use the included icons.

This post has a printable chart of suggestions for parents to use with their kids’ different love languages.

2. Read/Memorize Scripture

The best way to affect a real heart change is to renew our hearts and minds through Scripture. We love memorizing Scripture set to music, and kids love these songs from the Rizers.

Here is a list of some great scriptures to read or memorize for this focus (I’m sure we’ll be doing this multiple times):

Loving Others

printable verses with a love focus - use as mirror cards or put in a binder ring to carry with you to memorize | Family Character Focus™

Get these Scriptures as printable sheets to be cut into cards that you can keep together in a ring or use as mirror cards.

(if you need rings, you can find them here)

3. Do a Love Craft

There are some neat kids’ books like Fill a Bucket: A Guide to Daily Happiness for Young Children and Have You Filled a Bucket Today? A Guide to Daily Happiness for Kids that talk about “bucket filling” versus “bucket dipping” – basically how the things we do affect others and ourselves.

Bucket Fillers 101 has a craft idea, making little buckets, that serves as a great object lesson for kids – the importance of their actions as well as how they allow others’ actions to affect them.

Bonus: Download this Bucket Filling chart to fill out as a family with practical ways to show love to each other.

Hat tip to: Busy Kids Happy Mom for the idea with her handmade chart. (You can always just print it in black and white if the color is too bright for your liking.)

4. Write Valentine/Love Letters

For our family, learning about love is directly related to learning about and growing in our relationships with God, since God IS love. I came across the idea to write a Valentine letter to Jesus, which I thought could be an interesting exercise. This is an example of one someone did.

You can obviously also write love letters to each other as a family activity.

Bonus: Download this cute heart stationery for your loving letters 🙂

5. Do Love Devotionals

6. Do Random Acts of Kindness

I really love this simple idea of painting little hearts on rocks and leaving them for people to find. You could even add a little Bible reference or something for added meaning. UPDATE: we did it! See our process here.

Tons more ideas at the Random Acts of Kindness Foundation!

7. Listen

8. Use an Encouragement System

We’ve tried various methods to encourage good behavior over the years, but I would have to say that our favorite is using Deck of Awesome cards.

For this focus we would be watching for when our kids are loving and thinking of others, and give them a card when they do an especially good job. Our policy has been that when they collect 10 cards they can turn them in for a quarter, but you can let the cards be the reward in itself, or do something special with them or give them a treat or something instead of money, and you can obviously change up the number of cards to whatever works best for your family. Something fun about these cards is that they also fit together to make a puzzle. They’re basically like the trading cards of good behavior 🙂

If you don’t want to purchase anything you can always make your own or use one of the many chart systems or come up with your own creative idea.

Extra Resources

Helpful Reading+

Encouraging Videos/Songs

 

More Ideas

Kids of Integrity has a great collection of ideas for character focuses, and this one on Kindness may be helpful with some overlap for Love.

Have a great idea or resource we should add to this list? Let us know!

Check out focuses for other months here.

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Simplifying Parenting: Becoming a Family Who Communicates Well

We're well-acquainted with being stuck in soul-sucking survival mode, and the intense internal friction of not living in alignment with your potential. We're all about discovering, creating, and sharing adulting cheat codes™ so you can level up faster! -David (Tico) & Chris(tina)

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