Talk More: Love
As I built Talk More, I spent a lot of time online looking for resources to explain the idea of love to little ones and I frequently come up empty. Why is this concept that is so fundamental to our relationships so hard to explain (especially when there’s so many resources for more specific sexuality-related content)? Maybe it’s because feelings of love are so innate to us that they’re hard to put into words for both ourselves, and kids.
So, how do you talk to kids about love? Here are a few suggestions to get you started:
Love is universal and beyond romantic attraction. When talking about love with kids, make sure you talk about all the ways we experience love: familial love, love between close friends, love of pets, romantic love and others.
Use age appropriate, but concrete words to describe love. Love is often described as a simile, (ie, love is like…) but it may be more helpful to push yourself to define it in easy to understand words. Consider a few examples below:
Love is having very strong feelings of liking someone and enjoy spending time with them.
Love means caring about someone or something a lot and feeling like your best self with them.
You know you love someone when you really like them, you want the best things for them, and when you feel safe with them.
Love is likely defined differently for each person and family. Explore some ways that different people may feel and demonstrate love. This is also a chance to explain that some behaviors are never an acceptable part of love (like neglect or abuse).
Consider contextualizing love with specifics that your child may understand. For example, “Think about how much you like playing with your brother and how you always want to make sure he’s safe when you’re outside together. That is a way you show him you love him.”
For older kids, tease out the difference between liking something and loving something. Liking may be enjoying something but loving means you like that thing with an intensity, or strong passion over other things. How might you relate that idea to people? Love often has other feelings involved beyond just “liking it”, but instead may include trust, respect, or similarity in values or personality. Invite older kids to share their thoughts on what it means to love something.