How To Say I Love You Without Speaking One Word
There are three words humans commonly use that are often as meaningful as they are trite. Those three words are I love you. Three words that mothers and fathers casually proffer to their children as they depart for work as if there mere utterance will make up for the parent’s untimely and preoccupied return. Words too frequently extended out of mindless repetition rather than in the moment fondness and devotion.
Where Is The Love?
As much as everyone including children enjoy hearing the words I love you, there is nothing better than experiencing love in a real, first-hand tangible fashion. Consider this: animals who don’t have all the fancy words and extensive vocabulary humans do surprisingly get love right as much if not more than we do.
The inability to give all the excuses and explanations humans make for not showing love or disappointing loved ones provides animals with only one of two options – showing or not showing love. When it comes to love our ability to think and reason like no other animal is both a blessing and curse. Our high level of intelligence routinely makes the expression “to err is human, to forgive divine” the sad disappointing story of our “love life”.
With great regularity, we think we can find justifiable reason for not showing the love another needed or desired. Afterwards, we seek divine forgiveness from the humans we have disappointed.
To Err Is Human
This common misapplication of reasoning causes humans to err when it comes to love in ways no other animals can. Working parents in particular have a great affinity for this exploitation of flawed reasoning and the outcome is that we err much more than we care to admit.
Realities show that many parents believe simply saying the words I love you – instead of showing and illustrating the words through action – are enough. Even the animals whose intelligence pales in comparison to ours would tell you that this is unsound reasoning.
I love you said each morning to a waking child is typical but a big hug and a homemade breakfast is extraordinary. Saying I love you to your child as they head off to school is routine but walking them to the bus stop, giving them a big hug and including an encouraging note in their lunchbox is special. Telling your child I love you as they prepare for bed is good but reading to them, asking about their day and laying across their bed like best friends do before they go to sleep is great.
Make Hay
There is an old saying that exemplifies the importance of expressing and not simply saying I love you. “Make hay while the sun shines”. For those who are unfamiliar with the idiom, “make hay while the sun shines” means when you have the opportunity to do something you better do it immediately while you have the chance.
“Make hay…” for parents means that when you have the opportunity to show your child how much you love them you better do so right away with action and not just words. Fortunately for working parents who are already overworked and exhausted, “making hay” in relation to your children does not require the type of exhausting effort levied to make hay on the farm.
You can make hay with your children by expressing to them your love for them now while you still have time. You can even make hay without having to spend much if any money and without having to break a sweat.
Here are just a few hay making ideas to consider:
- Mirror Mirror – The night before or an hour before your child prepares to bathe or shower, go into the bathroom and run the shower at the hottest temperature possible. The goal is to create an inordinate amount of steam on the mirror. On the steamy mirror, write the words I LOVE YOU! You guessed it, later when your child showers, the words will reappear. Talk about a way to make your child misty eyed while simultaneously warming their heart.
- Be A Chalker – Just before your child goes off to school or prior to their arrival home after school, go outside with a box of washable sidewalk chalk. Write on the concrete the words I LOVE YOU! Be creative! Let your inner kid out! You can draw hearts, use multiple colors, add other shapes or include any symbolic details of your choosing. Writing your child is virtuous but writing your child in big multi-colored letters is magnificent.
- Heart-Shaped – For the record, most things that are heart-shaped are good. In fact, heart shapes make food that ordinarily would get only one star worthy of at least three stars. Cook your child, heart-shaped pancakes for breakfast. Make your child a heart-shaped sandwich for lunch. Bake your child heart-shaped cookies for dessert. Simply use your heart and mind to come up with something heart-shaped, I promise the result will tug on your child’s heart strings.
The Sun Is Shining
Childhood like the sunshine needed to make hay is fleeting. Before you know it the day is over and the sun is set. Likewise, with what seems like nothing more than the blink of an eye, your child will be grown and living on their own.
Hearing the weatherman say that it is sunny and 80 degrees is nice but it means more when you can actually go outside experience it and make hay. Hearing a parent say I love you is good but experiencing it through purposeful intentional action is exceptional.
Don’t miss out on the warmth of the sunshine and don’t let your child miss out on the warmth of your heart. Show your child you love them during the only time that matters – the present – and make hay every chance you get.
What ways do you say I love you that are non-verbal? How do you say I love you that is extraordinary? Share your ideas and experiences.