Episode 9: How to Love Valentines Day

I’m Heather Anderson, and this is Episode 9: How to Love Valentine’s Day.

Hello, my friends. Thank you for tuning in today. We are going to talk about Valentine’s Day. For a lot of us women, this isn’t our favorite holiday. It sometimes comes with a lot of expectations and disappointment, and after spending many years feeling like this, I decided to change it all up.

Last week we talked about showing our children an increase of love and what that looks like. Well, I wanted to give you an idea of how to change your Valentine’s Day so that you absolutely love it, and actually look forward to it. I use the day as an opportunity to make sure that my kids know how much I love them, and of course my husband too, and also to teach them the importance of expressing their love to all the important people in their life, not just that cute boy or a girl at school.

In last week’s episode, we talked about the different ways you can show your children you love them, and to even find out how your child feels the most loved. Those are physical touch, words of affirmation, acts of service, gifts, and quality time. Well this idea for Valentine’s Day checks two of those off your list: gifts and words of affirmation. You, of course, can create your own traditions with your kids, but I just wanted to let you know what I do…

Depending on how busy that day looks in that particular year, I will either do a Valentine’s breakfast or a Valentine’s dinner for my kids and my husband. This sure beats going out to eat on the busiest restaurant day of the year, and it’s kind of fun. Breakfast might consist of chocolate heart shaped muffins or a heart shaped egg in a hole, maybe some red fruit or red punch or whatever I come up with each year. And dinner might be spaghetti with red meat sauce to keep with the red theme or heart-shaped breadsticks, some sort of pink or red drink, and one year I even bought a little chocolate fondue machine, which was really fun for the kids but mostly frustrated me because it just wasn’t working right. But anyway, at that valentine meal, whatever it is (and just to clarify I don’t do both meals I do breakfast or dinner because I like to enjoy the day too), each of their places are set with a little valentine treat from me and a valentine card. This is the best part because inside the card I write to each child “10 Things I Love About You.” They really love this, and I think it’s so important to hear. Some of my kids really look forward to this, they just devour their cards each year and they even save them. It’s important for them to hear their parent point out some of their amazing qualities and abilities so they can start to recognize them in themselves too.

I try to get as specific and creative as possible. I try to keep away from complementing their physical appearance and make it more about their character and their talents and abilities. For example, some of the things I’ve written are:

I love how kind you are to your siblings.

I love how helpful you’ve been to me.

I love how hard you have been working in school.

I love your persistence in teaching yourself how to ride a skateboard.

It’s a little bit of prep work, I know, and so I’m hoping that you’ll have a few days to put this together by the time you hear this episode, because you might want to give this some thought of being a tradition you might want to start. It just gives you a reason and a reminder to let your family know some words of affirmation of why you love them and how special they are to you. But even though it is a little bit of a time investment, it is so, so, worth it. With a huge pay-off, as your kids will feel of your deep love for them, and discover a few more things each year that makes them special, which of course contributes to their self-esteem and establishes a sense of tradition. This helps them bond with those they love and gives them a sense of belonging.

You can continue the Valentine’s Day celebration, if time permits, with a fun romantic comedy movie that evening with the family. You might find, as did I, that making this day of love not just about my spouse but also about my kids, really taking it as an opportunity to show them an increase of love and spend quality time with them with words of affirmation and a little Valentine’s gift, made my day of love so much more enjoyable and so much more meaningful.

On this Valentine’s Day, my hope is that each of our children will have the confidence to always know their self-worth and to know how truly, deeply loved they are.

Have fun and good luck pulling Valentine’s Day together.

And I will talk to you next week.

If you would like to learn more about The Mommy Whisperer or would like to sign up for a free mini coaching call with me, please head on over to my website at heatherandersonlifecoach.com.