Sharing Love Abundantly in Special Needs Families: The 5 Love Languages® for Parents Raising Children with Disabilities

By Gary Chapman and Jolene Philo

"With a frank and honest observation on how disability can unravel family unity, this book inspires and equips us to live out our faith as we interact with those we love."

-Joni Eareckson Tada, founder & CEO, Joni and Friends

Between the worry, the doctor’s appointments, and the thousand small challenges of everyday life, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed and exhausted. The idea of showing abundant love to every member of your family can feel like a daunting task. Jolene Philo has been there. And in this wise, warm, practical guide, she and Dr. Gary Chapman show you how the 5 love languages can help strengthen your marriage and family life—whatever your needs. Sharing dozens of stories from parents of children with special needs children, they teach you how to:

• protect your marriage amidst the stress
• discover and speak the love language of your child—even if they’re nonverbal
• accommodate the love languages for children with special needs and disabilities
• show love to every member of your family when you have limited time, money, and energy

Having a special needs child shouldn’t mean sacrificing a full family life. Learn to share love abundantly no matter your circumstances.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Moody Publishers
• Release date: Aug 6, 2019
• ISBN: 9780802496867

Gary Chapman

Dr. Gary Chapman is best known for helping to improve or heal our most important relationships. His own life experiences, plus over fifty years of pastoring and marriage counseling, led him to publish his first book in the Love Languages™ series, The Five Love Languages®: The Secret to Love that Lasts. Millions of readers credit this continual #1 New York Times bestseller with saving their marriage by showing them simple and practical ways to communicate love to one another. Since the success of his first book, Dr. Chapman has expanded the Love Languages™ series to specifically reach out to teens, singles, men, children, and military families. Dr. Chapman speaks to thousands of couples nationwide through his weekend marriage conferences. He hosts nationally syndicated radio programs, A Love Language Minute, and Building Relationships with Dr. Gary Chapman, that air on more than 300 stations. After fifty years of service, Dr. Chapman recently retired from his role as senior associate pastor at Calvary Baptist Church in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

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Praise for Sharing Love Abundantly in Special Needs Families

Dr. Chapman’s wisdom on communication has been a blessing to countless couples. Paired with Jolene Philo’s personal experience and insights, I know this book will help strengthen families struggling with disability. Husbands and wives, parents and children—we all need tools to help us make the most of our personal connections. With a frank and honest observation on how disability can unravel family unity, Sharing Love Abundantly in Special Needs Families inspires and equips us to live out our faith as we interact with those we love.

JONI EARECKSON TADA | Founder/CEO, Joni and Friends

Sharing Love Abundantly in Special Needs Families is a must-have resource for all parents who have a child with special needs. So often as parents of a child with disabilities, we put our marriages on the back burner, and find ourselves struggling to keep it healthy and thriving. This book will help you discover your personal love language, as well as your mate’s. Equipped with this crucial understanding, you can implement the book’s practical advice on how to love your partner through their love language, in a way only a parent with a child with disabilities would understand. But it doesn’t stop there. It also helps parents figure out the love language of their child with disabilities and the unique ways we can show abundant love to them as we become fluent in their love language. I will be recommending this book to all of my families.

AMY KENDALL | Disabilities Minister at Saddleback Church

Gary and Jolene’s new book, Sharing Love Abundantly in Special Needs Families, lights the way for parents to find each other in the complex journey of raising a family when a child is diagnosed with a disability. The five love languages provide tender support to a spouse who’s managing practical, emotional, and spiritual aspects of raising a child with a disability and applies them to other relationships—with the child, siblings, and extended family. Professionals will gain insights to better support families. Parents will appreciate the ease in which the love languages can become part of self-care and growth as they raise their families.

SHELLY CHRISTENSEN | Parent of a child with a disability and author of From Longing to Belonging—A Practical Guide to Including People with Disabilities and Mental Health Conditions in Your Faith Community

Special needs parents are inundated with advice on how to educate, medicate, feed, and treat their children. But few resource show families how to enjoy them, according to their unique abilities … until now. Dr. Chapman and Jolene Philo are the perfect combination to offer this practical and needed wisdom, not to burden parents with more to do, but more to love and enjoy. Sharing Love Abundantly prescribes more fun and less fixing, a message all weary special needs families need!

DIANE DOKKO KIM | Author of Unbroken Faith: Spiritual Recovery for the Special-Needs Parent

Dr. Gary Chapman and Jolene Philo have written a desperately needed resource for the special needs community. As an adult on the autism spectrum, I am familiar with the challenges of understanding the social cues and nonverbal communication that is critical to connecting to my family, friends, and loved ones. Sharing Love Abundantly in Special Needs Families has provided parents, families, and caregivers with the tools needed to accommodate their child’s greatest need, the need to feel loved. This book is a major win for the special needs community!

LAMAR HARDWICK | Pastor, autism advocate, and author of I Am Strong: The Life and Journey of an Autistic Pastor

Creativity oozes from the pages of this new book by Gary Chapman and Jolene Philo. Gathering ideas from many parents of children with unique medical, sensory, and emotional wiring, Sharing Love Abundantly in Special Needs Families brings the trusted framework of the love languages and interprets that language for the relationships represented in these often-complex situations. What an inspiring new offering for parents and family members desiring to say I love you in a way best received by their child as well as others in the child’s life.

BARBARA J. NEWMAN | National speaker and author of several books including Accessible Gospel, Inclusive Worship, and Autism and Your Church

Eighteen years ago, we were in over our heads, as a young married couple, with a toddler and a newborn with special needs. Due to our son’s special needs, it took us months to connect with him in meaningful ways. Oh, I wish we had this book then! Sharing Love Abundantly in Special Needs Families combines Dr. Chapman’s five love languages with Jolene’s parental and educational experience to produce a must-have resource for families and ministry leaders.

JOE BUTLER | Founder and CEO of Ability Tree, an organization coming alongside families impacted by disability through recreation, education, support, and training

Every living soul needs love. This is true for children with disabilities as much as it is for typical kids. Together, Gary Chapman and Jolene Philo combine decades of frontline experience to teach us how to create uniquely tailored love for each member of our special needs family. Practical, specific, inclusive, and useful, this book is a primer for how to reach each individual heart that makes up our home. As a special-needs parent for more than twenty years and ministry leader in the disabilities community, this is a go-to tool I recommend wholeheartedly.

BECKY DAVIDSON | Cofounder and president of Rising Above Ministries

Coauthor, Common Man, Extraordinary Call with Jeff Davidson Founder of Redefine This Life

Learning your child has special needs can trigger so many fears and uncertainties: What will life be like for my child? For me? What about medical care, education, my child’s future? Perhaps scariest of all, Will my child be able to know how much I love them? The answer to the last question is a resounding yes. In Sharing Love Abundantly in Special Needs Families, Gary and Jolene teach parents and caregivers how to communicate love in ways their children can understand. Encompassing a wide range of recommendations for children with different special needs, here you can learn how to unlock the love language your child already knows and root your relationship firmly in a foundation of love.

ELRENA EVANS | Author, disability advocate, and editor and content specialist for Evangelicals for Social Action

Sharing Love Abundantly in Special Needs Families equips families to express love more meaningfully to one another. With the stresses that come with having special needs, children and parents need to communicate well to sustain relationships. This clear, practical, and helpful book can strengthen families. Anyone with a child with special needs, or who loves a family with such a child, will find this book worthwhile.

KATHY KUHL | Author, Homeschooling Your Struggling Learner; speaker and coach for parents teaching students with learning challenges

Dr. Gary Chapman and Jolene Philo have delivered a must-have resource for families and caregivers of children with special needs. Both insightful and compassionate, the guidance and real-life stories in this book have the power to change the lives of all who read it. I can’t recommend it highly enough.

JOCELYN GREEN | Coauthor of Refresh: Spiritual Nourishment for Parents of Children with Special Needs

Special needs parenting can feel like a foray into the wilderness. However, Chapman and Philo have created a field guide guaranteed to encourage the hearts of the intrepid travelers who live this journey. Their practical and accessible guidance, fortified by examples and research, will help parents make sense of sometimes-incomprehensible circumstances. Further, the strategies woven throughout the book will enhance relationships and fuel positive communication with extended family and professionals. The authors acknowledge the very real grief experienced by families, while also celebrating their unexpected and profound joy. This wisdom found in these pages will strengthen families for generations.

KATIE WETHERBEE | Special needs advocate, and coauthor of Every Child Welcome: A Ministry Handbook for Including Kids with Special Needs

Jolene and Gary have prepared a thoughtful book that truly looks at the struggles of the family with a special needs child or children. The relationship, within a special needs family, between husband and wife has additional stressors that often dissipate once children grow older and more independent. Jolene tenderly has shared her personal experiences, which is brave and comforting to the reader. Filling each other’s love tank in the family by understanding each individual family member’s love language is invaluable. Even as a psychologist who understands relationships, this book has offered me new insight into the communication patterns and needs between parents, parents and children, and children and children within a family. Thank you, thank you, thank you! I need this book in my library!

LIZ MATHEIS | Clinical & School Psychologist, Livingston, NJ

In Sharing Love Abundantly in Special Needs Families, Jolene and Dr. Gary Chapman apply the principles described in the Love Languages series to the unique struggles families experience when a child experiences a chronic medical condition or a serious emotional or developmental disability. This book offers encouragement and hope to families in which the struggles of daily living often result in frayed and vulnerable relationships.

STEPHEN GRCEVICH | President and Founder, Key Ministry; author of Mental Health and the Church: A Ministry Handbook for Including Children and Adults with ADHD, Anxiety, Mood Disorders, and Other Common Mental Health Conditions

As a special-needs sibling and parent, my family has been impacted by disability since the day I was born. This book from Dr. Chapman and Jolene is practical and encouraging, guiding families like mine in how to more effectively show love to each other. I’m thankful for such a comprehensive book that addresses not only how to love our children with disabilities in ways that are meaningful to them, but also our spouses and the typical children in our families. Whether you are new to the special-needs world or are a forty-year veteran like I am, this book will strengthen your family as you learn to give and receive love according to the love language you each speak.

SANDRA PEOPLES | Author of Unexpected Blessings: The Joys and Possibilities of Life in a Special-Needs Family

As a parent of three children, one an adult with special needs, and through my work with Faith Inclusion Network, I understand intimately the challenges that sometimes present themselves in meeting all the needs of the family affected by disability. Whether considering a child with a disability, siblings, or spouse, there are ways to achieve peace, love, and fulfillment in your relationships through the suggestions presented in Sharing Love Abundantly in Special Needs Families. Regardless of whether or not you are already familiar with The 5 Love Languages, this book will guide you through some of the ways you can speak love to your child with special needs as well as the whole family. Even seasoned parents like myself can find gems of wisdom and ideas to build on in our ongoing parenting journey. A wonderful resource for parents, service providers, and counselors; I highly recommend you add this to your personal library.

KAREN JACKSON | Founder and Executive Director of the Faith Inclusion Network of Hampton Roads and author of Loving Samantha

Gary Chapman and Jolene Philo have brought the highly regarded relationship strategy of The 5 Love Languages to the homes of families living with special needs. Using real stories from lived experience, each chapter offers insights and practical strategies to strengthen all relationships within the family. This book is a great tool for improving communication and connection in the midst of living with unique challenges. What a gift to special needs families.

LORNA BRADLEY | Author of Special Needs Parenting: From Coping to Thriving

Sometimes at the birth of a child with a disability, couples find it hard to keep their heads above water relationally. The changes that accompany this experience can cause someone to think that their lives have changed so dramatically that practices of the past are now different in every way. Addressing this misperception is the first area that this book addresses. Secondly, the book gives strategies to assist parents to determine the love language of their disabled child when it is difficult to determine, such as when people are unable to communicate. The book also offers ways to express the love languages. The unique connections provided by this book are likely not intuitive to all. For example, the combination of developmental stages and love languages. The approaches are also applied to siblings who may at times feel left out. In each of these ways, this book thoughtfully fills an important and unique niche.

JEFF MCNAIR | Professor of Special Education and Disability Studies, California Baptist University

Sharing Love Abundantly in Special Needs Families provides a much-needed treasure trove of practical help, encouragement, inspiration, and insight not only for special needs families but for individuals, educators, church families, medical practitioners, and others who walk beside those who care for special needs children. I highly recommend this insightful book written by Jolene Philo and Dr. Chapman.

SHELLY BEACH | Author, speaker, and caregiving consultant

Wow! We wish we had this book when our son was young. As parents of a child with special needs, the first thing to suffer was our relationship with each other. The second area that suffered was our relationship with our typical son. In a time that carries additional stressors, our relationships with our family don’t need to suffer. The simple yet profound insights offered in this book will equip struggling families to thrive in life’s challenges!

JONATHAN AND SARAH MCGUIRE | Founders of Hope Anew, which guides families impacted by special needs to Christ-centered hope and healing

© 2019 by

MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE CONSULTANTS, INC. and JOLENE PHILO

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

Some details have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals.

Published in association with the literary agency of Credo Communications LLC

Edited by Elizabeth Cody Newenhuyse

Interior and cover design: Erik M. Peterson

Gary Chapman photo: P.S. Photography

ISBN: 978-0-8024-1862-3

eBook ISBN: 978-0-8024-9686-7

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Chapman, Gary D., 1938- author. | Philo, Jolene, author.

Title: Love abundantly in special needs families : the 5 love languages for parents raising children with disabilities / Gary Chapman, PhD and Jolene Philo, MEd.

Description: Chicago : Northfield Publishing, [2019] | Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019017424 (print) | LCCN 2019021947 (ebook) | ISBN 9780802496867 (ebook) | ISBN 9780802418623

Subjects: LCSH: Parents of children with disabilities. | Parenting. | Parenting--Religious aspects--Christianity.

Classification: LCC HQ759.913 (ebook) | LCC HQ759.913 .C43 2019 (print) | DDC 649.151--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019017424

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