Showing love to our partner and our children are some of the most important tasks in life. Life gets busy and many times we forget to convey this important message to the ones we love.

When we show love to our partner or our children, we are teaching our children about love, how it feels and what it looks like. Children need to learn these lessons at home.

Let your children see you walking together hand in hand with your partner. Let them hear you telling each other that you love each other.

Even let them hear you being polite and considerate of one another because this is a way of showing your child about love. Even being kind and helpful to one another is part of love.

When a child sees this kind of behavior, he or she learns that this is a way of showing another person you love them.

We need our children to feel the love we have for them, too. They need to recognize that love is spending time with them, teaching them, talking together and listening to them. These create memories for a lifetime. These are the ways your child learns that she can count on you, that she is loved.

The extra lesson your child learns by experiencing being loved is that she will learn to love herself and gain self-confidence. This is a critical lesson in life.

By teaching our children about love, they will learn to love themselves and have self-confidence. They will learn to question inappropriate actions by others that show there is not love involved.

They will learn to understand the difference between what is love and what isn’t love. They will know how to make good decisions and know when to walk away from bad relationships.

Our children learn these love lessons from us — from the moments we spend together and from the number of talks we have together. When we talk together about the easy subjects in life, it teaches our children how we are open to talking about difficult topics.

They also learn how to listen. This teaches them that they can come to us with problems or questions and feel confident that we will listen.

Quality time, talks and difficult discussions start when our children are babies and continue to grow with them. Talking together is one important way we show that we love them.

Loving tips

Just think about ways we can show love to our children and even to our partner.

• When you are with them, truly listen to whatever they are talking about. Turn off the electronics of any kind, yours and theirs. Sit with them and make eye contact. Be totally with them.

• Save special notes, letters and artwork from them. Let them know you have them or maybe even display them. But this goes two ways. You too can send notes or pictures for them in lunchboxes or under their pillows. Even notes from the tooth fairy will in the long run be identified as from you. Even notes in your partner’s pocket can be an important way to express your love.

• Let them know you are proud of them. You can be proud of the many ways they do things. They do not have to be big things. Tell them you love them and are proud of them even when you see them being merely being affectionate with the dog or giving Grandma a hug when you leave her house. Even letting your partner know you are pleased with his promotion or the way he fixed the shower door is important.

• Make time for special one-on-one times talks. It is easy to become too busy.

• Involve them in decision making. Let them feel their opinion matters. This goes for partners and children.

• Be kind and considerate of one another. If you are not kind and considerate, it does not seem like love is really between you.

• Hug and kiss them a lot. Make sure you tell them you love them. Do these things seriously and when you are joking around. Actions always speak louder than words and when it comes to love, it is important to learn how to express your love without words.

Join your partner and your child in being excited about the things they are excited about. Your partner is about to begin a new phase of work. Your child is about to begin another school year. Be excited for both of these major events. Celebrate with them. Bake a cake. Buy a balloon. But mainly share in their happiness.

Cynthia Martin is the founder of the First Teacher program and former executive director of Parenting Matters Foundation, which publishes newsletters for parents, caregivers and grandparents. Reach Martin at pmf@olypen.com.