How WE Love Ourselves and How we Love our Kids

This is a win/win read. You can only learn from the experience, and with the authors being married with children and grand children; they have already tried all their research out on their own family. In the words of contemporary comedian Kevin Hart; ‘you gone learn today.’ This book is helping me immensely. I am learning me, about how I love – something which I knew was broken for a long time, and about how to change how I relate to my children and what they need. And what I need. I have heard it said, and said it many times– they don’t come with a manual. But I will be gifting lots of new mom’s with this manual.

I chose to review How We Love Our Kids: The 5 Love Styles of Parenting because of my experience with a different book. Years ago, I read Gary Chapman’s The Five Love Languages. Chapman expounds of the five languages we use to express love toward one another, assisting readers in finding their most relevant language, which then leads to an understanding of your own love language. In the best scenario, the reader learns how to identify how they relate in love and how their significant other communicates as well. It’s a great idea. If you put it to work, it’s a phenomenal experience. When I was pregnant with my first child, I bought Chapman’s book The Five Love Languages of Children. I still have it. I never read it.

So when the opportunity presented to read How We Love Our Kids: The 5 Love Styles of Parenting and given that my daughter is a new teen, and my 7 year old son astounds me daily with his own devices, I jumped at the chance.

Okay, so Milan & Kay Yerkovich, therapists, researchers, and authors of this benevolent offering, set out to show parents how to overcome the regular challenges that arise out of the five love styles (which we will learn or have already learned if we read their first book) and help parents develop a secure, deep connection with their child(ren).  We are going to learn how to fix up how we react based on our own love experiences, and change those experiences for our children.

 

Click here for a radio interview with the authors on the subject of the book:
   First, we identify the five love styles, and then which one of them best represents our own love style. Discover your Love Style here. Then, with the help of these therapist turned authors, we discover the dynamics of our parenting and relationship building that will help us to get rid of those hot buttons only our children can push, and begin to build a close, sincere relationship by learning about the 7 gifts every child needs.

This is behavior you cannot learn by one reading, you really have to put it into action, read it over more than once, and be willing to do the work. Much of this work is based on the Yerkovich’s 2006 book called How We Love. That book deals with the idea that the vast majority of adults have “injured imprints” which are a result of situations they experienced in childhood. It describes five injured love styles (Avoider, Pleaser, Vacillator, Controller, and Victim), and includes questions to help determine how you love and how your past experiences have molded that love style.

You don’t necessarily have to read the first book to benefit from the second one, I haven’t. But it is on my reading list for 2012. Happy reading!