How We Love Our Kids by Milan & Kay Yerkovich

The majority of this book is centered around 5 Love Styles that the Yerkovich's have identified.  They first wrote a book entitled How We Love that introduced these Love Styles and applied them to marriage.  This book shows how they can be applied to parenting.  The 5 Love Styles of Parenting are the Avoider, the Pleaser, the Vacillator, the Controller, and the Victim.  Each Love Style is explained, provides a self-assessment, shows how these traits might present themselves when dealing with different age groups of children, and has goals for growth.  There is also a section with parenting tips for those who find their children developing with these traits as well.

I discovered a website for these books which allows the user to take a Love Styles Quiz online, found here.  I got around 50% in the first 3 styles, and less in the others. Basically that means that I could identify with some traits in a few styles, but there wasn't one style that "defined" me.  Unfortunately, not fitting into a category made the content in this book not very relevant to me.  There were bits of wisdom here and there, but I think this book would be much more beneficial to someone who scores high in one style.

The last section of the book dealt with 7 gifts that we can give our children: insight, comfort, power, frustration, confession, laughter, and God.  I liked what the authors had to say in the last chapter. "What God does for us is what love looks like in action.  This is our perfect model for our job as parents.  As we grow out of our love styles, out of our injuries, and toward the ideal secure love style, our love will become a clearer picture of God's.  And by the time our kids leave home, relating to God will feel a lot like relating to Mom and Dad.  In our humble opinion, that's the greatest gift parents could give their kids."

I like the importance that this book places on us as parents to fix our own dysfunctions as a means of helping our kids fix theirs (or even to prevent our kids from getting them in the first place!)  Whether we fit into a "Love Style" or not, it's always good to be striving to become the best we can be for the benefit of our kids.

I received a complimentary copy of this book from WaterBrook Press in exchange for an honest review.