I just finished reading The Five Love Languages of Children by Gary Chapman and Ross Campbell recently. I borrowed the book from my company’s library.

I’ve listened the audio book of the original Five Love Languages which is directed for couples. This book is a spin off from that.

I’ve learned a great deal from the original book. Especially I found the categorizing how people want to be loved into these 5 languages making the abstract nature of love to be more understandable (and actionable). I was also aware that the concept can be easily transferable to different groups of people (ie not only to your spouse). 

So naturally I am excited reading "the children version" of the book. I did find it to be helpful and practical. For example, from the section on punishing the children, Gary and Ross suggested that parents should first of all assure that child felt loved (making sure his/her "love tank" full) before delivering the punishment. They also suggested against using the primary love languages as a mean to punish children, for example: if a child’s primary language is physical touch, then punishing the child physically might have a more detrimental effect than intended. Some other useful points include:

• Age and sex determine the appropriateness of showing your love, example: if have a boy whose primary language is physical touch, when he comes to his teenage years, refrain from showing your love physically in front from his friends or in public.
• If you are a single parent, seek help from your church or community, especially when your child is entering the teenage life, which he might withdraw himself from you.
• Use persuasion/request, command, gentle physical, punishment and behaviour modification in that order.

I found the authors have communicated the true sense of love quite strongly in this book, that is: love is all about the other person. You want to learn how to communicate love to your children for their sake not your own. The same message I also found from Gary’s original book.

I think the book can be made more concise, by cutting down the testimonies and stories, I just found them repetitive and too many. Although this book I think was intended for parenting in general, the authors being Christians themselves, they communicated how their faith made an impact on their understanding of love. They quoted some Bible verses to show how some of the points are supported by the Bible. I applaud the efforts from Christian authors writing to not necessarily Christian audience to do this. However I found that the usage of the Bible passages is often out of context (although I can’t remember an example and I have returned the book, but most of these out of context quotations were from the Old Testament).

I would strongly recommend this book for parents. It’s all about knowing your children better and then love them in the way that they understand best.

Book 14 finished!

Side note, I am also reading What Colour is Your Parachute, which is a very2 good and thorough book on career in specific and life in general. I think I need to buy this book (currently borrowing it from library) as the vast material in it needs to be digested slowly perhaps in the span of months. I think now my reading time would be taken by my SCJP Exam prep, so i won’t be able to finish too many books.