Gary Chapman and Ross Campbell
Northfield Publishing, 2012, 221 pp., $14.99
The 5 Love Languages Series from Dr. Gary Chapman boasts a long list of titles and has catered to many specific groups. In this particular book, Chapman and Ross Campbell address the five love languages of children, specifically 5 years old and older. The book helps you determine the primary love language of your children (each child may be different even within the same family) and how you can use that knowledge to keep their emotional tank full enough to help them “respond to parental guidance without resentment.”
There is a reason they are able to crank out so many books in this series, much of the advice and wisdom is sound and practical. The principles such as kind and firm love are simple and easy for any parent to grasp. Christians will find it particularly interesting that the system is based on offering children unconditional love. On a list of obvious traits of loving our children, they include “if I love my children only when they please me (conditional love)…they will not feel genuinely loved.”
The book is being called an updated version of the one originally published in 1997 that sold more than 1,000,000 copies. Other than some modern reformatting, there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot that has changed from the old to the new.
