Well, maybe you grew up in a healthy home or perhaps your home environment was really difficult.

The fact is none of us grew up in a perfect environment and we all have shortcomings and today we're going to

discuss ways to overcome patterns of dysfunction that you learned from your

family of origin in the home you grew up in. I'm John Fuller in the studio with

Dr. Danny Werta. He leads our parenting and youth team here at Focus on the

family and we're going to return now to a part of a conversation that Jim

Daly and I had with Mylan and Kay Yerkovich.

They talk about something they call the Love Styles and this is really great stuff.

Now in a previous episode they brought up three styles of attachment.

One is called Avoiter, another pleaser, and then Vassilator.

Let's unpack some of the others as we listen to.

Talk about controller parent.

That sounds obvious, but what are the adjectives that describe the controller parent?

Well, the controller parent grew up in a home where they were controlled. There's trauma in the history

of this parent and so when they become a parent it's very hard for them to

identify with a baby and a toddler and a little kid and really remember

what was it like to be a kid because they've survived by cutting it off, forgetting it, and

never ever again do I think about the past.

So you know little kids are a bundle of feelings and needs and this was something that

the controller in his own home growing up, her own home, these needs were not met.

So it's very difficult for the controller parent coming from trauma to have any skills in their own parenting and they're

constantly triggered by their kids crying and neediness. In fact in your book

...