Parenting With Love And Logic (Updated and Expanded Edition)

There are too many bad parenting books on the market. It seems everyone is an expert on raising children. But for those within the daily blessing of raising children, often these never-ending resources offer little assistance. As parents of an eight year old girl and a six year old boy, my wife and I are always looking for good parenting resources. Though, much on the market today is trite and faddist. A book that has gone through a few editions is typically more valuable than a recently published text. It has stood the test of time.Parenting with Love and Logic is helpful. Sometimes parenting books have endless resources for improvement, but can be difficult to execute. This book is clearly expressed and is easily executed. The book offers accessible skills that work in daily life.Love and Logic is written in two parts. The first part deals with the foundation for the style of parenting. The second part is a “how to” manual for various situations that a parent might face. The second part also gives advice on what to do concerning bedtime issues, homework problems, and even about pet care. In fact, there are 48 different topics of relevance.The book begins by describing present day parenting dilemmas. Parents are not having fun, and in fact are stressed out terribly in their role. The authors note two major ineffective parenting styles, which are the helicopter style and the drill-sergeant style. Instead of these approaches, the authors advocate the consultant style. This is defined as “they ask their children questions and offer choices. Instead of telling their children what to do, they put the burden of decision making on their kids’ shoulders. They establish options within limits.” Essentially, parents allow the children to fail in order to succeed.Throughout the book, it is packed full of wisdom and advice. There are so many helpful sections. One section addresses the difference between praise and encouragement. Often a parent will praise a child for a good job, when actually the child did terrible. Instead, the parent should encourage the child to continue to strive for something better. Instead of creating a false sense of self-esteem, the authors note that self-esteem comes from accomplishment. This means that children will make mistakes and the adult should not bail them out. The natural consequence must remain. It is better for children to make mistakes during the safety of childhood rather than during the high stakes time of the teen age years.There is a great chapter on choices and relinquishing control so that the children learn to handle control. This means not making idle treats, or even threatening punishment, that cannot be enforced. You are mostly allowing the natural course to provide the lesson to the child.Of all the parenting books that I have read, this one is definitely in the top three. It is easy to execute, and the foundations of the method are strong. If you are like me, trying to do this parenting thing well, this is a valuable resource.

As a child and family therapist, families come to me wanting to know why their kids meet the diagnostic criteria for Oppositional Defiant Disorder and how to "control" them. Parenting with Love and Logic helps parents to see that it is never about controlling or manipulating our kids and that we really cannot control anyone but ourselves.The book and the class provide parents with a different way of communicating with children that can bring about a change in the child's and the parent's negative, angry, and disruptive behaviors.It shows that if a parent approaches their role as a consultant to their child instead of micro-managing the child's every move (which worked when the child was an infant but needs to be gradually phased out as the child develops more and more independence from the parent), the child will feel more respected and competant and will not engage in a power struggle which often escalates into temper tantrums and very defiant behavior.Children need both limits and love and this book describes hands-on ways to provide both. This book has not only helped me as a therapist to help the families and children I treat, but it has also helped me as a parent myself.My husband and I began implementing the principles and techniques when our son was three. The use of choices and enforceable statements, along with the "uh-oh" song, made a significant difference in his behavior. He is now five years old and loves to think for himself. My husband and I obviously provide lots of supervision and are always available to him emotionally.The "uh-oh" song, besides providing a "time-out" consequence for our son has also had the incredible additional benefit of giving our son a technique to calm himself down from a tantrum. He will put himself in "bedroom recovery time" when he melts down! This blew my mind so I also taught him mindfulness meditation so that he could have "bedroom recovery time" anywhere, any time!It is really gratifying and enjoyable to be around a child who contributes so much to our family and our home, but yet has his own opinions and outlook on life and has his own interests that he can pursue on his own like reading, drawing, and playing with toys when his mom and dad need to get other chores done. He is genuinely fun to be around, at home and on vacation, and his teachers love having him in the classroom.I myself was raised in a highly dysfunctional and verbally abusive home. Even with our education, my husband and I still resorted to yelling and spanking. Parenting with Love and Logic provided us with much healthier alternatives. The whole idea of providing empathy but holding children accountable for their bad decisions helped me to not yell and get upset with my child.The only danger in following the advice of this book is that if a parent is personality-disordered or for some reason lacks empathy, these techniques will come off to the child as controlling, manipulative, and possible sadistic. The book, however, addresses this issue. As parents, we should always look at where we are at emotionally ourselves and if we need counseling in order to heal from our own hurts, we should avail ourselves of it so that we do not take it out on our kids.Also, I agree with the dog lovers. Never let a dog be neglected. I wouldn't even lay that kind of trip on a kid. If parents want a dog then the parents can get a dog, train the dog, feed the dog, etc. Don't get a dog expecting kids to take care of it.