Parenting With Love And Logic by Foster Cline and Jim Fay

Jen has been asking for sometime that we read a parenting book together. She even signed us up for some Love and Logic classes put on by the local school district, but we didn't end up going. Recently she borrowed Parenting With Love And Logic on CD from a friend, and so I listened to it.

Some background before I get into the book, I worked for years at ANASAZI Foundation, an adolescent intervention program. Anasazi has its own philosophy related to agency, natural consequences, seeing the goodness in oneself and others, and other good and solid principles. While I was there, they also taught principles from the Arbinger Institute. While I am pretty rusty at the ideas behind both these organizations, I know that once of the key principles behind Arbinger's ideas is that at a fundamental level, if I want to be successful in human interactions, I need to see other people as they truly are, as people with hopes, fears, desires, and wishes. While at Anasazi, we did teach and focus some on the behavior of children and their parents , the bigger emphasis was on what Arbinger referred to as Way of Being. I could either interact with others in a I-thou or I-it sort of way (I believe this idea as Arbinger explained it came from philosopher Martin Buber). So, every action I took could be done in a way that was helpful to other people, or hurtful. Meaning I could say "I love you," or "I'm sorry" and do it in a way that invited good in others or in a way that invited others to realize how much of a jerk I really am. I am not doing these principles any justice, but it was really good stuff.

The point of the background is to point out that Parenting With Love And Logic does what Anasazi and Arbinger didn't: focus on actual behaviors that have real world application for parents. I firmly believe that without the foundation that Arbinger talks about, all of the advice in Parenting With Love And Logic wouldn't do much good. That being said, I enjoyed the book and liked a lot of the advice it provided.

I think the main principles the book tries to communicate are the importance for children to experience natural consequences for their actions, and for parents to put the responsibility of decision making back on the child as often as possible. For example, if a child is mean and disrespectful to a neighborhood friend and parents of the friend, the natural consequence may be that the child is no longer allowed to play with the friend. This is not a consequence imposed by me as a parent, but rather, the friend just simply doesn't want to play with someone mean and disrespectful, and the parents of the friend don't want to let their child play with a child like that. The natural consequence is the friend and the friend's parents won't invite a mean disrespectful child over to play as often or ever.

Another concept: parents should respond with sadness rather than anger. I liked the ideas in the book for the most part. It was fun to see different ways a situation could be responded to. It was funny to try to implement some of the concepts and find that while it appeared so easy while listening to the book, the actual application was a lot more clumsy. Jen and I have had several conversation regarding the book and its concepts. She is in the middle of the book now, and I am excited to work on applying more of the principles in concert with her.

One of the more curious aspects of the book that I don't know if I fully agree with is the idea behind allowance. The idea, as I understand it, is parents shouldn't pay their children for daily household chores. Doing so goes contrary to the idea that each member of the household needs to be a contributing member and they have responsibilities that shouldn't be paid for with money. On the other hand, each child should receive a weekly allowance that is not tied in any way to their daily chores.

So, with the basis of all children receiving a weekly allowance, many of the "natural consequences" relate back to the allowance. For example, if a child doesn't want to go with the parents to some activity, they are free to stay home, but they must hire a babysitter paid for their own money, or have paid from their allowance next week. If a child doesn't want to eat the food provided by parents at dinner, and instead raids the refrigerator for food later in the evening, the cost of the food they ate will be paid for with cash, or from their allowance.

I suppose that if I buy into the idea of each child needing to receive a weekly allowance, and that is just what happens in our home, then there could be a lot of "natural consequences" related to the payment of allowance. However, I don't really see these consequences as being all that natural. It seems a little contrived to me. That is not to say it is bad, but I believe it goes against the author's own principles a little.

I may do another post in the future regarding what it was like to try to apply the principles and more on the general philosophy.

Overall, I think this a solid book for parents who believe they are floundering a bit, and are looking for some ideas to get a little control back. The book advocates for a comprehensive application, but allows for a gradual implementation. I'm not sure I even want to apply the program comprehensively, but I think a lot of the ideas have already helped in my home.

Format: audiobook
Read/don't read: read

You can find this book at Amazon.com here: Parenting With Love And Logic