Parenting with Love and Logic
By Foster Cline, M.D. and Jim Fay
Book Review by Marta Hatter
Jim Fay is one of America’s top educational consultants, and Dr. Foster Cline is a trend-setting child and adult psychiatrist. The authors contend in a very practical and clearly written style that parents who want to raise kids who are self-confident, motivated, and ready for the real world must take advantage of this win-win approach to parenting. The goal of this approach is to raise responsible children. This volume is appropriate for parents of children who are in eighth grade or younger.
Effective parents must learn to use different approaches with kids who live in today’s complex and rapidly changing world. Our culture has outgrown many of the approaches they we were raised with. The authors contend that effective parenting centers around love. Pessimism is to be avoided, and love employed which is strong enough to allow kids to make mistakes and strong enough not to tolerate disrespect. The logic in these techniques centers on the consequences themselves. How to allow consequences while expressing true empathy is portrayed.
The authors begin by guiding parents in developing the relational building blocks of effective parenting. They then proceed to forty-one practical examples of love-and-logic parenting. This method teaches children to think, to decide, and to live with their decisions within the environment of a healthy, loving relationship with their parents.
Twenty-three “Love and Logic Tips” are then provided to parents. They include such topics as “The ‘V’ of Love” and “When to step in, When to Stay out of Kids’ Problems.” Readers will explore their own parenting style and discover where growth and developing new skills will put the fun back in parenting and how to nurture responsible children.
As a clinician, this is the book I most consistently use in my work with parents and children. My clients consistently tell me they wish they had known about love and logic earlier. Parents who have withstood very challenging children develop tangible hope that they can still influence their kids. Consistently, I have witnessed positive results with my clients.
-Marta