Parents often want to know how Love and Logic works and if it is effective and easy to use. Although the Love and Logic® approach might sound complex, it’s actually simple and highly effective.
What Is Love and Logic Parenting?
Love and Logic is a simple, practical approach that is built on two basic principles:
- Allow children to grow through their mistakes.
- Allow children to learn from the consequences of their choices.
In other words, parents hand the responsibility for a child’s decisions to the child and let the consequences do the teaching.
The Love and Logic Process Explained
How do parents put these principles into practice? The Love and Logic process uses four powerful concepts:
1. Shared Control
Many parents try to control their child’s behavior, which often backfires. With Love and Logic, parents learn to gain control by giving away control they don’t need to the child.
2. Shared Thinking and Decision-Making
Parents provide opportunities for kids to do as much thinking and decision-making as possible.
3. Equal Shares of Empathy and Consequences
When parents respond without anger and use empathy instead, children are able to think about their choices and then learn from their mistakes.
4. Maintaining the Child’s Self-Concept
Allowing kids to make their own choices and learn from their mistakes leads to improved self-concept, resulting in improved behavior and improved achievement.
A hallmark of the Love and Logic approach is using empathy when kids make mistakes rather than responding with anger, threats, or lectures. In the moment, parents often wonder what to say instead. The Love and Logic approach is to hand the responsibility for solving the problem back to the child by responding with statements such as:
“That’s terrible. How are you going to handle that?”
“Hmm, that’s an interesting way of looking at it. Let me know how that turns out for you.”
“Really? I know you, and I’m sure you’ll come up with something.”
Statements like these communicate empathy while gently returning ownership of the problem to the child. By using empathy, By using empathy, parents strengthen their relationship with their kids and give them the opportunity to learn to make healthy decisions on their own.
Learn Love and Logic Parenting Skills
The best way for parents to learn and apply Love and Logic for raising responsible, resilient kids is to take a class with an Independent Love and Logic Trainer using the Parenting the Love and Logic Way® curriculum. This course is also available in our webinar version, Love and Logic Parenting Online.
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