Last week we explored the first three of the Seven Steppingstones of Trust for stepparents. Although these steppingstones are designed to help stepparents build trust with their stepchildren, they also serve equally well with parents as they strive to build trust with their own kids. At the heart of the Love and Logic approach is empathy and each steppingstone should be used with sincere, abundant empathy.
The Next Four Steppingstones of Trust
Below are Steppingstones 4–7 of the seven “Steppingstones of Trust” designed to help you continue building deep, lasting connections with your stepchildren—and with your own children as well.
Steppingstone 4: Share Control Within Limits
When control is taken from people, they often rebel or perform subtle sabotage. Stepchildren experience a dizzying array of changes over which they have no control. Because they often lack this critical commodity, they are more than willing to fight for it. When they encounter stepparents with their own control issues, sparks fly.
Love and Logic helps kids become respectful, responsible, and resilient with enforceable limits by:
- Providing plenty of choices within these limits.
- Hoping and praying that their kids make plenty of poor choices/mistakes when the “price tags” of the consequences are still small.
- Allowing consequences to do the teaching, and providing great empathy instead of trying to lecture kids into becoming responsible.
- Guiding children to own and solve their problems, rather than rescuing or telling them what to do.
Steppingstone 5: Delay the Consequences
One of the most effective Love and Logic strategy is delaying consequences and letting our kids know that we are going to do “something” later. This gives us time to calm down and make better decisions before we make any decisions or promises. It also allows our kids to grapple with what that eventual “something” might be.
Steppingstone 6: Make Them Part of the Team
Sometimes parents feel guilty for expecting their kids to help around the house. Parents feel guilty until they realize how important it is for kids to feel needed and to know that they are important and loved members of the family team. When this need goes unmet, feelings of entitlement and resentment soon emerge, and the kids fail to experience the true joy of serving others. Sadly, fewer and fewer young people are learning this, and therefore they spend their lives feeling emptier and emptier as they attempt to fill themselves up.
Steppingstone 7: Share Meals Daily
Families who regularly sit around the table and enjoy meals, including the essential nutrient of love, create far happier and more responsible kids. Their children display less delinquency, are less likely to abuse alcohol or drugs, show greater academic achievement, and tend to have fewer problems with obesity or other eating disorders.
Sharing control within limits is one of Love and Logic’s most valuable tools. To learn more about limits, check out our audio, The Gift of Limits: Why Kids Who Have Them Feel Safer and More Loved.
Thanks for reading!
