When does “helping” a child become “enabling” a child? It is hard to know where that line is sometimes. As parents, we love our kids and are willing to make sacrifices for them, but can our sacrifices ever send the wrong message to our kids? The answer is yes! We can certainly send unhealthy and unrealistic messages to our kids …
Has this ever happened to you or someone you know? Child: “Mom we need to go to the store tonight! My project is due tomorrow and I need a poster board and some construction paper!” Parent: “How long have you known about this project?” Child: “They told us two weeks ago, but I don’t see what that has to do …
I know of parents that are deep in debt. Not financial debt, but parental debt. What is parental debt? Parental debt, like credit card debt or any other debt, is when you want the reward or benefit of having something right now but (rather than paying for it right now) you put off paying until sometime in the future. How …
In the updated Love and Logic Parenting Class – Parenting the Love and Logic Way, Jim and Charles Fay share the following observation, “Our heart breaks every time we see someone falling into the ‘consequence trap.’ Well-meaning parents become ensnared in this trap when they believe that the solution to all of their problems involves finding bigger or better consequences.” …
I hear of parents whose knee-jerk reaction to almost anything that their child does wrong is to take away their child’s cell-phone. “It’s the only thing they care about”, parents will tell me. “It’s the only thing that makes them do the thing I ask them to do!” Whether the misbehavior is talking back, refusing to do chores, allowing grades …
Halloween is an interesting holiday to say the least. Kids dress up in costumes anywhere from witches to princesses and from superman to zombies. Then, we as parents encourage them to do something that we are opposed to them doing the rest of the 364 days a year – accept candy from strangers. Nonetheless, it is fun to see our …
I had a fun time getting to use some Love and Logic parenting skills with my five year-old son, Ezra, the other morning. Ezra is part of a carpool that leaves at 7AM each morning. In order to give him and his sister, Eliza, enough time to get ready, clean their rooms, make their beds, and eat breakfast, I wake …
Dirty Boy Won’t Shower. One of the couples in the Becoming a Love and Logic Parent class gave a great example of how they set a limit with their 13 year-old son. The mother shared that she and her husband had been asking their son for a few days to take a shower. He would tell them that he would …
There we were, at WalMart on a Saturday afternoon. Eliza and her brother Ezra each had two weeks of allowance and they were trying to stretch it as far as possible (which isn’t easy since they only had four dollars each). I was working on my skill of patience as each of them pointed out the things that they wanted …
Why is it that two set of parents can apply the same consequence but yet get very different results? Is it because the child that learns from the consequence is good-natured while the other child who becomes resentful is just a bad egg? Does it all depend on the temperament of the child or does the way the parents apply …
Many parents complain about how their children leave stuff all over the house. Parents either feel like unpaid servants or like broken records constantly nagging their kids to clean up after themselves. Some parents say that it takes less energy to clean up after their children then to get their children to clean up after themselves. Other parents complain that …