Genre: Nonfiction—Parenting
Completed: 26 April 2014
Summary & Review:
Raising children is one of life’s greatest challenges, but can also be life’s single greatest joy. Foster Cline and Jim Fay present their philosophy of parenting, a method aimed to teach children responsibility by allowing them to make choices and then face the consequences with parents who support and encourage. Rather than being “helicopter parents” or “drill sergeant parents,” so-called “consultant parents” use love and logic to set enforceable rules that they expect children to follow while also allowing children to gradually take more and more responsibility for their own lives and decisions as they grow older.
I thought this book was pretty dead on with most points. I agree with the authors that one of the best gifts we as parents can give children is the ability to make choices and then take responsibility for those actions. I started changing some of my interactions with our three-year old son while reading the book and have seen some positive changes already. What I like most about this approach is that it takes the constant battles and bickering that many people have with their kids completely out of the equation. Love and Logic parents have standards and rules that they expect their children to follow, but allows their children the freedom to determine how or when or in what way those standards are met.
My only real complaint is a very minor one. When the authors would present example conversations between hypothetical parents and children, the children would often times show wisdom, insight, and understanding that just seemed a little too good to be true and they would too readily see their parents’ points. I think that was largely due in an effort to streamline and sum up the points they had been presenting in the book. Other than that, the book was well-organized, the ideas thoroughly explained, and the principles sound.
Rating: 8.5
Guess I better read this huh? :)
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