Parenting with Love and Logic: Teaching Children Responsibility

by Foster W. Cline

Effective parenting centers around love: love that is not permissive, love that doesn’t tolerate disrespect, but also love that is powerful enough to allow kids to make mistakes and permit them to live with the consequences of those mistakes.

Drill sergeant parents tend to create kids who are followers because they have never learned how to make decisions for themselves.

Love and Logic parents avoid the helicopter and drill sergeant mentalities by using a consultant style of parenting as early as possible in the child’s life. They ask their children questions and offer choices. Instead of telling their children what to do, they put the burden of decision making on their kids’ shoulders. They establish options within limits.[2] Thus, by the time the children become teens, they are used to making good decisions.

But I wised up. I would instead say, “Charlie, it’s twenty degrees out. You might want to wear a coat.” This offered him a range of choices from worst to best (kids always seem to discount the first option we give them). In the end, Charlie decided to exert his free will with a warm coat.

So the paradox is that parents who try to ensure their children’s successes, often raise unsuccessful kids! But the loving and concerned parents who allow for failure wind up with kids who tend to choose success. These are the parents who take thoughtful risks.

We have a choice though: We can hurt a little as we watch them learn life’s lessons now, or we can hurt a lot as we watch them grow up to be individuals unable to care for themselves.

The first group of children learned that a fall is a painful experience. The second group learned from their mistakes, not concentrating on the pain and parental rescue. The problem is, rescuing parents often rescue out of their own needs. They like to heal hurts. They are parents who need to be needed, not parents who want to be wanted.

Parents who raise responsible kids spend very little time and energy worrying about their kids’ responsibilities; they worry more about how to let the children encounter SLOs for their irresponsibility.

Children who grow in responsibility also grow in self-esteem, a prerequisite for achievement in the real world. As their self-esteem and self-confidence grow, children are better able to make it once the parental ties are cut.

Children with a poor self-concept often forget to do homework, bully other kids, argue with teachers and parents, steal, and withdraw into themselves whenever things get rocky — irresponsible in all they do. Children with a good self-concept tend to have a lot of friends, do their chores regularly, and don’t get into trouble in school — they take responsibility as a matter of course in their daily lives.

Kids learn best and are responsible when they feel good about themselves.

Unfortunately, many parents don’t give their children a chance to build a positive self-concept; instead, they concentrate on their children’s weaknesses.

It’s the same way with kids. Kids say to themselves, I don’t become what you think I can, and I don’t become what I think I can. I become what I think you think I can. Then they spend most of their emotional energy looking for proof that what they think is our perception of them is correct.

The best kind of love is the love that comes with no strings attached. Our love for our children must never be conditional. This is not easy, but the benefits are enormous. Genuine love must be shown regardless of the kids’ accomplishments. That does not mean, however, that we approve of all their actions.

To build children’s self-concept, parents must send messages that tell their children they have the skills people their age need to be successful. Each child must feel he or she can compete with other kids in the classroom, on the ball field, at home — anywhere kids interact. Children must know that within themselves are the necessary ingredients to handle life and that they have the abilities to succeed.

Parents who routinely focus on the end result rather than on the learning taking place wind up with kids who have a negative self-concept about their skills. Then parents wonder why their kids never want to help around the house.

When children are small, we can teach them a great combination: getting the job done, fun, and me. We make sure that getting the job done is fun.

I’ll wear my coat, but only because you made me. Just wait until I’m old enough to decide for myself about wearing a coat! When little kids rebel, parents can quash the rebellion with a stern order and get good short-term results. But when kids hit adolescence and rebel, parental orders too often become unenforceable. Allowing children at a young age to practice decision making on simple issues teaches them to think and control their own lives. Then when adolescence hits, they will be less susceptible to peer pressure regarding alcohol, drugs, sex, and other temptations. They will have learned they can make their own wise decisions.

Kids get the most out of what they accomplish for themselves. Children will get more out of making their own decision — even if it is wrong — than they will out of parents making that decision for them. Sometimes that means standing by as our kids struggle to complete a task we could easily help them with or do for them.

1. Kids take a risk and try to do something they think they can’t. 2. They struggle in the process of trying to do it.

3. After a time, they accomplish what they first set out to do. 4. They get the opportunity to reflect back on their accomplishment and can say, “Look at what I did!”

The final steps of forming a positive self-concept as our kids grow is an inside job — it is something kids have to do for themselves. It comes from working hard and accomplishing good things. No amount of stuff or praise can build a resilient self-image for children. Oddly enough, kids don’t feel good about themselves when we do everything we can to keep them happ...

You may find this an extremely distressing thought, but kids learn nearly every interpersonal activity by modeling. And you know who their primary models are, don’t you? The way they handle fighting, frustration, solving problems, getting along with other people, language, posture, movements — everything is learned by watching the big people in their lives. Their all-seeing eyes are scoping out our actions, from learning to talk to learning to drive.

Responsible behavior has a direct correlation to the number of decisions children are expected to make. The more they make, the more responsible they become.

Mother, Please, I’d Rather Do It Myself

anytime we explode at children for something they do to themselves, we only make the problem worse. We give kids the message that the actual, logical consequence of messing up is making adults mad. The children get swept away in the power of their anger rather than learn a lesson from the consequences of their mistake. When we intrude into our children’s problems with anger or a rescue mission, we make their problems our problems. And children don’t worry about problems they know are the concern of their parents. This can be explained partly by the “No sense in both of us worrying about it” syndrome.

Kids who deal directly with their own problems are moved to solve them. They know that if they don’t, nobody will. Not their parents, not their teachers — nobody. And on a subconscious level, they feel much better about themselves when they handle their own problems.