Parenting with Love and Logic: book critique

In this series of blogs I am reviewing the book Parenting with Love and Logic, Teaching children responsibility, by Foster Cline and Jim Fay.

The book begins with the words in the book cover "As parents, you have only a few years to prepare your children for a world that requires responsibility and maturity for survival. That only thought alone can send shivers down your parental spine!"

Plus: sense of humor, humorous style of writing.
Minus: shivers in my spine went down not from the amount of years that are given for parenting, but from the authors image of the world's goal: survival. That is scary. Do parents think of survival in the first place? In developed country like the United States the survival for majority of people is provided. what kind of survival the authors meant?

People give birth to children so that they live happy, decent, meaningful life. If, instead, we prepare children for a world that requires responsibility and maturity to survive, we give children an image that the world they are going to enter is dangerous place: they need to know responsibility and be mature, otherwise they won't survive. The responsibility and maturity in this case sound to a child as something threatening, and the whole meaning of the well intended idea becomes wrong. We need responsibility and maturity to thrive, not to survive.

(c)November,2006 Aubanova&Dull

While threatening a child

It is easy to be a silent advocate of a child who is threatened by her mom, especially when we witness it in public. Desire to blame comes naturally because the scene is nasty and we don’t want our peace to be disturbed by another parent’s experience. We become indignant and accuse in our minds the mother for having vile behavior. We wonder if there is anything we can do about it.

We could tell this mother to stop encroaching upon her child, and if other people say the same with firm conviction, the effect might be positive for the child. At least the child would know that other people attempt to defend her against her mother’s aggression. (The more society shows its indifference to children’s feelings the worse it will be for the future of society.) And what about the mother? Who ever stopped to wonder what is going on in the head of such a mother?

Let’s try on this mother’s shoes and reveal her thoughts and feelings. Here is what she might say, “Yes, you are right. I am a part of the problem, not the solution. I know you all think of me as being a bad mother. I see blame in your eyes and, instead of increasing kindness, hatred increases inside of me. I hate this moment. I hate you when you notice my failure. I hate my child when she misbehaves, because I feel that she is disrespectful to me. And I hate myself for being helpless. I know that people around are watching and take my child’s side. This makes me even more evil. I know that I can’t cope with my child. I read parenting books and listen to success stories; they talk about love. I know I love my daughter, but I can’t do anything about myself, when it comes to the struggle between us. She makes me crazy when she suddenly becomes offended and stops talking to me. Evil awakens in me when she demands things, which I can’t afford, and when she doesn’t stop annoying me. I realize that I am wrong when I threaten her, but I can’t help my feelings. They remain evil. I feel no love at this moment because I need love myself. I want my child to love me. I want to be a good mother. I dream of having a loving relationship with my child, like in the movies, but in real life, my daughter and I are unhappy together. I face the truth: there is not enough love in my heart for my child. I strive to love more, but when it comes to exact words, warm eye contact, tender touches, I don’t know what to say and do. How do I know how love must be expressed if I never had that experience in my childhood? Theoretically I know what one should say and do with a child, but words work if only they are said with warmth and sincerity. What can I do if I don’t find those feelings in my heart? How can anyone help me? Blaming me doesn’t help.”

If we stop blaming and begin looking for real solutions we might try, at least, to begin an open conversation. Less public indifference to this topic may change people’s minds and advocacy for children’s dignities will transfer to real solutions to the problem in the future, when the children themselves become parents.

Parenting future failures or successes

Well known self-help books, motivating people for self-improvement, say that everything what men achieve is rooted in their inner thoughts. Good thoughts produce good results, bad thoughts - bad. It is alright. The sad thing is that people must work for improvement, by their soul, that is hard because bad thoughts are deeply rooted in mind. From men's early life they get those bad thoughts, negative thoughts, from their parents, from people influential to their lives.

The idea is here: while we are parents now, why not help our children to get right seeds to root in their minds and right desires to root in their harts? Why not, indeed.

Instead, parents are obsessed by "parenting" their children into better grades, better behavior, discipline, etc, etc, what is considered to be "parenting" during many years of psychobabble boom.

Soloveychik speaks exactly about that - about the roots of good desires and good thoughts to infect children, to inspire them for their future strivings. This is what is missing in parenting and what is available in the book Parenting For Everyone. The site is also offer free parenting advice for everyone who is interested in this kind idea.

Do parents know their parenting goals?

I guess most of parents do not know, or do not think of their parenting goals.
Well, when you have a child, you don't think of childrearing as a life project, which needs goal setting and alike stuff. Many of those who think, they say that a goal of their parenthood is "to be a good parent." I think, it is selfish, even though sounds right. To be a good parent - means still thinking of me as parent, how good am I, or bad? The focus is given to myself, not to my child. Seldom parents think, how good as a man my child becomes? They assume by default that if I am a good parent, then my child is a good man, authomatically.
Unfortunately here is a trap. Have you heard moans like "I was doing everything right, teaching my child right things, but he (or she) disappoints me." Familiar? That is what begins with not knowing parenting goals at the very beginning...

Passion

My passion is research on parenting field. For seven years I have been doing this research and yet it never bored me out. On the contrary! I see more and more facts to prove my conviction: Simon Soloveychik was right! S.Soloveychik is the author of the book Parenting For Everyone, which my husband and I interpreted into English and which is in the process of publishing.

Somewhere inside of their souls some mothers and fathers feel that their hearts are lacking love to their children. They won't tell anybody, but they feel it. They know other parents can give their children more because they are generous by their magnanimity, tactfulness to children.

Somewhere inside of their conscience some mothers and fathers feel they lack intelligence to explain to their children what is happiness, what is freedom, what is dignity, and what is the difference between dignity and self-esteem.

Don't close your eyes on these questions! Children look for the answers when they are seven and when they are seventeen. If we don't answer right, they will learn it wrong.

This is my passion. I can't tell everything what is in my mind: too much to say.