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Encouraging Heroes. You can be one too.

Yes…..and no. I think very very highly of the techniques and aspire to use them consistently and successfully in my parenting. At face value the principals are easy to understand and the techniques are easy to follow.

At the same time, there’s work involved. For me personally, it’s been quite a paradigm shift. I’m nothing if not verbal, and it’s sooooooo easy to just spout off and tell the boys everything they’re doing and what they should be doing and how they should be doing it. Oooh, and warnings. Those are my specialty. With my highly-advanced-very-analytical mind I can give them all sorts of detail on what possibilities may arise with certain behavior.

Sigh.

Unfortunately for me, Love and Logic requires a lot more parental silence. See, I have to let the boys make some mistakes so they can learn on their own. The general idea is that if they learn from mistakes when they’re younger, the mistakes will cost less. I totally get that. If I have time to ponder something, I’ve been able to come up with some pretty good solutions to issues.

On the fly, though, I don’t always do as well. Especially this time of year, when we’ve been working so hard on school and the weather is warming up tempting everyone to just chuck it and run outdoors.

The challenge in front of me, then, is to figure out how to shut up and let them make a few mistakes to learn from. I think I’ll start by re-reading my book. From there I may choose one chapter and focus on just those strategies for a while. In fact, now that I’ve said it I think that’s a fantastic idea.

It’ll be a lot of work, no doubt. Do I think it’s worth the time and effort? Absolutely.

I’ll keep you posted.

Earnest Parenting: help for parents who want to implement Love and Logic.