Reviews for Love and Logic Magic for Early Childhood: Practical Parenting from Birth to Six Years

The average rating for Love and Logic Magic for Early Childhood: Practical Parenting from Birth to Six Years based on 2 reviews is 2.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2008-04-12 00:00:00 J. Scott Hobtby Wow.... Okay, so there are a couple (I mean literally two) of key points that work for my parenting style. However, there are some big red flags that come up for me personally. I know this is a popular method with many people so will keep my opinions close this time. Happy to talk individually w/ anyone about it though. **Sorry, had to add a note after reading the reviews and some great information on Psychology Today's website / magazine. I feel that I took a bit of a cowardly exit by keeping my opinion to myself. The red flags I mention above speak to the act of demeaning a person (a child in this case) by making fun or light of their feelings/outbursts in order to "corral and reign in" the tantrum. The issue is related to creating dangerous passive-aggressive and co-dependent behaviors by asking the child "how they plan to replace the parents energy that was sapped from dealing with a tantrum." The idea of not positively reinforcing a tantrum as the book suggests is correct in my opinion. It is the tools and words that they suggest parents use that are highly dangerous to a small child's developing personality. Lastly, the steps suggested for "delivering consequences" are to load on empathetic statements and loving words on one hand while dishing a punishment on the other. This teaches children the concept of displaced anger and that words & actions do NOT need to align. This is the hallmark of most adult abusive relationships. ("I hurt you because I love you...") Most child psychologists recommend allowing natural consequences to happen based on the child's actions (as per the book.) However, children need to trust that their parents words and actions are speaking to the same emotion. In my humble opinion, helping children learn how to correctly identify emotions and feelings as they occur is perhaps the most valuable piece to parenting. We need to strive to mirror that ability in our daily lives as we identify our own emotions and work through them mindfully. There isn't better or more long-term lesson we could offer them.

Review # 2 was written on 2008-01-29 00:00:00 Bjorn Hanson This book has a lot of great ideas. I think the technique is pretty good, and they write it in an easy-to-use way. However, it was so obnoxious to read that I could barely stomach the first half of the book. After that I got over the annoyance and just gleaned the good techniques. The Fays seem to be high on their own theory. They even make comments such as "Is it possible that there would be no such thing as the United States of America if King George had known about Love and Logic?" Barf! The other thing this book is missing is more focus on encouraging and reinforcing positive behavior. Almost all of it was directed toward disciplining negative behavior, which of course is the more unpleasant (and generally tricky) part of child rearing. I'm glad I read it. I do think I can benefit from many of the techniques, but like I said, the Fays were a huge turn off.