Love and Logic

I have this book called, LOVE AND LOGIC, written by Dr. Foster Cline and Jim Fay. The book that I have is officially called, PARENTING TEENS WITH LOVE AND LOGIC.I love reading this book  because it is filled with real life examples of handling situations involving your teen age children. It also agrees that the teenage years are the years we make sure our children are prepared to responsible adulthood. In my own case, I ask questions like this everyday. " Does my daughter know how to use an iron and ironing board"? After all, when she took the test to enter first grade, she didn't know what a picture of an ironing board was. And yes, this might not come up very often with todays fabics, but still, if she goes organic, she might want to iron that cotton shirt before she goes out into the world.As I counsel them on the need to do things they might need in adulthood, they glare at me as if I want to prepare them for an alien world. My youngest doesn't understand why she can't have dear old Mom around to do whatever she chooses not to do herself. She fantasizes that Mom will always be there to help and take away the burdens of tough jobs like cleaning the toilet. Wait, I am vering off track a little. Back to Love and Logic, the goal is to help your children understand responsibility by setting up consequences that have something to do with the offense. So my example is my youngest who was suppose to go to the store for me and get milk. It was hot outside so half way to the store, she decides to go to a friends house to cool off and when she got home, she blamed to heat for her not doing what she was told. Her consequence for this was to water the front lawn which happened to be outside in the hot sun. She protested that this was so unfair and so inhumane. Her protest got her the back yard as well. This book is worth a read.