While Love & Logic® teaches easy to implement parenting strategies, it also teaches parents how to stay cool, calm, and collected in the most stressful parenting situations. According to Charles Fay’s research, children are less likely to throw fits, argue or talk back when parents are able to remain calm. There are also fewer power struggles and more positive interactions when a parent follows Love and Logic®. This program can also strengthen the love and respect in your relationship to your children, and, as an added bonus, with your spouse too!

It’s never too late for parents to begin using the Parenting the Love and Logic Way techniques, whether your family has a teenager or toddler. Love & Logic® is full of practical, fun solutions to some of the most common challenges facing parents, grandparents, and anybody who cares for children. You will hear easy-to-learn and effective strategies for CHILDREN OF ALL AGES.

Jim Fay teaches that parents should “lock in [their] empathy, love, and understanding” prior to telling kids what the consequences of their actions will be. The Love and Logic® curriculum teaches parents how to hold their kids accountable in this unique, effective, and empathy-focused way. This method causes the child to associate their consequences with their poor choices, rather than drawing the conclusion that their consequence is the result of mom or dad being in a bad mood. When done on a regular basis, kids develop an internal voice that warns them of the consequences of their actions. Kids who develop this internal voice become more capable of standing up to peer pressure.

The “Love” in Love & Logic® means that we love our kids so much that we are willing to set and enforce limits for them…even when it’s hard and requires more effort than giving in or being permissive. This “Love” also means that we ensure we set and enforce limits with sincere compassion and empathy.

The “Logic” in Love & Logic® happens when we allow children to make their own decisions (when appropriate), make affordable mistakes, and experience the natural or logical consequences of their mistakes. When we balance this with sincere empathy, they are able to grow into functional adults who will know that their choices have consequences and that they’ll have a better life if they make good choices (and therefore won’t be sleeping in your basement once that invitation has expired)!

Love & Logic® techniques are easy to learn and not very time-intensive to implement. While it may take your children some time to adjust to you setting limits without yelling, threats, and excessive punishments, it will actually simplify the way you parent, therefore saving you valuable time and energy.

Love & Logic® classes are offered quarterly. To make sure you receive an email to learn of upcoming classes, you can sign up here.

In general, Love & Logic® techniques are successful in most families. In fact, the only times I’ve seen a family not benefit from this program is when they have too much other stress in their lives that keeps them from being mindful about choosing to use the techniques. Luckily, as a therapist, I’m able to help busy parents find solutions and come up with a plan that is easy to implement, no matter how busy you are.

In addition to Love & Logic, I teach Gottman Emotion Coaching, which I find to be an important addition to the Love & Logic® curriculum.

Yes! Private sessions are actually my preferred way of teaching Love & Logic®, as we are able to really customize the techniques to your specific situation. Private sessions allow me to pull in other supportive resources and tools that may be helpful to your specific situation.

The short answer is no…but depending on what you want, that might be good news for you! I am a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC) with additional training in maternal mental health, Love & Logic®, couples therapy, codependency, and EMDR, a trauma treatment. (link to those pages) As a therapist, I’m able to not only offer: parenting tips, tricks, scripts, and interventions, but also an inside look at:

• child development,
• communication skills,
• emotion regulation,
• and most importantly, insight into what might be coming up for you that is keeping you from being the parent you want to be.

In this way, I can help you with the immediate parenting issues at hand, while also looking at the core issues that are causing you to get your buttons pushed by your child, resulting in lasting change.

Let’s look at an example of how a therapist and parent coach would respond to this common parenting problem: you’re looking for help getting your 5-year-old to listen to you without having to bribe him with cookies. Both a parent coach and a therapist would help you learn how to avoid the problem behaviors, how to respond when your child doesn’t listen to you, and how to turn tough situations into teachable moments.

However, a therapist would be able to identify that you may have a ineffective boundaries, and that that is the source of your problems, not your child. Your child is just doing what kids do best: testing limits because he knows he’ll get a cookie out of it if he refuses to cooperate—and who doesn’t want a cookie?! Because a therapist has more training in mental health and wellness, a therapist can help you identify key issues such as:

• Patterns – the patterns in your parenting that may be repeating in other relationships, in your marriage, or at work. Often, an inability to hold strong boundaries is at play in a scenario like this, and an inability to have functional boundaries often has it roots in our own childhood wounding, how we were parented, low self-esteem, depression, or trauma.
• Insight – into your past, present, and as such, insight into the changes you need to make to avoid problems in the future
• Relational Expertise – therapists receive a lot of training about the therapeutic relationship, something that can’t be replicated.
• Change Theory – therapists have extensive training in the theory of change – so we can assess how ready you are to change and help you move towards lasting change
• an in-depth look at how you handle your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors
• Stronger assessments = stronger outcomes – therapists can employ more thorough assessments so that they can get to know you better and better identify what is contributing to your problems and pain.
• Prevention – a good therapist is able to look at your current life to help you get some relief right away, look at your past to see how you became the adult you did today, heal the pain points from your past that are likely affecting you in ways you don’t realize, and therefore prevent future pain and problems. If we only look at the current problem, we are often just seeing the tip of the iceberg. It’s a little bit like putting a bandaid on something instead of finding a lasting cure.

Another plus to getting parenting help from a therapist instead of a coach is that therapists are licensed and regulated by the state, which helps ensure ethical and legal standards are followed. This also means that confidentiality, with certain limitations, is protected by law.

There are benefits to each option.

Group classes are often more cost effective, plus you get the added benefit from learning from others and the powerful realization that you’re not lone.

Private classes are able to be customized to your specific concerns, so you don’t waste time on interventions that don’t apply to your family.

Therapy can often offer more lasting change.