January 16, 2002
Parents seek both Love and Logic
By Carol South
Herald contributing writer
Area elementary schools are offering Love and Logic parenting classes to help parents in their community improve their parenting skills. Sabin and Traverse Heights Elementary schools are both beginning Love and Logic parenting classes this month.
Last Tuesday, the inaugural session of Sabin Elementary School's class drew ten attendees. The course was facilitated by Cindy Bardenhagen of the Wedgewood Christian Youth and Family Services, who guided the class through exercises, showed videos and led a discussion of parenting concepts pioneered by Jim Fay and Foster Cline at the Love and Logic Institute.
Bardenhagen and the class discussed control issues, safety issues, choices and sharing control. When parents take total control it can encourage a child to rebel. On the other hand, a hands-off approach can have a child in charge of a household.
"You can share control by giving choices that you can live with," she said. "But with safety issues, you never give a choice; you don't ask if they want to play in the street."
A win-win situation is to have parents sharing control effectively, which means that parents have to give up anger, intimidation and threats. Giving a child enough slack to make mistakes for themselves helps them learn the needed lessons to grow into responsible adults. According to the Love and Logic paradigm, the earlier a child learns the consequences of their behavior, the less costly the lesson.
"Good parenting classes are always about consequences," Bardenhagen noted. "Parents are wanting guidance; life is confusing: people are working two jobs, different shifts or single parents."
The group discussions around these concepts were very helpful, noted Tayna, a mother of three who declined to give her last name. Even though many had heard the ideas before or worked to implement them in their families, talking about them together made a difference.
"There's always a struggle with children and you always want to do something better," she said. "You always want to improve and sometimes it is just a matter of getting motivated again."
Hearing how other parents struggled with many of the same issues - from bedtime to mealtime to homework - was also helpful.
"I've tried to do a fair amount of this and it's also somewhat encouraging to be here because you think you are the only one," said Shannon, a mother of two who declined to give her last name. "You hear others are struggling and that helps. I think we were all chuckling at the video of the bedtime routine."
The Love and Logic class is an outgrowth of the Community Living Center Grant, a $754,000 grant received by the Traverse City Area Public Schools last June from the United States Department of Education. This grant targets five area elementary schools, Glenn Loomis, Traverse Heights, Sabin, Blair and Interlochen, and works to improve literacy, health and welfare for all members of each school's community.
Jennifer Cogle, the Community Living Coordinator at Sabin Elementary School, set up the Love and Logic class. Her goal is to give parents of the Sabin community access to educational opportunities on a variety of topics, including one that has universal appeal: parenting.
Cogle also offered dinner and 30-minute social time before the class to give participants a chance to get to know one another. With children of the group ranging in age from 3-15, the discussion of challenges and triumphs was fast and furious.
"I was really impressed by how talkative everyone was, they really enjoyed themselves and shared a lot," she noted. "They got to know each other during dinner before class and that really helped."