Parenting with LOVE and LOGIC

I've been taking a love and logic class from the public library. It's a free, 6 week course, about different parenting skills. The class is 2 hours every Monday, and I've only been twice, but I've enjoyed it tons already! It's nice to get away, and James has been watching the kids for me, since he's mainly working nights. So, here's my brief Summary of what we've learned about so far...We've talked a lot about ways to stay calm when your kids frustrate you. For example, when you are going to put your kids in time-out, you never get upset when you tell them to go their room, instead, you sing the Uh-Oh- song. It goes something like this: (Sung in a melodic tone...) Uh-oh- time to go to your room, this is SO sad! Then, you proceed to put them in time-out (or recovery time as they call it) and let THEM choose to have the door open, shut, or locked. Apparently, kids do better if you give them choices. Not a choice of going to time-out or not going to time-out, but little choices that don't really make a huge difference. If the child has choices, they feel more in control, and is willing to cooperate, even though the parent really is in control. The teacher gave an example about his kid never wanting to wear a coat anywhere. So, he gave his son the choice to carry the coat with him, or wear it. This made the kid happy since he didn't have to necessarily wear the coat. This made the father happy because he knew his son would have the coat with him one way or the other if he did get cold. Anyway, back to the time-out thing. Time-out doesn't start until they are calm. You tell them once they are "sweet" you'll start the timer. You only choose a few behaviors at a time to use the Uh-oh song with. Then, you slowly add more behaviors that need working on, until they are all mastered! We also talked a lot about teaching children lessons at a young age. Basically, the Love and Logic people say that they like it when children make mistakes when they are young. This gives children the opportunity to learn from their mistakes when "the price is affordable". I guess this means that it's best for our kids to make lots of mistakes,(since we all learn best from our own mistakes) when the consequences aren't that serious. The entire course focuses a lot on empathy and consequences. It says to let empathy and consequences do the teaching. For example, the teacher told a story of a little girl who earned $2, and went grocery shopping with her Dad. She took her money with her, and saw one of the Claw machines. She decided she wanted one of the toys in the machine, and chose to use her money on that. Her dad told her that it was totally up to her since it was her money- but didn't necessarily recommend this game. The little girl didn't care, and did what she wanted. She, of course, lost and was so upset. The dad just empathized with her, without giving her more money or lecturing her. The next week, the little girl had earned another dollar, and when she went to the store, she looked at the machine, and said, "I think I just want to buy some gum today!" I guess the point was that she learned from the empathy of her father and the consequence of losing her money,without her dad lecturing her and trying to give the "I told you so, next time you should listen to me" talk. The examples the teacher gives are awesome, and I kind of expected the class to basically be common sense stuff that we've all heard, but really I've already learned a lot of new ideas that I had never thought of before. If anybody is iterested, I'll give you an update if I learn any good ideas next week!