Love & Logic-ing a Tantrum

So, I've been taking a parenting class. Actually, John and I both have been taking the class. It's called Love & Logic parenting. Now John is pretty skeptical about these kinds of things, but he kindly agreed to accompany me on Monday nights for 8 weeks because (1) it means we could go out to dinner after without the kids and actually finish a conversation and (2) I threatened to withhold sex from him unless he went with me. But after the first class, we tried some of the techniques, saw them be uncannily effective, and John turned to me and said "I'm ready to drink the kool-aid."

I'll try to summarize the L&L approach. As does any you-can-do-it-our-way-and-live-happier approach to life, they have an acronym. C.O.O.L. I know. Dorky. But bear with me.
C: control- share the control (or give them the impression it is shared by giving them choices).
O: ownership of the problem-make sure you don't make your child's problem your problem.
O: opportunity for thinking - Let your kids make decisions so they can make mistakes.
L: Let empathy and consequences do the teaching- not yelling and punishments.

OK, totally oversimplified. but I had the perfect opportunity to use the approach last night and I loved every minute of it.

Jack hates bedtime. He constantly comes out of his room and says "But I don't like my room, I want to be with you." After the fifth time of walking back to his room last night, I asked myself how to approach this the Love & Logic way. And here we go...

As we walked back into his room, Jack began throwing a tantrum. "I don't want to be in my room, I don't like it" he yelled.

"How sad" I said to him, "that you don't like your room with all of these wonderful toys. Notice I didn't say "I'm sorry" which implies that his dislike of his room is MY problem. I just give him a dose of empathy.

Jack keeps yelling , throwing some things around the room for emphasis. "Jack, I see you're upset. You know, when you yell and scream like this and keep coming out of your room, it really drains my energy which makes me really tired tomorrow morning. So if you're going to drain all of my energy like this, I think you might have to buy me a cup of coffee tomorrow to keep me awake. ". I take his piggy bank and open it up. I take out a quarter. Letting him know of consequences of his actions.

He yells at me to not take his money. I don't stay anything as he yells, just sit there and watch. I take out another quarter.

Finally, between yells I say, "I had better make it a large coffee if you're going to keep yelling and keep me awake. I bet you have some options here though. Want to hear some choices? OK, first you could keep yelling and Mom would just need more money from your bank to buy coffee. Dad might need one too. How does that work for you? No? OK, the other option is you could climb into bed and we could find some great books for you to read until you decide you want to fall asleep." Give him a sense of control by letting him make a choice.

He nods his head. "I bet I won't need any more money to buy Dad a coffee because I know you'll be in here having a great time reading books, and we can all get some rest."

It felt great not to have to use time-outs or have the problem escalate into yelling. This technique is one we will definitely keep around.

It all started so well...

For some reason last week, they decided to fit as many possible dress up days into one week. And picture day. As if you didn't have to think hard enough about where to get the dress up costumes, now I also had to consider what would look good on film. Damn these people, don't they know I don't think straight before 9am?



So we started off with Dr. Seuss' Birthday, which has become an official holiday in schools across the country just so kids acn dress up. So we did Thing 1 and Thing 2 from The Cat in the Hat. Jack loved it and vows to wear his Thing 1 shirt every night. Alex hated painting her hair blue. It was cold...and blue...and different...and stay away from me, Mommy. No worries., her hair is so fine, the color fell out by 10am.

Two days later we had crazy hair day. No pictures, let's just say it involved two wigs which were "awesome" at home but not so awesome once we pulled up to school. My kids curl up into little balls of shyness when we get to school, so no funny wigs would touch their heads.



Two days later, we had Cowboy day. The kids obligingly put on some western wear I dug out. Stood in the driveway, smiled, even sang a song. Let's just say it was "Home on the Range" because it sounds better than "The Alphabet Song".



I think all of the dressing up must have sent Alex over the deep end because that night, her bandana morphed away from "howdy, cowgirl" and more into "yo, yo, what's up, homey".