The Effective Parenting Style of Love and Logic
The Consultant Parent
Helicopters can’t hover forever, and eventually drill sergeants go hoarse.
Allow us to introduce an alternative, employed by Love and Logic
parents, which works well throughout life. While especially effective
with teenagers, it also reflects the attitude parents should have from the
time their children are toddlers. We call it the consultant parenting style.
As children grow, they move from being concrete thinkers to being
abstract thinkers when they are teens. Children need thoughtful guidance
and firm, enforceable limits. We set those limits based on the safety of
the child and how the child’s behavior affects others. Then we must
maintain those limits to help children understand that they are
responsible for their actions and will suffer reasonable consequences for
actions that are inappropriate. However, while the parents are drawing
and holding these limits, it is important for them to continue encouraging
their children to think about their behavior and help them feel in control
of their actions by giving choices within those limits. This is where the
consultant parent comes in.
As our children grow into adolescents, this parenting style becomes
even more important. Teens often resent guidelines and rebel at firm
limits because they’ve grown to think differently than when they were
younger. Because of this important change in cognition, parents must
adjust the way they parent to meet the needs of the new thought processes
taking place in their adolescents. They step back a bit from being the
enforcer of limits and let reasonable, real-world consequences do the
teaching. They become advisors and counselors more than police officers,
allowing their adolescents to make more decisions for themselves, and
then guide them to successfully navigate the consequences of those
decisions.^1
Love and Logic parents avoid the helicopter and drill sergeant
mentalities by using a consultant style of parenting as early as possible in
the child’s life. They ask their children questions and offer choices.