Love and Logic

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Home : 2006 : August : 26

Love and Logic
By Mrs.H

The Love and Logic books are inspiring, aren't they. It's hard to do everything at school, but I use many of the strategies from the book:
1. I offer students choices-always 2 choices that I am comfortable with. "You
may sit at the carpet with your hands in your lap or you may sit in the red square (a time out area in my classroom). "Would you like to clean up now or in 5 minutes?" "It's fun to see this work to your advantage!
2. I respond to misbehavior and difficult situations with a cool head and a calm voice. I try not to let emotions and frustration show when dealing with issues with students.

(At least this is what I strive for.)
3. I try to not get into power struggles. When students try to "talk" their way through the situation, I repeat the directions or choices, get out of the back-and-forth cycle, and/or redirect.
4. I use natural consequences sometimes, other times I can't. The example from the book about staying after school to clean up is something I would not be able to do. I do have students clean up the mess they make. I also talk to them about how their behavior will effect their chances of doing an activity again. For example, "If you xyz, do you think I will want to do this ___ project with you again?" I use positive and negative examples.
5. When there is a problem to solve, I use that "Would you like to know what other students have done?" line a lot. They seem more open to this than me telling them exactly what to do. It seems like more of a decision they can make to do that action.

The Love and Logic website has some GREAT pages you can print out for parents (and teachers, too.) I have printed several pages and will be giving them to parents this year. I think parents need a lot of help with this, too. Here is the parent page:
http://www.loveandlogic.com/parents.html

Hope this helps! Have fun!