Parenting with Love and Logic by Foster W. Cline and Jim Fay

I've had this book on my shelf for at least five years and meant to read it this whole time. But Tommy and I are taking a parenting class through the self-reliance program with our church and in the first session they mentioned Parenting with Love and Logic and I thought it was high time that I read it. I started off really enjoying the book and the premise of the whole parenting with natural consequences idea, nodding along with each chapter. But by the end I felt like they'd kind of lost me, and stretched their idea of natural consequences too far. They even expect the idea of natural consequences to work on toddlers sucking their pacifiers (you just present the toddler with the choice of sucking their pacifier in their room or not having it in the family room, and that child will calmly decide on their own without any forcefulness needed from the parent!) and on angry teenagers yelling disrespectfully. It just seemed like they thought all children were robots who would only need one reminder or experience with a consequence before they would automatically learn and choose to act logically forevermore. I still think the idea has merit, and I think it's a great reminder to me not to rush in and solve all of my kids' problems. But it would have been more convincing to me if they hadn't acted like there were no limitations on this whole idea.