'Love and Logic' workshop participants enjoy dinner by local culinary students

From left in the foreground, Marshall High School students Brandon Creswell, Jessica Henderson, Alexis Still and Eboni Ervin stand ready to serve William Green, Matthew Green and Iris Green during the Circles of Saline County Thanksgiving Dinner Tuesday, Nov. 17. In the background stand Missouri Valley Community Action Agency Engagement Manager Lani Brite and Rick Arni. (Geoff Rands/Democrat-News) [Click to enlarge] [Order this photo]

The Saline County Circles meeting Tuesday, Nov. 17, that saw the second to last appearance of Nancy Kleinschmidt as presenter on the Love and Logic method of parenting began with a Thanksgiving dinner prepared and served by several of Saline County Career Center instructor Bryan Schmidt's culinary arts students.

Eboni Ervin, Alexis Still, Jessica Henderson, Brandon Creswell, Mary Crandell and Allen Hall each donated five hours of their time to cook and serve the meal of turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, vegetables and pecan pie, said Schmidt. Students are usually paid for their time, he added.

Kleinschmidt told those present that the point of Love and Logic is to model for children how to take care of themselves, so when they get out into the world on their own, "they'll say, 'Hey, I recognize this world out here,' because we, as Love and Logic parents, have helped them become responsible to accept their own problems (and) that it's theirs to fix."

The message children should receive about their parents from the Love and Logic program, she added, is, "There is nothing you can put to me I can't handle. I am in charge."

She also said that it is not important for consequences to be immediate, it is only important that the consequences are experienced.

The aim of Love and Logic, said Kleinschmidt, is to "teach the child to take responsibility for themselves."

The evening's video featured Love and Logic speaker Foster Kline addressing the issue of siblings who fight. His advice was simple: "Tell them to leave."

By telling children consequences will come if undesirable behavior is repeated, he said, parents will get "kids who continually walk the line of nonsense."

After role playing a situation where two girls got into an argument about what program was viewed on the television, Kline said, "These girls know that when it gets to a certain level, I'll ask them lovingly to leave."

Kline also spoke about a hypothetical child -- one of the "toughest kids" parents have to deal with, a child who does nothing but "play Nintendo and sleep."

He advised parents with this type of child to give him or her a choice of two chores that the parent knows the child will not do, giving an extended deadline. In Kline's example, he used mowing the lawn and cleaning the garage. In a loving way, he said, the parent should tell the child that he or she needs to pick one of those in order to contribute around the home.

By calling it a contribution rather than a chore, he said, the parent tells the child, "You're important, you're appreciated, and I need this."

When the child refuses to perform the requested task, said Kline, the parent should say, "I love you too much to fight with you about this. I'll take care of this."

When the deadline set by the parent passes, the parent should hire someone, such as a college student, to do the job, informing the child that he or she is responsible for paying the worker. Again, when the child refuses, the parent should state, "I'll take care of this."

But, he said, the objective here is to condition the child to realize that "when mom says, 'I'll take care of this,' sad things happen."

In Kline's example, "taking care of this" meant pawning the child's bicycle to reimburse the parent for the cost of hiring the student, and, when the child complains, presenting the child with the ticket from the pawn shop and, after empathizing with the child's plight, telling the child that if he or she gives the pawn shop the amount of money listed by the date noted, the bicycle can be retrieved.

Although such a response might sound cruel to some, Kleinschmidt said the important thing is for children to experience negative consequences of their actions when they are young, rather than when they are older.

"I want them to learn to take care of themselves when the worst thing that could happen is they have to take fifth grade over. I don't want them to learn that if they do something when they're older, they're going to be in jail. I want them to not pass fifth grade," she said.

Contact Geoff Rands at marshallreporter@socket.net