Post Punk Kitchen Forum

Maybe I should have posted this in the playground.

Is anybody familiar with the Love & Logic books by Fay and Funk? Everybody seems to love them and the web is full of glowing praise. I can see good kernels here and there like giving kids choices whenever possible. I did that in my classroom often enough by letting kids shape the format of their major assignments, etc.

But, overall, most of this book just strikes me as manipulative, sarcastic, and even slightly sadistic. Example: the recommendation is to deal with some problems later, even the next day. The book then describes repeatedly telling the kid "not to worry, will deal with it tomorrow," and then tomorrow it's "don't worry about it, will deal with it after lunch," etc, with the goal being to let the poor kid stew and fret over stuff. So, ok, if the kid stole a car or something, but for a smart asparagus remark in class? That just seems sadistic.

The sample dialogues in the book are also driving me crazy because they ALL seem sarcastic.

Am I just missing the point here? Why is there so much raving, lavish praise for these books?

Also: some of it just seems ineffective. They recommend dealing with a kid who doesn't have their homework by saying "don't worry about it. you can turn it in tomorrow for reduced credit." This is nonsensical: the kids who do their homework and honestly had something come up or forgot it or their parrot pooped on it are going to turn it in tomorrow anyway. Everybody else could give a damn because they aren't grade motivated so the reduced points won't mean anything and they won't turn it in tomorrow anyway. At any rate, this doesn't do anything to solve the problem of kids not doing homework, so I see it as a waste of space in the book.

Mostly I just wonder why nobody else seems to find this book slightly sadistic. (I stopped reading and googled and bunch of blogs and book reviews; apparently I am crazy)

I think I saw a post about this book in a different forum. Is it the one where the authors let a dog nearly starve to death, ignoring it while it howled for food, because they were trying to get the kids to take responsibility? That sounds pretty sadistic to me.

The one I have is for teachers so it is all geared towards classroom applications. I sure hope they aren't suggesting that in another book.

thats incredibly forked up and possibly illegal.

I just looked and the one I was thinking of is Parenting with Love and Logic by Jim Fay and Foster Cline. In the example with the dog I guess the parents neglected to feed it until it became emaciated and then gave it away. You know, to teach a lesson about responsibility.