With three daughters of her own, Bangor Elementary School guidance counselor Michelle Torgerson knows that guiding children to make good decisions can be a parental minefield. Plus, letting kids make (and learn) from their own mistakes is just not easy for most parents.

Yet the belief that kids learn valuable skills from making their own mistakes is one of the core principles of the “Parenting with Love and Logic” system Torgerson has been teaching throughout January to nine families of 4-year-old kindergarten students from West Salem and Bangor.

Parenting with Love and Logic is a philosophy founded by former high school Principal Jim Fay and psychiatrist Foster Cline that aims to produce responsible children. The two are in great demand as speakers for parents and educators nationwide, and there’s even a Love and Logic Institute in Golden, Colo.

None of that would matter to Torgerson, however, if the system didn’t produce results.

“If it wouldn’t have worked with my 4-year-old, I wouldn’t be teaching it,” she said. “If you don’t let kids make mistakes they will never learn consequences. People will ask me whether it works for really young children, too, and I have to tell them ’yes.’”

Torgerson shares how one of her daughters continually resisted putting on shoes to go to school. Finally, rather than argue or engage in a power struggle, Torgerson let her walk to the car without her shoes.

“Well, she learned pretty fast that cleared cement is really cold in the middle of winter. You might want to try that when they’re wearing old socks though,” she said with a laugh.

A big part of the system is letting the natural consequences of a decision do the teaching instead of nagging a child. Torgerson’s oldest daughter had been getting good grades but decided she no longer wanted to study for her Friday spelling tests.

“We battled every Thursday night, and I finally had to give in and let her not study,” Torgerson said.

For the next few weeks her daughter’s spelling grades dropped. “It was tough for me to see her grades suffer, but after a while she admitted to me that it didn’t feel good. That’s when I asked her if she wanted to start studying again and she said ‘yes,’” Torgerson said.

Displaying empathy for the situation children find themselves in is very important, Torgerson said. “If you show empathy first, then you can defuse anger both for you and for your kids.”

According to the program, there are four steps to responsibility. They are giving a child a task, hoping he or she “blows” it, letting empathy and consequences do the teaching, and then trying the task again. In addition, Torgerson has been teaching parents something called “The C.O.O.L Formula.”

The “C” stands for control. “If control is not shared, kids will fight you for it,” Torgerson explained. Parents are taught when and how control can be shared wisely.

One “O” stands for ownership of the problem and the other for opportunity to learn thinking and decision-making skills.

Finally, the “L” stands for letting empathy and consequences do the teaching.

“Children need to see and feel the logical consequences of their actions,” Torgerson said. “Now, when my kids do the unexpected, I work on solving the problem rather than expressing anger,” Torgerson said.

An additional benefit of the program is that it provides techniques of enforceable statements to guide behavior. For example, instead of saying “Don’t talk to me in that tone of voice!” a parent might say “I’ll listen to you as soon as your voice is as calm as mine,” or “I love you too much to argue.”

Upon completion of the classes, Torgerson hopes parents will have gained a “toolbox” of strategies and ideas to use in raising responsible children.

“This course gives parents permission to make the hard choices not to intervene when children are making poor decisions,” she said.

Although the Love & Logic classes offered in Bangor were part of a parental outreach associated with the 4k program, Torgerson said anyone interested could find books on the subject in local libraries. Also, there’s a Web site — www.loveandlogic.com — with additional information.