Unconditional Parenting: Moving from Rewards and Punishments to Love and Reason

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Children lack basic reasoning skills, and some brain function isn't completely developed until all the way to their 20s, so to think that we have equal status in the home and decision making is absurd. In other words, if you neglect your duties as a parent, the state authorities will pick up the slack when your child fails. It’s what we’ve come to expect from Alfie Kohn, and this is unquestionably one of his most persuasive, important works.

Alfie Kohn - Unconditional Parenting

Reading this book requires patience to get past the first six chapters without screaming, "Okay, I get it! As I was sitting there watching them "teach" us how to put our children in time out with the "naughty" point (from the Nanny which I actually used to love) my stomach began to churn.The punishment-reward “behavior modification” methods popularized by SuperNanny and such always seemed kind of icky to me. Although predictability is essential, it is even more crucial to respond to different situations based on their unique context rather than rigidly enforcing rules. These two theories of human behavior and motivation, used in conjunction, have been proven worthy repeatedly in helping people learn, grow, and lead better lives. One of the things I appreciated most about this book was Kohn’s insistence on seeing a child as a whole person with needs of his or her own, needs that are not or should not be secondary just because of being a child.

Unconditional Parenting: Moving from Rewards and Punishments

And I had a hard time with the fact that it claimed you can only love your child unconditionally if you fit their mold.I liked the ideas in this book, though I felt like Kohn kept repeating himself to try to drill home people’s understanding of why to do it. So throw out the time outs and the ‘atta girls’ and get ready for a challenging and paradigm-shifting view of parenting. Because I know better what is the greater good for the family and I also know that if I don't preserve my own sanity, we will all fail. However, parenting from the perspective that you’re always right doesn’t do much to help your child’s confidence. Kohn's criticisms of competition and rewards have been widely discussed and debated, and he has been described in Time magazine as "perhaps the country's most outspoken critic of education's fixation on grades [and] test scores.

Unconditional Parenting | Book by Alfie Kohn | Official

Of course all parents want to help their children become happy, well-adjusted adults, and many parents may wonder: Without praise, what do we do with our children?This doesn’t mean you have double standards; instead, it means you understand that the rules and meant to serve the family and not the other way around.

Unconditional Parenting by Alfie Kohn | Waterstones

They will grow up to please you (and, by extension, put others’ needs above theirs), seek external validation, and fear being authentic. Instead of focusing their attention on themselves, it helps draw them out to notice the world around them. However, there is no room for this type of motivation and these parenting techniques in unconditional parenting.This review is a little scattered, but it's my thoughts a few months after reading it and taken over a couple days. Alfie had me questioning things that I believed to be "best practice" in both the classroom and at home with my toddler. Najkorisnije knjige o ljudskom razvoju, emocijama i ponašanju, nisu napisali psiholozi, nego edukatori, neurobiolozi i (naravno) advokati. I appreciate being let off the hook for not following through on naughty mats, timeouts, sticker charts, or any of that stuff.