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

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Quite frankly, I think it's a tough book to fully internalize. Kohn does explain what he wants parents to do, but it's a deductive puzzle: his rules are broad and general while your exact circumstances are specific. 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. Understand that kids simply want to have fun, and it often seems like we are getting in their way, regardless of our best intentions. Children can be immoral, selfish, violent, abusing, manipulative horrible little animals, just like any other humans.

Unconditional Parenting: Moving from Rewards and Punishments

Kohn’s views, while controverisal, are well-researched and ring true. . . . So throw out the time outs and the ‘atta girls’ and get ready for a challenging and paradigm-shifting view of parenting. Open the book and open your minds. You won’t be disappointed.” I’m currently 18 and not a parent but both my parents love this book and so I have heard a lot about Alfie Kohn. My mum first read it when I was little (although there is a mystery of her thinking she read it when I was a toddler but the publication date being 2005...strange), it's one of her favorite parenting books and she has since read it at least 4 times, my dad has also read it multiple times. It’s safe to say this book has had some influence in the way I was raised. Unconditional parenting advocates flexibility with rules as it applies to children. Although predictability is essential, it is even more crucial to respond to different situations based on their unique context rather than rigidly enforcing rules. I agree with the author that rewarding a child for doing a task takes away the intrinsic enjoyment that the child may have gotten from it. I also agree that traditional punishments are seldom affective, which is why they have to be repeated so often. But I disagree with his assertion that allowing a child to feel the natural consequences of his misbehavior is the same thing as punishing the child. I am a HUGE fan of natural consequences, and I try to look for them whenever I can.The overall goal is to make children live more authentically and feel supported in their decisions as you become a better parent. Bottom line: children can only learn to make better decisions if they are allowed to decide. 7. See Things From Your Child’s Point of View Indeed, the concept of unconditional parenting raises many questions because the approach defies most of the long-held parenting ideologies. To answer these and more questions, let’s look at the principles of unconditional parenting. 8 Key Principles of Unconditional Parenting

Alfie Kohn - Unconditional Parenting

If you believe in the humanity in children and in growing their own sense of individuality then this book is for you.

Despite that, I read this very slowly in short snippets over a long span of time and I thought about it and mulled it over and talked about it with my wife. So I think I've come to something that resembles a pair of actual rules a parent could reasonably follow: What I found interesting about this book also is the fact that so many of its proposed ideas seem unbelievable at first but after some time you start to think about it and relate your own childhood and it changes you completely.

Unconditional Parenting - (Book) - Alfie Kohn

Bottom line: give up the need to be right all the time, especially when it comes to dealing with your kids. What to Expect From Unconditional Parenting By leaving out these practical tips, Kohn abandons those of us in the trenches. As a mother of young children, I find life very unpleasant when I'm around terribly misbehaving kids. As much as I try to remain empathetic to the parents, I begin to hate this "unconditional love" (read: inability to set boundaries on behavior) approach. Most of the time, in my observation, the parents aren't confident enough to demonstrate some leadership qualities and are terrified their children will hate them as much as they hate their own parents. Reading this book requires patience to get past the first six chapters without screaming, "Okay, I get it! I know what not to do. What do I do!?"And this book is no exception. While I’m still finishing up (skimming mostly), I can see that the majority of this book seems to be pointing out flaws with other philosophies of parenting. Alfie Kohn knows what everyone else is doing to warp their kids. Other parenting experts, pediatricians, teachers, and a variety of other parents Alfie has observed are just doing it wrong wrong wrong.