Unconditional Parenting

I stood up and cheered when President Reagan was shot.

I was seven years old and one of my friends had just told me that Reagan wanted to eliminate Gifted and Talented programs (we LOVED getting out of class to do logic puzzles). Talk about bad timing...within hours of hearing this silly rumor, Ms. Slaton burst in the room to announce the President had been shot. We jumped out of our seats and shouted “YAY!” A gasp. Silence. Then we were yanked into the hall with no chance to explain. I remember a verbal tongue-lashing that included phrases like "shocked," "appalled," and "never in all my life."

The thing is, I knew it was horrible as soon as I did it. And what I remember most vividly about the whole situation was the humiliation of being misunderstood. My teacher never asked me to explain, nor did she talk to my parents in the hope that they could probe a bit deeper. I was verbally scolded and it was dropped.

Elisa and I have always tried to follow the principle that all children—no matter what age—have thoughts and opinions that matter; every action of a child is rooted in genuine emotion that must be validated. This can be a monumental task, especially as parents in the midst of a 24/7 onslaught of “I-want-the-small-spoon-not-the-green-one!”

A few years back, we discovered a book called Unconditional Parenting by Alfie Kohn, which seemed to tap into our underlying respect for children and translate it into parenting theory, which we sometimes found difficult to do on our own. Not only did it resonate with us, it also shook the foundations of our parenting philosophy and led to many nights of tear-filled wrestling with our own parenting methods. Here are a few of the ideas that hit home with us:

• Is the primary goal of our parenting well-behaved children, or is it confident, capable, and well-adjusted adults?

• A punitive approach to parenting (rewards & punishments) is not usually effective in nurturing the kind of human beings we deeply desire to help our children become.

• Punitive parenting often makes a parent’s love appear conditional in the eyes of a child.

• "Working with" is always better than "doing to."

• A healthy parenting style should build within the child the capacity to choose right behaviors based on an intrinsic impetus, not extrinsic motivation.

You may agree with 80% of what is in this book, or you may agree with 20%, but the bottom line is that there are not many other parenting books out there that will elicit such a strong response in either direction. This book may simply galvanize the approach you already take in parenting, or it may challenge you to abandon some of your current ideas and try out some new ones. In any case, I believe you will become a more thoughtful, intentional parent if you read this book, and that will always be a step in the right direction.

There is also a DVD by the same title which presents most of the essential contents of the book.

Comments

[Bobbie]

sounds interesting... I am always sad when the kids listen to their father more than me - I think this is as you said above

Punitive parenting often makes a parent’s love appear conditional in the eyes of a child.

we dont smack in our house, but sometimes some harsh words can come out of our mouths, thanks for the link i will check out this book