Unconditional parenting means acting in a way where your child knows you love them for WHO they are, no matter WHAT they do.
Table of contents
🚀 The Book in 3 Sentences
Our main question shouldn't be "How do I get my child to do what I say?" but "What does my child need — and how can I meet those needs?"
It's not necessary to evaluate kids in order to encourage them. Just paying attention to what kids are doing and showing interest in their activities is a form of encouragement.
The way kids learn to make good decisions is by making decisions, not by following directions.
🎨 Impressions
🔍 How I Discovered It
👤 Who Should Read It?
Parents who want to know how to communicate in a way that prevents their children from thinking that they are only loved for what they do and achieve in this hyper-competitive world.
☘️ How the Book Changed Me
It changed the way I viewed conventional parenting methods by emphasising that...
praise, rewards and punishments are all ways of controlling our children. These provide extrinsic motivation to behave in the way we want. But this is the wrong type of motivation – better for it to come from the child themselves.
we should shift towards “working with” our kids as opposed to “doing to”
over many years, researchers have found that "the more conditional the support [one receives], the lower one's perceptions of overall worth as a person." When children receive affection with strings attached, they tend to accept themselves only with strings attached.
✍️ My Top 3 Quotes
"Good job" isn't a description, it's a judgment.
How we feel about our kids isn't as important as how they experience those feelings and how they regard the way we treat them.
What many people in our society seem to want most from children: not that they are caring or creative or curious, but simply that they are well behaved.
📒 Summary + Notes
Chapter 2: Giving and Withholding Love
Time-outs: This very popular discipline technique is a version of love withdrawal — at least when children are sent away against their will
When you send your child away, what's really being switched off or withdrawn is your presence, your attention, you love
The Failure of Rewards
A considerable number of studies have found that children and adults alike are less successful at many tasks when they're offered a reward for doing them — or for doing them well.
Rewards can never help someone to develop a commitment to a task or an action, a reason to keep doing it when there's no longer a payoff.
The more that people are rewarded for doing something, the more likely they are to lose interest in whatever they had to do to get the reward.
Not-So-Positive Reinforcement
Praise creates pressure to "keep up the good work" that gets in the way of doing so. Partly because people's interest in what they're doing may have declined (because now the main goal is to get more praise). Partly because they become less likely to take risks — a prerequisite for creativity — once they start thinking about how to keep those positive comments coming.
"Good job" isn't a description, it's a judgment.
Instead of "I love you," what praise may communicate is "I love you because you've done well."
It's very easy for children to infer from a pattern of selective reinforcement that we approve of them only when he does the things we like.
Children's sense of their competence, and perhaps of their worth, may come to rise or fall as a result of our reaction.
The child comes to see their "whole self" as good only when they please the parent. That's a powerful way of undermining self-esteem. The more we say "Good job!" the worse the child comes to feel about themselves, and the more praise they need.
Chapter 3: Too Much Control
The dominant problem with parenting in our society isn't permissiveness, but the fear of permissiveness. We are so worried about spoiling kids that we often end up overcontrolling them.
Few of us would think of berating another adult in the tone that is routinely used with kids.
Chapter 4: Punitive Damages
Data overwhelmingly shows that corporal punishment makes children more aggressive and leads to a variety of other damaging consequences.
"Natural consequences", another form of punishment, invites parents to discipline by inaction — that is, by refusing to help. If a child leaves their raincoat at school, we're supposed to let them get wet the following day. This is said to teach them to be more punctual, or less forgetful. But the far more powerful lesson that they are likely to take away is that we could have helped — but didn't. Instead, the child experiences the twin disappointments that something went wrong and you did not seem to care enough about them to life a finger to help prevent the mishap.
The truth is that explanation doesn't minimize the bad effects of punishment so much as punishment minimizes the good effects of explanation.
Why Punishment Fails
It makes people mad.
It models the use of power: Punishment now only makes a child angry, it simultaneously provides them with a model for expressing that hostility outwardly.
It eventually loses its effectiveness.
It erodes our relationships with our kids.
It distracts kids from the important issues: the idea that time-outs are an acceptable form of discipline because they give kids time to think things over is based on an absurdly unrealistic premise. Above all, they're likely to focus on the punishment itself: how unfair it is an dhow to avoid it next time. Punishing kids is an excellent way to hone their skills at escaping detection.
Chapter 5: Pushed to Succeed
The unconscious equation "My kid's a success, therefore I am, too" — or maybe even "My kid's a success, and I'm the reason" — is directly tied to tactics such as positive reinforcement, where children figure out that they have to make good in order to get hugs and smiles, and that their parents aren't proud of them for who they are, only for what they do.
Conditional parenting and conditional self-esteem are not just unhealthy, they are unproductive. They lead to emotion-focused coping and repair of the self, rather than problem-focused coping.
At School
Students whose main goal is to get A's are apt to become less interested in what they're learning.
Grades lead students to pick the easiest possible assignment when they're given a choice.
A quest for good grades often leads students to think in a more shallow and superficial way. They may skim books for what they'll "need to know," doing just what's required and no more.
Chapter 7: Principles of Unconditional Parenting
Our main question shouldn't be "How do I get my child to do what I say?" but "What does my child need — and how can I meet those needs?"
The Guiding Principles
Be reflective: try to figure out what may be driving your parenting style.
Reconsider your requests: before searching for some method to get kids to do what we tell them, we should first take the time to rethink the value or necessity of our requests.
Keep your eye on your long-term goals.
Put the relationship first: choose a "working with" as opposed to a "doing to" response. See children's behavior as a "teachable moment".
Change how you see, not just how you act.
R-E-S-P-E-C-T.
Be authentic: make a point of apologizing to your child. First, it sets a powerful example. It makes no sense to force children to say they're sorry when they're not. A far more effective way to introduce them to the idea of apologizing is to show them how it's done. Second, apologizing takes you off of your perfect parent pedestal and remind them that you're fallible.
Talk less, ask more.
Keep their ages in mind.
Attribute to children the best possible motive consistent with the facts: sympathize and try to understand why our children acted as they did.
Don't stick your no's in unnecessarily: you need a good reason not to go along with what's being proposed.
Don't be rigid.
Don't be in a hurry.
Actionable steps
1. Working with (instead of doing to)
The biggest message I have taken away from Alfie Kohn’s book is his emphasis to shift towards “working with” our kids as opposed to “doing to”.
“Doing to” strategies are things like threatening, bribing and rewarding our kids as ways to control our children. Instead some “working with” strategies he suggests are:
Reconsider your requests – for example, instead of asking “how do I get my child to eat?” instead look at your assumptions, look at what your child needs, and place your focus on offering nutritious food instead.
Talk less, ask more
Assume the best from your child – we don’t always see what has happened and know what has gone on. Instead of assuming the worst, you can also assume the best!
Give age-appropriate choices
2. Use of praise, rewards and punishment
Alfie Kohn believes that praise, rewards and punishments are all ways of controlling our children. These provide extrinsic motivation to behave in the way we want. But he says this is the wrong type of motivation – better for it to come from the child themselves.
For example, instead of putting a child into time out if he has hit another child, you can get the child to work out what to do to make amends. “I think she feels so bad she is crying. What can you do to make her feel better?” By ending with a question, you give your child a chance to come up with something (even a pre-verbal child!).
3. Use of testing in schools
Alfie Kohn is also very critical of the schools in the US (and many other countries) where there is a lot of focus on test scores. He would like to see school implement interactive, interdisciplinary, and question-based learning to get a deep understanding as opposed to just learning facts.
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