EducationNews.org

A Discussion with Alfie Kohn about Parenting
Michael F. Shaughnessy - April 11, 20095
Senior Columnist EducationNews.org
Eastern New Mexico University
Portales, New Mexico
and Douglas Main

Alfie Kohn is a well-known author who writes and speaks widely on education, parenting, and human behavior. His tenth book, UNCONDITIONAL PARENTING: Moving from Rewards and Punishments to Love and Reason, has just been published. Among his others: PUNISHED BY REWARDS (1993), NO CONTEST: The Case Against Competition (1986), THE SCHOOLS OUR CHILDREN DESERVE (1999), and THE CASE AGAINST STANDARDIZED TESTING (2000). His books have been translated into Japanese, Korean, German, Swedish, Dutch, Portuguese, Hebrew, Thai, Malaysian, and Italian. For more information about his latest book, or to participate in an on-going discussion of parenting questions, log on to http://web.archive.org/web/20061004001009/http://www.unconditionalparenting.com/.

In this interview, he responds to questions and issues regarding parenting and his latest book.

1) Your latest book is about "unconditional parenting." What prompted you to write about this topic?

I figured now that the whole education mess has finally been sorted out to everyone's satisfaction, it was time to move on to a new topic.

But seriously.  As the father of two children, ages 9 and 5, I've become increasingly frustrated by the quality of advice that's offered to parents - and, more broadly, by the conventional wisdom about discipline and child development.  I began to question the premises, to read the available research, and to think about how I might try to combine serious analysis with practical guidance.

2) What, in your mind, is wrong with "traditional parenting" (however one defines it)?

Most "how to" books and articles for parents bother me not only because the advice they offer tends not to work very well, but also because they're fundamentally disrespectful to children.  The basic question they're trying to answer is, "How do we get kids to do whatever we want?" rather than, "What do kids need - and how do we meet those needs?"  Even the newer, groovier approaches, with methods that seem less harsh, are still traditional deep down because the goal is still control.  Whether it's sugar-coated control, secured by saying "Good job!" when children obey you instead of by smacking them when they don't -- that's almost beside the point.

3) In today's stressful society, it is more important than ever to "get kids to do what they are told." How do we convince them of this, particularly in this age of sexual predators and child molesters?

I'm afraid I'm going to have to disagree with the premise of your question.  What's more important than ever is to help kids become independent thinkers who are committed to good values and have the ability to think critically about what they hear.  Sure, most parents want their children to be assertive . . . with their peers.  But to help kids cope with unpleasantness and threats out there, we have to welcome their independence and opposition in here - that is, at home.  Children who are micromanaged by their parents, raised to do what they're told and obey authority, will continue to do whatever they're told, even when the people doing the telling aren't us.

4) What DO kids need and what do parents need to actively DO to help them get their needs met in a socially acceptable manner?

First of all, it's not enough for us to love our kids.  What matters is how we love them.  My book takes its title from the key insight that kids need to be loved unconditionally -- which is to say, for who they are rather than for what they do.  They need to believe; deep down, that they don't have to be well behaved or impressive in order for us to care about them.  Even when they screw up or fall short, our love is undiminished.  Sadly, much of what parents are encouraged to do has exactly the opposite effect.  It leads kids to believe they have to earn our love, which is psychologically devastating.

Second, the way kids learn to make good decisions is by making decisions, not by following directions.  To act in a way that's socially acceptable, or that meets an even higher ethical standard, requires that children come to take responsibility, which they can't learn if we're insisting they conform to our standards and jump through our hoops.  That's why one of my favorite slogans for parents - and for teachers, incidentally - is "Talk less, ask more."

5)  A clean, neat, organized room is something that all parents want. Why is it so hard to convince children of this?

Well, I'd have to say the more important question is why it's so hard to convince parents that the child needs a space to call his or her own, and that he or she should have some discretion about what to do with that space.  This is a good example of how, when children don't do what we tell them, our first step should be to consider whether the problem might be with what we're telling them rather than with the child.  We're so focused on getting compliance that we're unwilling to take a step back and rethink the reasonableness of our requests.  That's why there are so many books urging us to treat our children like pets, to bribe or threaten them - whatever it takes to make them clean the room.  And that, in turn, explains why kids react with either excessive defiance (fighting back against our excessive control in order to reclaim their autonomy) or excessive compliance (losing a sense of who they are in a desperate effort to please us).  The bottom line is that our relationship is more important than a clean room.

6) What is wrong with parents withholding their approval when a child misbehaves?

What's wrong is that the cure (love withdrawal) is far worse than the disease (misbehavior).  What's wrong is that this tactic is rarely effective at stopping misbehavior over the long run and may even make it worse.  What's wrong is that withholding approval is a way of hurting rather than teaching.  What's wrong is that when children are made to feel unhappy, unsupported, and alone, it's harder for us to get to the root of the problem, the cause of the misbehavior.  What's wrong is that it gets them so focused on their own needs (specifically, figuring out how to get Mom and Dad to love them) that they become less concerned about other people's needs.

7)  Do parenting styles differ by class, race, ethnicity? What do professionals need to know about this?

Yes, I review a fair amount of research on this in the Appendix to Unconditional Parenting.  Descriptively, there is a wide variation across cultures and subcultures in the extent to which conformity is valued, and punishment, including physical punishment, is used to bring that about.  Prescriptively, it appears that this orientation - and a focus on exercising authoritarian control over children -- is undesirable regardless of cultural context.

8)  Much of your work has focused on the abuse of stars, bribes, candy, checks, smiley faces, scratch and sniff stickers and the like. What reinforcers are parents using that perhaps they should not use?

The problem isn't with particular types of reinforcers.  The problem is with the whole construct, the temptation to say, in effect, "Do this, and you'll get that."  The problem is with behaviorism, a reduction of people to the actions we can see and measure, and the methods that emerge from that truncated theory, which amount to doing thing TO children instead of working WITH them.

In an earlier book (Punished by Rewards), I reviewed a boatload of research demonstrating that rewards, including verbal rewards, tend to reduce people's intrinsic motivation.  The more you reward kids for doing something, the more they come to lose interest in whatever they had to do to get the reward.  (The type of reward is irrelevant, except that the more the child likes it, the more damage it ultimately does.)  Thus, for example, we have two studies showing that children who are frequently rewarded or praised tend to be less generous and helpful than other kids - and the effect is most pronounced for the kids who were rewarded or praised for being generous or helpful.  In the new book, I argue that there's an additional problem with dangling goodies in front of kids:  Positive reinforcement for behaving - along with love withdrawal (like time-outs) for misbehaving -- amounts to conditional parenting. 

The more we praise them for doing what we want, the more desperate they become for the kind of love that doesn't have to be earned.

9) Elisabeth Kubler Ross once said that parents send messages such as "If you grow up to be a lawyer or a dentist, I will love you, and if you grow up to be a doctor, then I will REALLY love you." How do we get kids to really utilize their potential and abilities?

We can start by making sure that our children never get those messages from us.  Erich Fromm put it this way:  "Few parents have the courage and independence to care more for their children's happiness than for their success."  Our love shouldn't depend on doing well any more than it should depend on being good.  In fact, it's precisely when kids are struggling that they most need our support and encouragement.  Whether WE think we love our children unconditionally isn't important; what matters is whether the kids agree - or whether, by contrast, they feel as though our affection rises and falls in response to how well they're doing at school, at sports, or at anything else we value.  It's when they know that our love is a given that kids feel freer to take chances and throw themselves into activities they love.  To oversimplify a bit:  Excellence comes from interest, interest comes from freedom, and freedom comes from not having to worry about whether failing will cause your parents to pull away.

10) How do you best reason with children when they want immediate gratification and have low frustration tolerance?  

You've just offered an excellent description of the style of parenting we need to avoid - a low tolerance for being frustrated by children's needs and a need for kids to comply with our demands immediately.  The issue I struggle with is how best to reason with grown-ups who bring that impatience - or that need for control - to their parenting.

With kids, we need to be patient and recognize developmental limitations for what they are.  Of course a preschooler has trouble waiting until tomorrow, or even until supper.  It's heartbreaking to see parents cracking down on little kids for being little kids.  All we can do is offer gentle guidance, sympathize with them, and accommodate them whenever possible.  They don't need us to say "no" unnecessarily just to teach them to deal with frustration, that's for sure.  They have plenty of frustrations without our adding more.  People don't get better at coping with unhappiness because they were deliberately made unhappy when they were young