I’ve been meaning to post for a while now about a book I read a few months ago called, Unconditional Parenting by Alfie Kohn. The basic view of the book is that all children should be treated with the kind of respect we show our peers, that their feelings are of equal value to ours, and that their behaviour is a result of what’s going on in their minds and shouldn’t be handled based merely on appearances. I have to say that I am a huge fan of the book, and believe it to be the best parenting book I’ve read so far.
Kohn also takes a few opportunities throughout the book to express his disapproval of the mainstream reward/punishment system most parents employ to control their children. He finds the approach to be manipulative in favour of what’s “easiest” for the parent, and that it is nothing more than bribery. More important, Kohn asserts, is that rewards and punishment are reactions to a child’s behaviour instead of the human being behind the behaviour, and if we as parents seek only to modify behaviour, the child in question will grow up to feel very insecure about his own worth. This deep-rooted self-doubt results from the repeated message that his thoughts and feelings are not valuable and trustworthy because they aren’t taken into consideration in the midst of meaningful interactions, and that only how happy he makes his parents through good and bad behaviour matters. The child then constantly seeks the approval of others to feel any sense of “rightness” in himself, and because that kind of dependence on others’ opinions is futile, it cannot serve as a solid foundation for his sense of well-being and self-acceptance. Parents set the scene for this kind of conflicted identity by continually asserting our approval or disapproval of our children, often through the use of rewards and punishment. Even saying something as seemingly innocuous, according to Kohn, as, “good job,” to just about everything a kid does as well-intentioned encouragement through praise (which is a kind of reward), does little to serve our children in the long run. Isn’t it up to them, if they are to become self-trusting decision-makers, to decide if they accomplished a task to their satisfaction instead of to ours? Continually praising children tells them that they haven’t succeeded unless we’ve said so, and then they come to look for and then need our approval for everything they do or else they think they’ve failed, paying little heed to what they themselves know to be true. I expect that most parents want their children to love themselves as they are, and to set expectations that they themselves want to meet because only then will they find any kind of satisfying success; we all know how doing something because someone else expects it of us not only makes the task more of a chore than a joy, it pretty much encourages failure and kills the meaningful outcome of the learning experience. Trusting a child to know what he wants to do (or learn) and how he wants to do it, free of the offensive, parental need to interfere in something that is beautiful and inspiring all on its own, is simply a healthy way of raising happy children.
I’ve agreed with Kohn on almost everything he writes about in this book, but I have to concede that it’s quite hard not let the popularly accepted ways of handling children’s behaviour creep into my everyday interaction with Fisher. Before I read the book I would occasionally bribe Fisher to do what I wanted him to do, and I felt something was a little “off” with this method though I couldn’t quite figure out why. After all, that was the way I had been raised, with reward for good deeds and punishment for bad behaviour. Hell, that’s the way our whole world runs these days. But these blindly-followed methods of controlling people simply do not work. Criminals are released back into society with little understanding of who they are or how they’ve hurt others, the penal system having only worsened the indignities they likely endured as children. And money, the ultimate “reward” for hard work and getting to the top, still makes miserable, insecure bastards of those who seek its excess. People have no respect for others, and even less for themselves, all because we haven’t the compassion to see that ever single person counts, that no one can be controlled, not even children. All of us were born free; born dependent, yes, because social dependence is essential to the success of humanity, but one can live spiritually free, physically dependent and still be happy. In fact, that is how children are happy; free to love and give and take and enjoy and learn, and dependent on us to keep them nourished in all manners as we earnestly defend their right to explore their place in the world. Let us all decide on the kinds of people and citizens and fathers and mothers and leaders we want our children to become, and not forget that every little step towards that ambition shapes their futures.
