Unconditional Parenting 1. Conditional Parenting

I want to think more about CM and parenting techniques, and my first step is reading this book more thoroughly. I wish I had Jack Beckman's charts and outlines, as they did a great job of summarizing the book, but I don't have them. I've actually read the first six chapters (half the book) but I wanted to go back and read it a second time.

Unconditional Parenting:
Moving from Rewards and Punishments to Love and Reason
by Alfie Kohn

1. Conditional Parenting

All parents love their children, but not all children feel loved. Children need unconditional love that they don't have to earn or measure up to in order to thrive. If our preschooler is naughty and difficult all day, do we still snuggle and read stories with her that night, or do we refuse to reward her bad behavior by depriving her of that fun as a consequence? Unconditional parenting means that we deal with the behavior by talking about it and teaching, but then we snuggle and read our bedtime stories as usual. "Whatever lesson we hoped to impart was far more likely to be learned if she knew that our love for her was undimmed by how she had acted."

Conditional parenting is closely related to behaviorism (B.F. Skinner: if good behaviors are reinforced/rewarded, then they'll be repeated; if bad behavior is associated with negative results, it will cease. We can't do anything about a person's motives, we can only deal with their actions.)

Behaviorism is forcing a child to apologize, even if they don't feel sorry. It's making a child cry it out at night with no regard for why he's crying. It's ignoring a toddler's desire not to go potty and bribing him with M&M's or stickers. Behaviorism is "concerned not with the thoughts and feelings and intentions that give rise to a behavior, only with the behavior itself." Behaviorism assumes that if the little girl who was naughty in the previous paragraph gets her snuggle and story, she'll be encouraged to be naughty again because her bad behavior was reinforced.

"Unconditional parenting assumes that behaviors are just the outward expression of feelings and thoughts, needs and intentions. In a nutshell, it's the child who engages in a behavior, not just the behavior itself. Children are not pets to be trained, nor are they computers, programmed to respond predictably to an input." We need to find out why, not just stamp out the way the child is expressing his feelings.

Unconditional love doesn't reinforce bad behavior. Those who fear that it does are cynical and think the worst of human nature. A misbehaving child probably isn't being malicious or deliberately trying to make us miserable. She may be expressing her own misery in the only way she knows how. She needs to learn better ways of expressing herself, but she'll be more teachable in an atmosphere of love and acceptance. Love and acceptance should be a child's birthright, a gift, not a privilege to be earned.

Conditional parenting focuses on behavior, has a negative view of human nature, views parental love as something to be earned, and does things to the child - reward/punishment - as its strategy.

Unconditional parenting focuses on the whole child, including his thoughts, reasons, feelings (this sounds CM). It has a balanced or positive view of human nature, considers parental love a gift, and uses problem solving to work with the child as its strategy.

All parents love their children and want the best for them, but when children perceive that they have to earn their parents' love by doing well, they may have trouble accepting themselves, may create a false self as a result of trying to please, and may resent their parents as they get older. Children who felt unconditionally loved had a better relationship with their parents into adulthood and a more balanced view of themselves.