Book Recommendation: Unconditional Parenting

erinkate23

I just finished reading Unconditional Parenting by Alfie Koen, and it pretty much blew my mind.

Like anything, I think you have to take it with a grain of salt, and I'm certainly not going to treat it like a bible, but the book was absolutely fascinating and made me really examine a lot of what I thought I knew about raising kids.  I started reading it for David, but ultimately, I felt like I was reading about myself - especially my own drive to please, and my own insecurities about being worthy of love and respect.  I won't do everything he suggests in the book as an alternative (there are certain circumstances where I do think more traditional discepline is necessary), but I will look at things through a different light.

 If you're not in the book-buying sort of mood, take a few minutes to read the "sneak peek" on Amazon.  That alone was pretty amazing.

 

webMistress0609

I just finished this & had some of the same thoughts. I've been processing a lot of emotional issues from my childhood since Ari was born - stuff I've buried for years. I'm committed to raising my children very differently from how I was raised. Anyway, this book was actually very therapeutic for me. It really helped me put words to a lot of the feelings I had in my childhood - feeling inadequate in my parent's eyes, feeling like my mother only loved me when x,y,z happened, my parents extremely over critical tendencies, etc.

There were some other things my parents did in addition to the techniques Kohn discusses that contributed to this, & they also were an extreme case, but I still found it very enlightening. 

ETA: If you want something a little more traditional than Kohn, check out the Positive Discipline series. It's kind of between Kohn & the Dr. Sears Discipline book. I'm over simplifying but you'll understand if you read all 3 or just peruse Dr Sears. I liked his book but I don't care for reward charts or punitive time outs, mostly b/c I've seen them backfire with SD. Anyway,  for the Positive Discipline series.

Kestrel84

I'm part of the way through this book but I agree that it's a great read.  I now see things from a completely different perspective and while I won't be following it 100%, there are a lot of great concepts to keep in mind.  I'm glad to have read it while DS is still young because it introduces a lot of things that are foreign to me, like not using rewards/punishments.  It is nice to have time to think about these things and how I plan to handle it in the future instead of having to change the way I think overnight.