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Reviews? Unconditional Parenting by Alfie Kohn
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Is this book any good? Any other gentle discipline book recs? I just read Positive Parenting Birth - 3 years. Looking for others.
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Re: Reviews? Unconditional Parenting by Alfie Kohn
Honestly, the book sort of blew my mind. It was the first parenting book I read as a parent, and it really challenged every notion about parenting that I had. I knew I wanted to discipline "gently," but this book really makes you take a look at the whole idea of discipline. I was definitely "sold" on many of his ideas (he backs everything up with research), but I have no idea how realistic it would be to implement his philosophy in real life.
The one main criticism I had with the book is that it was lacking in real life examples. I'm a really concrete thinker, and some case studies or examples would have helped me understand and solidify his ideas, and help me see how I might put his philosophy into practice. The other thing is that it can be somewhat repetitive at times - but I read it in one sitting, so maybe if you break it up a bit the repetition will be helpful.
It's also a pretty easy read, which is good when you're sleep deprived and short on time.
Definitely give it a read - and then come back and talk to me about it, because I'd love to hear what someone else thinks about it!
I'll agree with basically every word of this, but I think at times, it's not an easy read at all. I don't think he's a good writer, so he can be hard to follow. The real-life examples were really hard on me when I was reading it as a parent of an infant. It just didn't totally make sense to me, since I hadn't really dealt with the truly challenging parts of parenthood yet. His book gave me the confidence to parent in my own way, really. I don't follow his method (really, he doesn't have a method, he just challenges you to think before you parent) completely, but he gave me so much to think about.
I got the DVD to start since it takes me forever and a day to read a book these days but I think I will get the book eventually for more detail.
I find his presentation of the research really enlightening. It is definitely hard work to put this kind of parenting into practice because it doesn't feel very natural. I would also appreciate more concrete examples.
To summarize, his main idea is thinking about what you want for your child in the long term and is your short term/day to day parenting working towards supporting that. Rewards and punishments are two sides of the same coin; rewards can be just as damaging. Praise effort, not outcomes. Instead of spending effort on controlling a kid's behavior, work with kids to come up with solutions to problems. This goes hand in hand with respecting them as individuals. I think his ideas and conclusions all fit very well within AP. He's all about the kid trusting parents and finding security in the relationship, especially when things aren't going well, behavior is poor, etc.
So, yeah, I don't even know if any of that makes sense. You can see it's not any quick fix type of parenting advice where there's a formula to follow. I'm really into learning more about it, though. I love that it's evidence based and not a bunch of opinions disguised as facts.