Book review: Alfie Kohn: Unconditional Parenting

This is one of the best parenting books I have read so far. I am impressed by the straighforward style of the author and I am also thrilled to know that I am not the only one thinking that the way we do education is wrong.

Alfie Kohn wrote Unconditional Parenting: Moving from Rewards and Punishments to Love and Reason in order to give a huge alarm signal when it comes to how we decide to raise our children.

There are big chances that you will get triggered if you are parent or a teacher reading this book. You might have been doing everything wrong. Are you ready to accept this and become humble and eager to learn how to be genuinely loving as you child needs you to be?

Children need unconditional loving. A lot of parents do not know how to offer that because they also received poor parenting from their own parents. Educating someone with punishments or rewards is highly detrimental and also dehumanizing.

Abuse of any form will leave scars. Children who got beaten up in their childhood tend to be aggressive adults with behavioural and emotional issues. Those who managed to “dodge the bullet” and not become bitter and aggressive still have a lot of trauma because of the bad parenting they received.

This is a must read if you want to become a parent or if you are already one!

Key ideas from part 1 from this book:

• put the relationship first
• change how you see, not just how you act
• respect your child
• be authentic ( Alfie suggests to “make a point of apologizing to your child about something at least twice a month”)
• talk less, ask more
• keep their ages in mind
• attribute to children the best possible motive consistent with the facts
• don’t stick your no’s in unnecessarily
• don’t be rigid

A long in depth review :