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5b58c40
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I think our challenge as parents is to rise above that preference for the child of least resistance and to think beyond short-term success as a criterion--particularly if success is defined by conventional and insipid standards. Don't we want our kids to be inspiring rather than spend their lives just collecting tokens (grades, money, approval)? Don't we want them to think in the plural rather than focusing only on what will benefit them pe..
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Alfie Kohn |
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fefb327
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They're arguing for giving homework and tests to all young children, or separating them into winners and losers, because these tykes need to get used to such things -- as if exposure itself will inoculate them against the negative effects they would otherwise experience later. If we were interested in helping children to anticipate and deal with unpleasant experiences, it might make sense to the details with them and perhaps guide them th..
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Alfie Kohn |
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b2ff372
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Again, the most effective (and least destructive) way to help a child succeed--whether she's writing or skiing, playing a trumpet or a computer game--is to do everything possible to help her fall in love with what she's doing, to pay less attention to how successful she was (or is likely to be) and show more interest in the task. That's just another way of saying that we need to encourage more, judge less, and love always.
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Alfie Kohn |
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441c520
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When we set children against one another in contests--from spelling bees to awards assemblies to science "fairs" (that are really contests), from dodge ball to honor rolls to prizes for the best painting or the most books read--we teach them to confuse excellence with winning, as if the only way to do something well is to outdo others."
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Alfie Kohn |
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7a6e538
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Most children seem eager, even desperate, to please those in authority, reluctant to rock the boat even when the boat clearly needs rocking. In a way, an occasional roll-your-eyes story of excess in the other direction marks the exception that proves the rule. And the rule is a silent epidemic of obedience. For every kid who is slapped with the label "Oppositional Defiant Disorder," hundreds suffer from what one educator has mischievously c..
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Alfie Kohn |
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784ed7b
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The story of declining school quality across the twentieth century is, for the most part, a fable," says social scientist Richard Rothstein, whose book The Way We Were? cites a series of similar attacks on American education, moving backward one decade at a time.3 Each generation invokes the good old days, during which, we discover, people had been doing exactly the same thing."
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Alfie Kohn |
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9e632ab
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We're told that parents push their children too hard to excel (by ghostwriting their homework and hiring tutors, and demanding that they triumph over their peers), but also that parents try to protect kids from competition (by giving trophies to everyone), that expectations have declined, that too much attention is paid to making children happy. Similarly, young adults are described as self-satisfied twits--more pleased with themselves than..
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Alfie Kohn |
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e7ef2da
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The dominant problem with parenting in our society isn't permissiveness, but the fear of permissiveness. We're so worried about spoiling kids that we often end up over controlling them.
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Alfie Kohn |
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243a020
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My wife says [parenting] is a test of your capacity to deal with disorder and unpredictability -- a test you can't study for, and one whose results aren't always reassuring.
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Alfie Kohn |
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c0885bf
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Children aren't helped to become caring members of a community, or ethical decision-makers, or critical thinkers, so much as they're simply trained to follow directions.
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Alfie Kohn |
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a07a497
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Students get the message bout what adults want. When 4th graders in a variety of classroomswere asked what their teachers most wanted them to do, they didn't say, "Ask thoughtful questions" or "Make responsible decisions" or Help others." They said, "Be quiet, don't fool around, and get our work done on time."
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education
rewards
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Alfie Kohn |
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384831c
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They are not raising children so much as living resumes, and by the time high school arrives, the kids have learned to sign up for activities strictly to impress college admissions committees, ignoring (or, eventually, losing sight of) what they personally find interesting in the here-and-now. They have acquired the habit of asking teachers, "Do we need to know this?"--rather than, say, "What does this mean?"--as they grimly set about the b..
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Alfie Kohn |
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fe517d3
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Most people who refer to an epidemic of permissive parenting just assume that this is true, that everyone knows it, and therefore that there's no need to substantiate that claim. My efforts to track down data -- by combing both scholarly and popular databases as well as sending queries to leading experts in the field -- have yielded absolutely nothing. I'm forced to conclude that no one has any idea how many parents could be considered perm..
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Alfie Kohn |
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407d66b
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Independence is useful, but caring attitudes and behaviors shrivel up in a culture where each person is responsible only for himself.
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Alfie Kohn |
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0e902fb
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How well you do things should be incidental, not integral, to the way you regard yourself.
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self-esteem
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Alfie Kohn |
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91d15ab
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Few readers will be shocked by the news that extrinsic motivators are a poor substitute for genuine interest in what one is doing. What is likely to be far more surprising and disturbing is the further point that rewards, like punishments, actually undermine the intrinsic motivation that promotes optimal performance.
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Alfie Kohn |
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a1d4cad
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Just because some children were more effective than others at distracting themselves from [the marshmallow in the famous Marshmallow Test] doesn't mean this capacity was for the impressive results found ten years later. Instead, both of these things may have been due to something about their home environment. If that's true, there's no reason to believe that enhancing children's ability to defer gratification would be beneficial: It was j..
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self-discipline
self-control
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Alfie Kohn |
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d006c53
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Thomas Gordon said it well: "Children sometimes know better than parents when they are sleepy or hungry; know better the qualities of their friends, their own aspirations and goals, how their various teachers treat them; know better the urges and needs within their bodies, whom they love and whom they don't, what they value and what they don't."4 In any case, we can't always assume that because we're more mature we necessarily have more ins..
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Alfie Kohn |
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1d90f52
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How we feel about our kids isn't as important as how they experience those feelings and how they regard the way we treat them.
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Alfie Kohn |
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80b3239
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Do we really want to condemn as excessive the use of safety helmets, car seats, playgrounds designed so kids will be less likely to crack their skulls, childproof medicine bottles, and baby gates at the top of stairs? One writer criticizes "the inappropriateness of excessive concern in low-risk environments," but of course reasonable people disagree about what constitutes both "excessive" and "low risk." Even if, as this writer asserts, "a ..
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spoiled-children
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Alfie Kohn |
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f2fd1f5
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From deep contentment comes the courage to achieve.
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Alfie Kohn |
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15a01e9
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Educators remind us that what counts in a classroom is not what the teacher teaches; it's what the learner learns. And so it is in families. What matters is the message our kids receive, not the one we think we're sending.
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Alfie Kohn |
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5b0a7f9
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S. Neill put it, promising a reward for an activity is "tantamount to declaring that the activity is not worth doing for its own sake."26 Thus, a parent who says to a child, "If you finish your math homework, you may watch an hour of TV" is teaching the child to think of math as something that isn't much fun."
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Alfie Kohn |
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50a8992
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the question is not whether more flies can be caught with honey than with vinegar, but why the flies are being caught in either case--and how this feels to the fly.
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Alfie Kohn |
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6d76406
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We tell them how good they are and they light up, eager to please, and try to please us some more. These are the children we should really worry about.
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Alfie Kohn |
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127f2fa
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Many of us have watched people become uneasy, if not positively furious, when they believe some offense--including one committed by a child--has not been punished severely enough. Later in this book I will argue that a child's misbehavior is best construed as a "teachable moment," a problem to be solved together rather than an infraction that calls for a punitive response. I will try to show that this approach is not only more respectful an..
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Alfie Kohn |
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f42bdb9
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A willingness to question the way things are paradoxically affirms a vision of the way things ought to be.
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Alfie Kohn |
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3aa6c32
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Contingent on what, though? Some bases for feeling good about oneself may be worse than others. Jennifer Crocker, a psychologist at Ohio State University, and her colleagues have shown that the prognosis is particularly bad when self-esteem hinges on outdoing others (competitive success), approval by others, physical appearance, or academic achievement.47 Consider the last of those. When children's self-esteem rises or falls with how well t..
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Alfie Kohn |
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b53566a
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Unconditional parents want to know how to do something other than threaten and punish. They don't see their relationship with their children as adversarial, so their goal is to avoid battles, not win them.
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Alfie Kohn |
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c78bf6a
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Instead, you would probably hear, "No rewards and punishments?? Then how will we get our kids to do what they're told, follow the rules, and take their place in a society where certain things will be expected of them whether they like it or not?" Indeed, there is evidence that greater concern about social"
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Alfie Kohn |
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68cacb9
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It's been said that the personal is political, and there's no doubt that parenting is intensely personal. To argue against traditional ways of raising children, or to suggest that we can help children stand up for what they think is right, doesn't introduce politics into parenting. It's always been there. If we've failed to notice the political implications of child rearing, it may be because most advice on the subject has the effect of per..
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Alfie Kohn |
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e9676a3
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As Thomas Gordon pointed out, 'Parents who find unacceptable a great many things that their children do or say will inevitably foster in these children a deep feeling that they are unacceptable as persons.' That doesn't change just because the parents remember to say soothingly, 'We love you, honey; we just hate almost everything you do.
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Alfie Kohn |
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1271c11
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After all, if we want a child to grow into a genuinely compassionate person, then it's not enough to know whether he just did something helpful. We'd want to know why.
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Alfie Kohn |
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3e1f514
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We complain loudly about such things as the sagging productivity of our workplaces, the crisis of our schools, and the warped values of our children. But the very strategy we use to solve those problems--dangling rewards like incentive plans and grades and candy bars in front of people--is partly responsible for the fix we're in. We are a society of loyal Skinnerians, unable to think our way out of the box we have reinforced ourselves into.
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Alfie Kohn |
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0efbb43
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The more pressing question, of course, is how we can communicate our love after kids keep acting up even when we think they ought to know better. (We've certainly told them enough times!) Here it's common to assume that they're "testing limits." This is a very popular phrase in the discipline field and it's often used as a justification for parents to impose more, or tighter, limits. Sometimes the assumption that kids are testing us even be..
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Alfie Kohn |
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6b22667
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A society in which no one is willing to risk being called a troublemaker is a place where power is certain to be abused.
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Alfie Kohn |
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b08ea71
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Besides, what best prepares children to deal with the challenges of the "real world" is to experience success and joy. People don't get better at coping with unhappiness because they were deliberately made unhappy when they were young."
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Alfie Kohn |
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7bbaa7d
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In the pages that follow, I want to invite readers who don't regard themselves as social conservatives to reexamine the traditionalist roots of attitudes about children they may have come to accept. And I want to invite all readers, regardless of their political and cultural views, to take a fresh look at common assumptions about kids and parenting. We've been encouraged to worry: Are we being firm enough with our children? Are we too invol..
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Alfie Kohn |
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9bb7e02
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So if pundits were throwing up their hands even during the Eisenhower era about schools on the decline and students who could barely read and write, the obvious question is this: When exactly was that golden period distinguished by high standards? The answer, of course, is that it never existed. "The story of declining school quality across the twentieth century is, for the most part, a fable," says social scientist Richard Rothstein, whose..
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Alfie Kohn |
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fd266d7
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Hence a report from Harvard's own "Committee on Raising the Standard": "Grades A and B are sometimes given too readily--Grade A for work of not very high merit, and Grade B for work not far above mediocrity. . . . One of the chief obstacles to raising the standards of the degree is the readiness with which insincere students gain passable grades by sham work." Except that report was written in--you saw this coming, didn't you?--1894."
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Alfie Kohn |
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5108dbb
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For the anthropomorphic view of the rat, American psychology substituted a rattomorphic view of man. --Arthur Koestler, The Act of Creation
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Alfie Kohn |
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f2169c7
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In an autobiographical essay published in 1946, Albert Einstein reflected on his days as a student of physics some fifty years earlier. He recalled his teachers with affection but, referring to exams, said, "This coercion had such a deterring effect that after I had passed the final examination, I found the consideration of any scientific problems distasteful to me for an entire year."
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Alfie Kohn |
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6fd2007
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Nothing is more important to us when we're young than how our parents feel about us. Uncertainty about that, or terror about being abandoned, can leave its mark even after we're grown.
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Alfie Kohn |
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f4b91ca
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control is an unavoidable feature of human relationships; all that actually varies is the subtlety of the system of reinforcement.
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Alfie Kohn |