Unconditional Parenting, Principle #2: We shouldn’t just be concerned w/ our children’s behavior. Our children act the way they act for different reasons, and “we can’t just ignore those reasons and respond only to the effects (that is, the behaviors).” “Children are not pets to be trained” (15).
The effects of conditional love.
- Conditional love effectively produces “the desired behaviors.” One study found that “[c]hildren who received approval from their parents only if they acted in a particular way were a bit more likely to act that way.”
- However these children felt that they were loved conditionally and were more likely to feel rejected and to dislike their parents. Other studies have found that children who felt they were loved conditionally were more likely to contract a “false self” in order to please their parents and to grew to feel less worthy as adults (22, 23).
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Love Withdrawal
Examples:
- “Some parents withdraw their love by simply refusing to respond to a child--that is, by making a point of ignoring him” (25).
- Other parents “separate themselves physically from the children,” e.g., by walking away or sending the child on time-out (25).
Love withdrawal is effective: One study found that “love withdrawal made it more likely that” children “would comply with their mothers’ wishes, at least for the moment” (28).
One psychologist observed that love withdrawal is very similar to power-based discipline in that both forms “communicate to children that if they do something we don’t like, we’ll make them suffer in order to change their behavior.” He believed that love withdrawal might actually be worse than more ostensibly harsh forms of punishment because, “[a]lthough it poses no immediate physical or material threat to the child,” it “may be more devastating emotionally than power assertion because it poses the ultimate threat of abandonment or separation” (29).
One study found that love withdrawal tends to “leave the child in a state of emotional discomfort for longer periods” than spanking. Other studies have found that children subjected to love withdrawal “tend to have lower self-esteem,” “display signs of poorer emotional health overall,” and to grow to be more anxious” (30).
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Rewards
Rewards do not improve “the quality of people’s work or learning.” Numerous studies have shown that students “tend to learn better all else being equal, when no A’s are used to reward them them--that is, in classrooms where descriptions of students’ performance are used without any letter or number grades attached.” Rewards can successfully buy “temporary obedience,” but they can “never help someone to develop a commitment to a task or an action, a reason to keep doing it when there’s no longer a payoff” (32)., Many studies show that “[t]he more that people are rewarded for doing something, the more likely they are to lose interest in whatever they had to do to get the reward” (33)--e.g., “[g]ive little children an unfamiliar beverage, and those who are offered a reward for drinking it will end up liking it less next week than kids who drank the same stuff without being offered a reward,” or “pay children for trying to solve a puzzle, and they’ll tend to stop playing with it after the experiment is over--while those who were paid nothing are apt to keep at it on their own time” (34).
The same is true of praising kids. Studies show that “individuals who are praised for doing well at a creative task often stumble at the next task…[p]artly because people’s interest in what they’re doing may have declined (because now the main goal is just to get more praise)” (34). One study found that kids who were praised by their parents for being generous “tended to be slightly less generous on an everyday basis than other children were” (35).
One major problem with praise: It tells children that our love is conditional; we love them if they act in certain ways (36). Kids, for example, might think: “Look how excited Dad gets when I hit the ball...and only when I hit the ball” (38).
“Children’s sense of their competence, and perhaps of their worth, may come to rise or fall as a result of our reaction. They look to us, figuratively and sometimes literally, to see whether we approve of what they’ve done” (39). Children who become dependent on praise can become “less able or willing or able to take pride in their own accomplishments--or to decide what is an accomplishment” (40).
Kids can become dependent on praise: The more we praise them, the more they need it, find themselves waiting for it, longing for it. Such children often start to base their entire self worth on how well they please their parents (40).
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Control
Authoritarian parents--i.e., parents who insist on having absolute control over their children--tend to have kids who are either (a) excessively obedient or (b) excessively rebellious. The problem with (a) is that, according to one study, although these kids are obedient, they tend to lack self-confidence, “both in terms of self-reliance and in terms of their perceptions of their own social and academic abilities” (54).
“On balance, the kids who do what they’re told are likely to be those whose parents don’t rely on power and instead have developed a warm and secure relationship with them” (51).
One study compared the type of mother who is “sensitive, accepting, and cooperative” with the type who believes “she has a perfect right to do with [her child] what she wishes, imposing her will on his, shaping him to her standards, and interrupting him arbitrarily without regard for his needs, wishes, or activity-in-progress.” The first mother had more compliant children (52).
Another study found that “the two-year-olds who were most likely to comply with a specific request turned out to be those whose parents ‘were very clear about what they wanted, but in addition to listening to their children’s objections, they also accommodated them in ways that conveyed respect for the children’s autonomy and individuality’” (52).
A third study asked one group of mothers to play with their children as they normally did and trained another group to “engage in any activity that the child might choose and to allow the child to control the nature and rules of the interaction.” The experimenters then asked the mothers to command their children to put away their toys. The children in the second group were more likely to comply (52).
Other studies have corroborated these findings (52-53).
Examples…
Food. Children will naturally “consume the number of calories their bodies need over time.” One study found that children lost their ability to self-regulate when their parents insisted that they only eat during dinnertime, clean their plates, etc. (58-59).
Morals. One study found that children with authoritarian parents are less likely to have internal moral compasses (59).
Interest and Skills. Studies have found that controlling parents are less likely to have children who are interested in performing various tasks and less skilled at those tasks (60).
Kids need structure, not controls. What is the difference? “There are certainly some gray areas here, but as a rule, reasonable structures are imposed only when necessary, in a flexible manner, without undue restrictiveness, and, when possible, with the participation of the child” (61).
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Punishment
One study found that punishment “proved to be counterproductive regardless of whether the parents were using it to stop aggression, excessive dependence, bed-wetting, or something else” (63).
Some parents repackage punishments as “consequences”--e.g., “If you don’t clean the room, you can’t go to the party.” But this “communicates a message of distrust (‘I don’t think you’ll do the right thing without the fear of punishment’), leads kids to think of themselves as complying for extrinsic reasons, and emphasizes their powerlessness” (65).
Sending your child on time-out is still punitive.
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Success
Research “suggests that when kids are encouraged to focus on getting better marks in school, three things tend to happen: They lose interest in the learning itself, they try to avoid tasks that are challenging, and they’re less likely to think deeply and critically” (79).
Compulsory apologies train children to say things they don’t mean, that is, to lie.
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THE ANSWER…
Minimize:
Limit your number of criticisms. “[T]oo much criticism and disapproval may lead a child to feel unworthy.”
Limit the scope of your criticisms. Be specific: e.g., “Your voice sounded unkind when you were talking to your sister,” not “You’re so mean to people.”
Limit the intensity of your criticisms. Be as gentle as possible, keep your emotions in check.
Look for alternatives to criticism. Try to help the child see the effects of their actions: e.g., “Jeremy looked kind of sad after you said that to him,” “The next time you’re feeling frustrated, what do you think you could do instead of pushing?”
Reassure children that we will never stop loving them. E.g., “No matter what you do, no matter how frustrated I get, I will never, never, never stop loving you.” Reassure kids of this, esp. during conflicts.
Examples:
Child keeps asking for brownie before dinner; you keep saying no. Don’t give silent treat, but “it’s appropriate to stop responding. The reason, however, is not to silence the child…Rather, you’ve stopped answering simply b/c there’s not much more for you to say. And you do it as lovingly as you can, given that you’re busy and fed up. You don’t pretend she isn’t there; you make it clear that you hear, you notice, you care. The child may still feel frustrated, but ideally she won’t feel unloved” (151).
Instead of sending a child on time-out, offer them “the choice of retreating to a comfortable place when he’s going berserk. This option should be discussed in advance, in part to make it clear that the child is not being incarcerated or isolated against his will. He’s just deciding to take a breath in a quiet room, maybe vent a little without fear of repercussions, maybe spend a few minutes with a favorite book. At the time of the crisis, the parent can gently ask him if he needs to do this. But even this suggestion probably should be our second step, the first having been to ask what’s going on, to remind him that what he does has an impact on other people, to explain why some ways of acting just aren’t acceptable, to problem-solve together, and so on” (152). If the child is having an outburst in public and must be removed, it is okay to remove him, but don’t banish him from yourself (“Let’s go snuggle in the den.”)
No bribes. We should never give them gifts with strings attached. “Presents should never be offered as an incentive for behaving well, getting good grades, or doing anything else” (153).
“While it may be possible to spoil kids with too many things, it isn’t possible to spoil them with too much (unconditional) love. As one writer put it, the problem with children whom we would describe as spoiled is that they ‘get too much of what they want and too little of what they need.’ Therefore, give them affection (which they need) without limit, without reservations, and without excuse. Pay as much attention to them as you can, regardless of mood or circumstance. Let them know you’re delighted to be with them, that you care about them no matter what happens. This basic posture, as I’ve noted, is completely different from praise, which is doled out as a response to something a child does” (153).
It’s okay to be proud of a specific accomplishment of your child, but you need to emphasize that you’re proud no matter what, that your love doesn’t hinge on their success. Praise should be “just a spontaneous reaction of delight to something our children have done, with no attempt to ‘reinforce’ a certain behavior” (154).
So what should we say when our children do something good?
Say nothing, simply pay attention.
Describe what you see (don’t evaluate): We can “simply point out what we’ve seen and allow the child to decide how to feel about it (rather than telling her how)”: “Hey, there’s something new on the feet of those people you just drew. They’ve got toes” (155).
Explain the effects the child’s action has on other people: “You set the table! Boy, that makes things a lot easier on me while I’m cooking.”
Inviting reflection: “How did you come up with that way of grabbing the reader’s attention right at the beginning?”
Asking (not judging): “What made you decide to give some of your brownie to Deidre when you didn’t have to?” “What do you think about your drawing?”
Also instead of praising…
If we want children to be generous, we should convince them that “their motives already are generous” (157). One study showed took two groups of children who acted generously. The first group was later told that they acted that way because “you’re the kind of person who likes to help other people,” while the other was told that they had acted generously (donated) because they were expected to do so. The first group went on to act more generously later on (157-58).
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Choices for Children
We should “let kids make decisions about matters that concern them except when there is a compelling reason for us to override that right” (168).
We all have a need to exercise autonomy.
Giving kids a choice works: “For example, when parents not only avoid the temptation to rely on control but also go out of their way to help children experience a sense of autonomy, these children are more likely to do what they’re asked and less likely to misbehave. Teenagers who are able to participate in family decision-making are more apt to rely on their parents and to share many of their beliefs. They also end up feeling better about themselves, liking school more, and preferring more challenging assignments--and, if all that’s not enough, they’re also more likely to stay out of trouble. Finally, college students whose parents had encouraged them to be independent as children are more likely than their peers to feel confident about themselves and to persist in the face of difficulty or failure” (168-69).
Kohn’s summary of the research: “The way kids learn to make good decisions is by making decisions, not by following directions” (169).
Even if we let our child decide on an issue, it’s okay to sometimes give them our opinion: e.g., we might tell her we think it would be appropriate to apologize but leave the decision to her. Even if we are not going to honor their decision, it is good to let them make their argument; this lets them know that their viewpoint counts (170).
It is good to work together with children to make decisions, instead of either (a) giving in to their wishes or (b) imposing our will on them. “In addition to listening, we need to be candid about our feelings and, ultimately, to look for solutions together: ‘Let’s talk about what’s fair to you but also what might address my concerns. Let’s come up with some ideas and try them out’” (173).
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