Episode 7: Parenting Without Punishments and Rewards with Alfie Kohn

Today’s podcast is in 2 parts. In the first part, I was so fortunate to interview Alfie Kohn. Mr Kohn is a writer and speaker who specializes in human behaviour, education and parenting. He is the author of 14 books and hundreds of articles and lectures at education conferences and universities, as well as to parent groups and corporations. Mr Kohn talks today about moving away from an approach to parenting which is based on having power over our children, to one based on working with our children. He explains how research has challenged many of the assumptions about mainstream approaches to raising our children. He explains that punishments and rewards are really both manipulation and control of our children and only work temporarily and at great cost to our relationship with our children. He describes how intrinsic motivation is damaged by rewards, praise and punishments. We discuss how to offer our children unconditional love in a way that our children receive as unconditional and how to parent without these coercive “sticks”. He also briefly discusses the failings of education systems that are based on testing, homework, and grades, all of which destroy creativity, meaningful learning and the desire to learn. Please note this part of the episode is not specifically about Aware Parenting. In part 2 of this episode, I outline the Aware Parenting perspective on not using punishments or rewards. I describe how to shift our thinking away from the behaviour modification perspective of trying to control and coerce our children and move instead to an Aware Parenting perspective of power with our children. I explain how to treat our children in a way that allows them to feel unconditionally loved, and how to ‘discipline’ our children with a compassionate and connected approach that looks underneath our children’s behaviour so we can identity what is getting in the way of them being their natural, loving, cooperative selves. I provide many strategies that parents can use instead of punishments or rewards to make parenting more enjoyable, to deepen our relationship with our children and support ourselves to be the parent we want to be. To find out more about Alfie Kohn, please visit www.alfiekohn.org I highly recommend Alfie Kohn’s books “Punished by Rewards” and “Unconditional Parenting”, as well as “Cooperative and Connected” by Aletha Solter and her article “20 Alternatives to Punishment” available on her website www.awareparenting.com