Unconditional Parenting

Unconditional Parenting by Alfie Kohn

Excerpts on praise from Chapter 8 "Love without strings attached"

… what matters isn’t the message you sent—or even the reason you sent it. What matters is the message the child received.

The happy news is that it’s not necessary to evaluate kids in order to encourage them. The popularity of praise rests partly on the failure to distinguish between those two ideas. Just paying attention to what kids are doing and showing interest in their activities is a form of encouragement. In fact, it’s more important than what we say immediately after kids do something marvelous. When unconditional love and genuine enthusiasm are always present, “Good job!” isn’t necessary; when they’re absent, “Good job!” won’t help.

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At first, it can feel weird to hold back when you’re used to offering these constant evaluations. (“Good drawing!” “Good drinking!” “Good drooling!”) It may seem as though you’re being unsupportive. But from observing many parents, including myself, I’ve become convinced that praise is less a function of what kids need to hear than of what we need to say. And whenever that’s true, it’s time for us to rethink what we’ve been doing.

On those occasions when we feel it would be appropriate to say something, 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). A simple, evaluation-free statement lets a child know that you noticed. It also lets her take pride in what she did. …

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… If a child does something caring or generous, you might gently draw his attention to the effect of his action on the other person. This is completely different from praise, where the emphasis is on how you feel about his sharing.

Finally, even better than descriptions are questions. Why tell him what you thought of what he did when you can ask him what he thinks? That’s likely to promote useful reflection about why it may be better to act one way than another. Questions you ask about something he wrote or drew or made, meanwhile, invite him to consider what he succeeded in doing and how he did it. This can spur further improvement and nourish his interest in the task itself. The research, remember, suggests that praise may have exactly the opposite effect, directing his attention away from the task and toward your reaction.

Recently, I found myself at a crafts activity sponsored by a local library in which children were invited to create snowflakes out of pipe cleaners and beads. A boy of about four or five sitting near me showed his mother what he had done, and immediately she gushed about how wonderful it was. Then, since I was the only other adult at the table, he held his snowflake out so I, too, could see it clearly. Instead of offering an evaluation, I asked him whether he liked it. “Not so much,” he admitted. I asked why, and he began to explain, his tone suggesting genuine interest in figuring out other possible ways he might have used the materials. This is exactly the sort of elaboration and reflection that are stifled when we slather our kids with praise. They tend to stop thinking and talking about what they’ve done as soon as we pass judgment on it.