{"id":74889,"date":"2022-08-01T19:22:00","date_gmt":"2022-08-01T23:22:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=74889"},"modified":"2022-08-12T14:19:36","modified_gmt":"2022-08-12T18:19:36","slug":"best-parenting-advice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/best-parenting-advice\/","title":{"rendered":"Best Parenting Advice for Raising Confident, Happy Kids"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

What is the best parenting advice<\/a> for raising children<\/a> today? What’s most important to know if you want to raise confident, happy kids? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Unconditional Parenting<\/em>, author and lecturer Alfie Kohn argues that we should throw away the standard parenting rulebook and replace it with a new approach built on unconditional support, acceptance, and understanding. Kohn’s approach requires rethinking standard parenting, which traditionally emphasizes a system of punishment and rewards when raising children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read on to learn Kohn’s best parenting advice and why following standard parenting advice might be risky.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

The Best Parenting Advice? Rethink How You Discipline<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Kohn notes that most parents have similar long-term goals for their children<\/strong>: They want them to be happy, independent, confident, and creative<\/strong>. But he cautions that it\u2019s easy to forget about these goals in the short term<\/strong> and shift your focus to whether or not the child is being \u201cgood\u201d (doing what you want them to do) or \u201cbad\u201d (doing something else) at any given moment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Kohn, mainstream parenting advice focuses almost exclusively on discipline<\/strong>: how to use rewards to encourage good behavior and punishments to discourage bad behavior. He argues that even seemingly the best progressive parenting advice (for example, doling out attention, affection, and praise when you catch your child behaving well<\/a> or putting a misbehaving child in a time-out<\/a>) still buys into an overall parenting framework built around rewards and punishments. This framework, he says, is outdated, and it may even be damaging your children<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conditional Parenting Discipline: Using Punishments<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Parents commonly use punishments (or the threat of punishments) to discourage behavior they see as problematic. Some of Kohn\u2019s best parenting advice invites readers to redefine punishment more broadly than most common definitions: He includes isolation and the withdrawal of parental attention alongside physical punishments and temporarily not allowing a child to do something she enjoys.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What Counts as a Punishment?<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

A punishment is any deliberate attempt to make a child suffer following \u201cbad\u201d behavior. Punishments include:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Physical punishments such as spanking<\/strong>, slapping, or handling a child roughly when they misbehave. These punishments are especially damaging because they teach children that it\u2019s okay to use violence to solve problems, which may be why they\u2019re also <\/strong>linked to aggressive behavior<\/strong><\/a>. According to Kohn’s parenting advice, even in communities in which parents believe spanking is best (and in which parents are more likely to justify it with, \u201cIt didn\u2019t do any damage to me\u201d), children still show adverse outcomes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Shortform note: Many parents make the decision not to spank their children on philosophical and moral grounds. For those who want hard evidence one way or the other, the picture is extremely murky<\/a>. For example, aggression outcomes may be influenced by the child\u2019s gender<\/a>: One study found that 1-year-old male babies who were spanked are more likely to be bullies at age 3, while female babies who were spanked at the same age are less likely to be bullies. Some researchers even argue that Sweden\u2019s spanking ban, enacted in 1979, increased <\/em>crime, violent child abuse in particular, in subsequent decades<\/a>.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Criticism. <\/strong>Kohn argues that criticizing kids is damaging to their self-esteem in the long run<\/strong>. His best parenting advice recommends that <\/strong>if you have <\/em>to criticize, try to do it as little as possible and always make sure the criticism is specific (for example, \u201cPulling the cat\u2019s tail hurts her\u201d rather than \u201cDon\u2019t hurt animals\u201d). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Shortform note: Research supports Kohn\u2019s warning about criticizing children. Criticism from parents can lead to depression in children<\/a>, and parents also typically underestimate how often they criticize their kids<\/a>.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLove withdrawals,\u201d <\/strong>such as time-outs, ignoring the child, and briefly pulling back emotionally from the child. Kohn’s advice says this method is not the best and leads to inflicting emotional pain<\/a> on the child <\/strong>and that they can be even more damaging than physical punishments<\/strong>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Shortform note: Kohn\u2019s framing of these techniques as \u201clove withdrawals\u201d is one of his more controversial opinions. Though they\u2019re not recommended for very young children<\/a>, time-outs are still widely recommended as a disciplinary measure\u2014including by the CDC, which claims that they work not because children are afraid of losing love but because they hate to be bored<\/a>.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Taking away \u201cprivileges\u201d<\/strong> (things the child enjoys). Kohn argues that taking away privileges isn\u2019t ideal because it doesn\u2019t directly link the problem behavior with the consequence\u2014unlike, for example, making a child clean up the colorful crayon mural she\u2019s drawn on the walls. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Shortform note: Some parenting advice experts recommend that the best way to teach kids is by allowing a child to experience the \u201cnatural consequences<\/a>\u201d of their behavior. For example, allowing your child to get wet if he doesn\u2019t put on his raincoat, even arguing that doing this increases kids\u2019 intrinsic motivation<\/a> to avoid uncomfortable consequences. However, despite his overall inclination toward non-intervention, Kohn warns against this strategy in most cases. He says that the thing children are most likely to learn from this setup is that you could have helped them but chose not to.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why You Should Stop Punishing Children<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

According to Kohn’s parenting advice, using punishments with children is not the best form of discipline because<\/strong>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. They don\u2019t help the child to develop internal moral standards. <\/strong>Punishments don\u2019t teach children to take responsibility<\/a> for their behavior, repair relationships, or fix the problems they\u2019ve caused.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. They can be counterproductive<\/strong>: A child\u2019s negative reaction to a punishment (for example, yelling or crying) might prompt the parent to punish more, locking both into a vicious cycle of punishments with increasing stakes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. They misdirect children\u2019s attention<\/strong>, causing them to focus on the punishment itself and their anger about it rather than the problem behavior.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. They cultivate either rebellion or over-compliance in the long term. <\/strong>Children whose parents rely on harsh punishments usually turn out in one of two ways: They stop questioning authority<\/a> in a healthy way and end up completely disempowered, or they deliberately rebel. And in the case of rebellion, punishments simply encourage children to focus on not getting caught, rather than discouraging the behavior itself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What is the best parenting advice for raising children today? What’s most important to know if you want to raise confident, happy kids? In Unconditional Parenting, author and lecturer Alfie Kohn argues that we should throw away the standard parenting rulebook and replace it with a new approach built on unconditional support, acceptance, and understanding. Kohn’s approach requires rethinking standard parenting, which traditionally emphasizes a system of punishment and rewards when raising children. Read on to learn Kohn’s best parenting advice and why following standard parenting advice might be risky.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":74960,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,43],"tags":[711],"class_list":["post-74889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-parenting","category-self-improvement","tag-unconditional-parenting","","tg-column-two"],"yoast_head":"\nBest Parenting Advice for Raising Confident, Happy Kids - Shortform Books<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"What is the best parenting advice for today's parents? How can you avoid emotionally damaging children? 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