{"id":75059,"date":"2022-08-04T14:18:00","date_gmt":"2022-08-04T18:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=75059"},"modified":"2022-08-12T14:19:32","modified_gmt":"2022-08-12T18:19:32","slug":"poor-parenting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/poor-parenting\/","title":{"rendered":"Poor Parenting Skills: Here’s What Not to Do"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Which parenting skills are potentially harmful to children? How does mainstream advice teach poor parenting<\/a> skills? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Alfie Kohn’s book, Unconditional Parenting<\/em>, he argues that mainstream parenting advice<\/a> has several potentially damaging effects, even leading to poor self-esteem and depression in children. Kohn’s technique of unconditional parenting aims to make children feel more loved and accepted by their parents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read on to find out why society may have taught you poor parenting skills and learn Kohn’s solution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Does Mainstream Advice Teach You Poor Parenting?<\/h2>\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 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 a poor 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 This framework, he says, is outdated, and it may even be damaging your children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

Parents are often advised to tweak these strategies to make them less damaging, for example by ignoring bad behavior<\/a> rather than actively punishing it or by praising effort, not ability<\/a>. But Kohn says this misses the point and teaches poor parenting skills\u2014he encourages parents to break free of the old framework entirely<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this article, we\u2019ll look at Kohn\u2019s argument for change: how traditional parenting techniques work and why these techniques potentially lead to poor parenting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s Not Just Parenting: School Grades as Rewards and Punishments<\/strong>

The bulk of Unconditional Parenting<\/em> focuses on parent-child interactions, but Kohn also takes on the education system<\/a>. He argues that good and bad grades constitute systems of reward and punishment, and as such, they get in the way of children\u2019s natural desire to learn<\/a> and negatively affect their relationships with their teachers<\/a>. He also notes in Unconditional Parenting <\/em>that when parents reward their children for good grades and punish them for bad ones, this multiplies the damage caused.

Kohn isn\u2019t the first person to suggest alternatives to grades. In most Montessori schools, for example, teachers hand out progress reports rather than grades<\/a> for the same reasons. These progress reports include sections on broader areas of development<\/a>, such as inquisitiveness, desire to explore, and spirit of cooperation, and teachers rate the degree to which children have mastered particular academic skills (for example, beginning, in progress, or fully mastered). Receiving progress reports doesn\u2019t seem to hurt these kids\u2019 academic prospects\u2014Montessori students typically score better on standardized tests than students from mainstream schools<\/a>, as well as write more creatively and have better social skills, possibly lending weight to Kohn\u2019s claim that grades do more harm than good.<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Does Conditional Parenting = Poor Parenting?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Kohn argues that any system of rewards and punishments<\/strong> (and their close relatives, bribes, and threats) is ultimately destined to fail both parent and child. Specifically, to avoid picking up poor parenting skills, these are the six<\/strong> reasons<\/strong> parents should stop using conditional parenting techniques<\/strong>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. They\u2019re rooted in behaviorism, an outdated psychological theory that\u2019s inappropriate to use with human children.<\/strong> Kohn traces <\/strong>conditional parenting techniques (including the time-out) back to the work of 1950s behaviorists<\/a>, most of whom experimented on pigeons, rats, and chimpanzees. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. They send children the wrong message. <\/strong>Conditional parenting techniques teach children that: <\/p>\n\n\n\n