Unconditional Parenting

by Alfie Kohn

Atria Books · 2005

Alfie Kohn argues that conventional approaches to child-rearing — praise, punishments, rewards, timeouts — are based on a flawed model of human motivation. Drawing on research in psychology and education, he proposes an alternative he calls 'unconditional parenting': working with children rather than doing things to them, asking what our children need rather than how to make them comply.