Not if you ask Alfie Kohn.
The know-it-all… I mean, child behavior expert and author… recently wrote a piece in the New York Times admonishing parents who punish their children for bad behavior AND those who reward their children for good behavior.
According to Kohn, parents who reward or punish their children are sending a message that love is dependent on behavior: “Turn up the affection when they’re good, withhold affection when they’re not.”
So, no time outs and no gold stars.
I guess Kohn just wants us to let our rule-ignoring kids run around hog wild and never suffer the consequences of their actions.
Not quite.
Kohn ended up writing a follow-up to his original piece after he was inundated with criticism from parents who live and die by the time out technique.
The “expert” first provided a short explanation of how timeouts and constant praise (like “good job!”) can translate into conditional love:
Somehow we have to communicate that we love them even when we’re not thrilled with what they’re doing. However, the recommendation to make that distinction is sometimes tossed around a little too casually. The fact is that it’s often hard even for an adult, much less a child, to make sense of it. “We accept you, but not how you act” is particularly unpersuasive if very few of the child’s actions find favor with us. What is this elusive “me” you claim to love, the child may wonder, when all I hear from you is disapproval? As Thomas Gordon pointed out, “Parents who find unacceptable a great many things that their children do or say will inevitably foster in these children a deep feeling that they are unacceptable as persons.” That doesn’t change just because the parents remember to say soothingly, “We love you, honey, we just hate almost everything you do.”
In his response to irate parents, Kohn outlines 10 points that moms and dads should ponder in an effort to show their children that they love them unconditionally, including:
*Allow kids to see that you are not a perfect parent—“Kids should see that moms and dads make mistakes too.”
*Attribute to children the best possible motive consistent with the facts—“Kids will live up to, or down to, our expectations, so it’s better to assume the best when we don’t know for sure why they did what they did.”
*Don’t function on autoparent—“People don’t get better at coping with frustration as a result of having been deliberately frustrated when they’re young.”
What do you make of Kohn’s theory that time outs and other discipline techniques are merely examples of conditional love?
Related Articles:
Southerners Spank Their Kids More
Parental Threat: Intention Good, Results Not So Much