Ren Allen

...by Alfie Kohn is being discussed over at the Always Unschooled
list.
Since I've been thinking a lot about punishment and how it is
detrimental to unschooling, I decided to swipe this wonderful critique
and share it with you all.

Just as punishment is harmful, so can the wrong kind of praise/rewards
be harmful. The following was written by Cathy over at AU:

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I'll go first...

This is the first book that I wrote in and made little notes in the
margins since I got my masters. I really love the way Kohn writes,
he makes this kind of confronting information so accessible, he
comforts you through the paradigm shift if you let him, kwim?

Anyway, here are a few of the things that I really liked, which I
actually wrote on a peice of card stock so I could put them on my
fridge (since that, and not sharing, was the intent I didn't write
down the page numbers -- sorry!).

"Children are more likely to grow into caring people if they
themselves are cared about."

"If children feel safe, they can take risks, ask questions, make
mistakes, learnt trust, share their feelings, and grow."

"If they are taken seriously they can respect others."

"If their emotional needs are met, they have the luxury of being
able to meet other people's needs."

And then his little list of things to think about when using praise:

1) "Don't praise people, only what people do."
2) "Make praise as specific as possible."
3) "Avoid phony praise."
4) "Avoid praise that sets up a competition."

He refers to praise at one point as something that becomes like a
nervous tick, the automatic "good job" (I think he talks about this
in both PBR and UC) -- this really struck home for me when I first
read UC about 9 months ago, and PBR just drove home the point even
more. I find, for myself, that I have to be REALLY MINDFUL when I
start to praise my children, I have had to strive to break the
praise habit so to speak. At first, I really wanted to disregard
what he was saying, because 'how could praise be bad'? And of
course he clarifies this point, it isn't praise in and of itselfthat
is bad, it is how praise is used -- this is where the mindfulness
comes in, I have become conscious of not only what I praise and how
I phrase it, but also of why I am praising.

Sometimes I find myself backpedalling on praise, something I never
would have done before, because as the words come out of my mouth I
realize that I am not just acknowledging, for example, that
they "took the laundry out the laundry machine and brought the
basket upstairs all by themselves for the first time" -- there is a
hidden agenda in the praise. So, then I go back over the words, try
to rephrase to say something else to remove the agenda. I might
follow that other statement with something like "thanks for doing
that today" because I want to thank them for being helpful but I
really want to remove that hidden agenda of maybe they will do it
again, so that is why I add the today, trying to let them know that
it is perfectly okay if it never happens again. I am sure that
there are better ways to do this, but I find that, as with all
things RU, I just have to keep working on it, being and becoming
more conscious of how my words are heard.

BTW, I really credit Kohn for generating my paradigm shift
from "pop" parenting as he calls it to unschooling. Unconditional
Parenting, his latest book, brought all that I had read about
unschooling into perspective -- it gave me not just an idea that it
might be the way to go, but some good concrete evidence in the form
of studies and documentation that pushed me through that rough spot
(you know, the one where you think that maybe you can pick and
choose instead of fully embracing) and got me to really give up on
the "pop" parenting and take on radical unschooling.

trektheory

I loved that book -- really resonated with me on a few levels. And it
helped me understand the rapid decrease in my son's reading (not level,
but amount.) He used to love to read -- but two things happened:
reading requirements and reading incentive programs. Both of those
killed his love of reading, or at least made it seriously sick. Now, I
try to help him find books he will enjoy (he has somewhat specific
reading tastes -- and how many books involving codes and such are
there? But Digital Fortress let me know that he can still get
engrossed in a book, that his reading level hasn't suffered, and that
if we find the right book, he loves to read.)

I have recommended this book to many people in all three states I've
homeschooled in.

Linda