Comment: Alfie Kohn Mania

Okay, it appears to me that at least 75% of all parents in the San Francisco Bay Area are going to see Alfie Kohn tonight. And that’s a conservative estimate.

Who is Alfie Kohn? He’s a radical intellectual with a radical point of view: in brief, as a parental practice, punishments don’t work; but neither do rewards.

He has a book called “Punished by Rewards” if that gives you a clearer idea about where he stands on the issue of praise/positive reinforcement. Yikes.

Let me step back a bit. I first found his book. “Unconditional Parenting” when my children were very small; toddler and infant, to be exact. I tried to read the book. It was so daunting, the methods so off my grid and the point of view so extreme that I gave up and hid the book on a shelf high up in my closet. There was no way that as a new mom I could possibly live up to his expectations. I kind of wanted to, but sheesh, the whole paradigm shift/sea change that was required was beyond my sleep-deprived, overwhelmed mindset.

Fast forward three years. The nursery school where I’ve sent both my children has an educational component for the parents as well. One evening not so long ago, we watched an Alfie Kohn DVD.

Basically it was him giving a lecture (there were no special effects, though I could swear I saw lasers coming out of his eyes at one point). He came across as so draconian, manic and intense that I felt like he was chastising me from the TV for my shoddy parenting practices. Other parents in the room felt the same way.

But it doesn’t stop there. I decided to go home that night and pick up the long-ago-abandoned book and see if it was as intense as he was. If it didn't bite me when I picked it up, I'd be okay.

Did it blow my mind? Not so much. His language in person is meant to shock and awe, and that it does. He makes you feel like a freaking idiot for telling your child they did a good job, or giving them a sticker for cleaning their room.

In the book, though, his language and expectations are far gentler. He allows for the fact that we are all human, and thus, err, and that in fact we are bound to do some punishing and some rewarding. That’s not his point.

His point, it seems to me, is that we should as much as humanly possible consider the child with respect, think about what we’re asking of them, and teach them to be autonomous. You don’t want little Johnny to stop kicking people because you’re going to punish him if he does, you want him to stop because it is unkind and hurtful to other people. You want to develop intrinsic social behaviors, not extrinsic ones. And Kohn’s thesis is that punishing or rewarding do just that.

I read the whole book, felt inspired, and have been trying, with some success, to listen more and punish/praise less. This is not easy. I’m an enthusiastic gal. I’m still going to say “good job!” dammit, but I see the point in helping to teach my children not to harm or do negative things not because they’ll get in trouble, but because it isn’t kind. And I want them to do their school work or other activities because they want to, not so I will cheer and jump and down like a dork every time they wipe their ass.

It’s actually quite sensible, and dovetails nicely with the Farber/Maslish gentle (and very positive) bestselling classic, “How to Talk to So Kids Will Listen and Listen so Kids Will Talk”. It and Alfie Kohn’s ideas are not incompatible.

So everyone and their sister is off to the auditorium tonight to see Alfie Kohn rant. I’m not sure what going to see him would do for me, since I’ve read his book, seem the rant, and figured out what I think I need to learn from his ideas.

Call me jaded, but I need my sleep more than I need a live parenting celebrity sighting. Good night, Alfie.

Thanks for the insights.