Unconditional Parenting- Book review

The Book in 3 Sentences-

– This book lays out guidelines for parenting. It teaches us some key principles we should always keep in mind while parenting a child.

– It opens our eyes to the dangers of conventional parenting styles. It takes a scientific approach to uncovering issues with traditional parenting styles.

– It recommends a few guiding principles for parenting, with strong justification, and allows the flexibility to apply them as per the need. It does not prescribe a solution but surely lends a helping hand.

– unconditional love, a relationship based on respect and trust, the opportunity for children to participate in making decisions

Impressions

I could not have grabbed this book at a better time. As an expecting parent, this book was an eye-opener. I have thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. It squashes all the prenotion we carry in our heads about raising kids. It helps you understand the world from the kid’s viewpoint.

Who Should Read It?

Anyone. An adult who wants to, has, and will have kids in the future should be reading this. I might even go as far as saying, the Govt should mandate reading this book before applying for a birth certificate. Don’t worry, I am just kidding.

This book also be extremely helpful to grandparents, uncles, and aunties … well basically anyone who is having contact with kids.

How the Book Changed Me

At the end of the book, I feel I have become slightly more patient toward kids. Now, I feel I might understand why a kid is behaving a certain way better before trying to correct it or control it. Tantrum-throwing kids in the supermarket or in a flight, used to annoy me but I suspect now I will have a more empathetic view toward it.

My Top 3 Quotes

– Kids are heavily influenced by parents and their environment.

– The way kids learn to make good decisions is by making decisions, not by following directions.

– Better than yelling is telling. Better than telling is explaining. Better than explaining—is “Discussing”

Here are my notes from some of the important chapters of the book.

A. Who do you want them to be?

How often do we ask this question to our kids? We train them to answer as a doctor or an officer. Some kids even dare to say they want to be a film star, isn’t it? But fail to understand these are professions and not human characteristics.

The ideal answer to this question would be that we want our children to be happy, balanced, independent, fulfilled, productive, self-reliant, responsible, functioning, kind, thoughtful, loving, inquisitive, and confident. If you agree to this, then we must think about, how our current actions are helping the children to be what we want them to be. The book challenges us to ask whether what we’re doing is consistent with what we really want. Are my everyday practices likely to help my children grow into the kind of people I’d like them to be? Will the things I just said to my child at the supermarket contribute in some small way to her becoming happy and balanced and independent and fulfilled and so on—or is it possible (gulp) that the way I tend to handle such situations makes those outcomes *less* likely?

I understand thinking about the long-term goal could be very daunting. So let’s break it down. Think about what you’d love to hear about your child from, let’s say from your neighbors. I bet you’d love to hear, “Your kid listens to everything told to him” isn’t it? The book compels us to think about how exactly are we raising kids. we sometimes act as though that *is* what we care about most than the long-term objective. When we fail to examine our objectives, our current practices are intended solely to get kids to do what they’re told. That means we’re focusing only on what’s most convenient for us, not on what they need.

Kids lose a sense of themselves in trying to obey and please the adults around them. How do you suppose these kids survive the world on their own?

Key callouts from the chapter:

– Discipline doesn’t always help kids to become *self*-disciplined.

– There’s a big difference, after all, between a child who does something because he or she believes it’s the right thing to do and one who does it out of a sense of compulsion. Ensuring that children internalize our values isn’t the same thing as helping them to develop their own. And it’s diametrically opposed to the goal of having kids become independent thinkers.

– if we place a premium on obedience at home, we may end up producing kids who go along with what they’re told to do by people outside the home, too

B. Love with Ifs and Buts

Traditionally we have the following methods for raising kids and some of them might look very familiar to you.

Controlling the child’s behavior, either by withholding love or on punishment based on behaviors. This is a very popular technique used for training circus animals. When the animal does something that the master desires, the animal gets a reward and if the animal does something undesirable, the animal gets punished. Think for a moment and try to remember if were you ever a victim of this technique or do you know someone who uses it on their kids. If a child is locked in a washroom in the name of timeout from the ruckus he was creating? Does any of these sound familiar to you?

Let’s take a step back and think about how that child might be viewing this technique. You may insist that your love for your child is undiminished by his misbehavior. But what matters is how things look to the child. whatever controlling technique we use, we are sending a message that we’ll make them suffer: by causing physical pain through hitting, or by causing emotional pain through enforced isolation. Both are based on getting kids to focus on the consequences of their actions to themselves, which is, of course, very different from raising children to think about how their actions will affect other people. How about the “If you complete your studies, I’ll cook your favorite snack” technique? If I offered you a thousand dollars right now to take off your shoes, you’d very likely accept—and then I could triumphantly announce that “rewards work.” But, as with punishments, they can never help someone to develop a commitment to a task or an action, a reason to keep doing it when there’s no longer a payoff.

How about when we praise a child for doing something we like? What happens then? Praise can be dangerous if our positive comments and other expressions of love are mostly reserved for those occasions when the child does something that pleases us. We should try to understand why he acted the way he did. Was it because the child felt that was the right thing to do or only to please his parent he did?

When children feel they’re loved by their parents only under certain conditions—a feeling typically evoked by the use of love-withdrawal techniques and positive reinforcement—it’s very hard for them to accept themselves. And everything goes downhill from there.

C. Then How should we exactly raise our kids?

Chapters 7,8 and 9 are the most critical to understand what we need to do.

The shift away from older methods, however, has to be accompanied by a shift in goal. Specifically, our main question shouldn’t be “How do I get my child to do what I say?” but “What does my child need—and how can I meet those needs?”

Here are all the principles of unconditional parenting :

Be reflective- Be honest with yourself about your motives. Don’t stop being troubled by things you do that really are troubling. And be alert for signs that the way you interact with your children may have drifted toward a controlling style without you even being aware of it.
Reconsider your requests- before searching for some method to get kids to do what we tell them, we should first take the time to rethink the value or necessity of our requests.
Keep your eye on your long-term goals- anything you do with your children on a regular basis should be evaluated in light of your ultimate goals.
Put the relationship first- misbehavior is easier to address—and problems are easier to solve—when children feel safe enough with us to explain the reasons they did something wrong. Kids are more likely to come to us when they’re in trouble, to look to us for advice, and to want to spend time with us when they can choose whether to do so. Furthermore, when they know they can trust us, they’re more likely to do what we ask if we tell them it’s really important.
Change how you see, not just how you act- When a child does something inappropriate, conditional parents are likely to perceive this as an infraction, and infractions naturally seem to call for “consequences.” Unconditional parents are apt to see the same act as a problem to be solved, an opportunity for teaching rather than for making the child suffer. Seeing children’s behavior as a “teachable moment” invites us to include them in the process of solving the problem, which is more likely to be effective.
R-E-S-P-E-C-T- we can’t always assume that because we’re more mature we necessarily have more insight into our children than they have into themselves.
Be authentic, and apologize when you make a mistake- The reasons that apologizing is so important are also the reasons that most parents don’t do it. After all, it can feel reassuring to stand on that pedestal, that position of ultimate and unquestionable authority. To say you’re sorry is to make yourself vulnerable, which isn’t easy for many of us—in part because of the extreme vulnerability we experienced as children. Children will still look up to us even if we’re candid about our limitations, even if we speak to them from our hearts, and even if they can see that, for all the privileges and wisdom that adulthood confers, we’re still just people struggling to make our way in the world, to do the right thing, to balance people’s needs, to keep learning.
Talk less, ask more- If talking to our children about what they’ve done wrong fails to bring about the results we were hoping for, it isn’t because some stronger form of discipline is required. It may be because we did most of the talking. Maybe we were so busy trying to get them to see our point of view that we didn’t really hear theirs. To be a great parent is more a function of listening than of explaining.
- When children are old enough to tell us why they’re unhappy or angry, the question then becomes whether they feel safe enough to do so. Our job is to create that sense of safety, to listen without judgment, to make sure they know they won’t get into trouble for telling us what they’ve done or be condemned for what they feel. I’m a pragmatist who realizes that you have to know the source of a problem in order to solve it, and also that people who are afraid of being judged are less likely to speak openly and therefore less likely to give you the information necessary to understand the source of the problem. That’s why taking this credo seriously—“talk less, ask more”—is good advice for becoming not only a better parent but also a better spouse, friend, manager, or teacher.
- Before asking something, you might “question why you are asking it.” Laying bare our motives can offer guidance about whether it’s worth asking. It’s when we’re not entirely sure what the child will say, and when we’re open to more than one response, that a question is most likely to be beneficial.
- On occasion, we would do well to avoid talking or asking. In many situations, we get into trouble as parents because we feel obliged to say something, even though the best advice would be to keep quiet. Sometimes when a child is very sad, suggests child psychologist Alicia Lieberman, “only staying near wordlessly does honor to the child’s experience. Hugging and holding (if the child allows) can convey feelings much better than words. In fact, to use language in these conditions is necessarily to misuse it. There will be time for words later.”
Keep their ages in mind – We have to keep our expectations keyed to what they’re capable of doing.
- ATTRIBUTE TO CHILDREN THE BEST POSSIBLE MOTIVE CONSISTENT WITH THE FACTS.
- If we assume that inappropriate action was motivated by a child’s sinister desire to cause trouble or to see how much he can get away with—or if we attribute such behaviors to his being a natural troublemaker—he may become exactly what we fear. Children construct a theory about their own motives based in part on our assumptions about their motives, and then they act accordingly: “You think I’m just plain bad and need to be controlled all the time? Fine. Watch me act as though you’re right.
- The more negative those assumptions, the more inclined we’ll be to control them unnecessarily.
- Just because a child’s action may have a negative effect on you doesn’t mean that was the child’s intention.
- The most obvious case in which it makes sense to attribute the best possible motive has to do with immaturity. Mischief often can be explained by a simple lack of skills or guidance, an innocent desire to explore, an inability to foresee what happens when you take that thing and do this to
Don’t stick your no’s in unnecessarily- Don’t say no if you don’t absolutely have to. And try to think about the reason for everything you say.
Don’t be rigid- Waive the rules on special occasions; forget about their bedtime now and then; suspend the prohibition on eating in the living room under certain circumstances. Make it clear to your kids that what you’re doing is, in fact, an exception, something they shouldn’t expect all the time, but don’t let a fear of creating a precedent prevent you from being flexible and spontaneous.
Don’t be in a hurry- Rather than trying to change your child’s behavior, it usually makes more sense to alter the environment. What’s true of time is true of space. A locked gate that keeps a toddler in your yard is a lot more sensible than an attempt to rely on fear or even persuasion to keep her from wandering into the street. In general, do what you can to head off problems. If you anticipate that your child will have trouble sitting still (say, at a restaurant), then take along books, toys, or other diversions rather than placing the burden on her to behave herself. Finally, I can’t resist pointing out that the phrase “don’t be in a hurry” has another meaning. It might be thought of as a reminder to slow down and savor your time with your kids.
Decide things together – The way kids learn to make good decisions is by making decisions, not by following directions.
- Empowered kids are in the best position to deal constructively with disempowering circumstances. And we, as parents, are in the best position to empower them—as long as we’re willing to limit our use of power over them. we have to proactively support kids’ capacity to choose and help them feel that they are at least to some extent self-determining. Our job is to nourish their sense of autonomy and also to think together about ways of negotiating solutions for specific issues.

About TV or computer usage:

Consider a child who is spending what we believe is too much time in front of the TV or the computer. Recently I had separate conversations with two different parents about this issue. One was unhappy about excessive television watching in her household, but she shrugged and asked rhetorically, “What are you going to do? It’s the times we live in.” The other mother, by contrast, felt she had to take action— so she hid the remote control from her daughter. Together, these responses define a classic false dichotomy. If we let kids do whatever they want, even when we disapprove, we risk sending the message that we really don’t care, that we’re washing our hands of responsibility. (In the case of TV, the do-nothing option may actually be more appealing to some parents because, despite their misgivings, they find it convenient to have their children occupied and quiet.) On the other hand, the second response is a doing-to solution. Never mind that hiding the remote is unlikely to work (at least for very long) and merely invites the child to find a way to work around it. What’s more important is that this teaches children to use power—or sneakiness—to get their way. What these two strategies share is that neither of them takes any time, any talent, any skill, any care, or any courage. As I noted earlier, a true working-with approach is more demanding than either “I’m the parent; I decide” or “Do whatever you want.” A more constructive response would begin with listening—not only so that kids feel heard but so that you can learn more about what’s really going on. TV programs and computer games are appealing in their own right, but children who spend inordinate amounts of time with them may be doing so because they’re depressed or trying to avoid other activities (including social interaction) for specific reasons that need to be dealt with. In addition to listening, we need to be candid about our feelings and, ultimately, look for solutions together: “Let’s talk about what’s fair to you but also what might address my concerns. Let’s come up with some ideas and try them out. ”In this case, that may mean agreeing on a reasonable limit to the time spent in front of the TV or PC, as well as specifying which programs or games are okay and which are not (and why). But that’s just the beginning of the discussion. We may need to explore the underlying issues that explain why television has become the child’s best friend. And we may decide to spend more time with our kids—at activities they help to choose.

In short, with each of the thousand-and-one problems that present themselves in family life, our choice is between controlling and teaching, between creating an atmosphere of distrust and one of trust, between setting an example of power and helping children to learn responsibility, between quick-fix parenting and the kind that’s focused on long-term goals.

When kids don’t want to but they have to-

The good news is that parents who haven’t overplayed their hand by demanding obedience all the time are likely to find that their children will give them the benefit of the doubt and do what they’re asked when the situation requires it. Resistance is more common among children who feel powerless and are driven to assert their autonomy in exaggerated ways.

If you wish to buy the book, I would request to click this link – HERE

It will help me earn a small commission without any extra cost to you. Appreciate your support!

Sharing is Caring!