A Quote a Day

For my last Weekly Geeks A Quote a Day post, I've chosen a quote from Unconditional Parenting: Moving from Rewards and Punishments to Love and Reason by Alfie Kohn.

'This book looks at one such distinction - namely, between loving kids for what they do and loving them for who they are. The first sort of love is conditional, which means children must earn it by acting in ways we deem appropriate, or by performing up to our standards. The second sort of love in unconditional: It doesn't hinge on how they act, whether they're successful or well behaved or anything else.
I want to defend the idea of unconditional parenting on the basis of both a value judgment and a prediction. The value judgment is, very simply, that children shouldn't have to earn our approval. We ought to love them,"for no good reason." Furthermore, what counts is not just that we believe we love them unconditionally, but that they feel loved in that way.
The prediction, meanwhile, is that loving children unconditionally will have a positive effect. It's not only the right thing to do, morally speaking, but also a smart thing to do. Children need to be loved as they are, and for who they are. When that happens, they can accept themselves as fundamentally good people, even when they screw up or fall short. And with this basic need met, they're also freer to accept (and help) other people. Unconditional love, in short, is what children require in order to flourish.'

Five Reasons to Stop Saying "Good Job!" by Alfie Kohn