Emotional Intelligence | Stevehein.com
Alfie Kohn
| Introduction
Five Reasons To Stop Saying Good Job! My comments on the "Five Reasons..." article How "time out" is still punishment and can be used to threaten and humiliate. His website is: http://alfiekohn.org I also suggest reading his guestbook. Here is a copy of it I made once. |
Most Recent Items April 22 - Links to his books | Part of Beyond Discipline: From Compliance to Community | The Folley of Merit Pay Feb 17 - Five Reasons to Stop Saying "Good Job" | My comments on the article |
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Alfie Kohn is a critic of the US educational system. I feel encouraged when I read his writing and see how many people, including teachers in the USA, agree with him. Here is just a little from him. Please visit his website to read more.
I used to have a link to an article about "time out" for parents, but that page is down now from Alfie's site. So here I have a link to help you search for all the things he has written about time out.
http://www.google.com.ar/search?hl=es&q=site%3Aalfiekohn.org+%22time+out%22&meta=
Five Reasons To Stop Saying Good
Job!
by Alfie Kohn
Hang out at a playground, visit a school, or show up at a childs birthday party, and theres one phrase you can count on hearing repeatedly: Good job! Even tiny infants are praised for smacking their hands together (Good clapping!). Many of us blurt out these judgments of our children to the point that it is becoming almost a verbal tic.
Plenty of books and articles advise us
against relying on punishment, from spanking to forcible
isolation (time out). Occasionally, someone will even
ask us to rethink the practice of bribing children with stickers
or food. But, youll have to look awfully hard to find a
discouraging word about what is euphemistically called
positive reinforcement. After all, what could be
wrong with telling kids we like what theyre doing?
In fact, theres nothing objectionable about supporting and
encouraging our children. On the other hand, surprising as it may
seem, praise can often do more harm than good. Heres why.
1. Manipulating children.
Suppose you offer a verbal reward to reinforce the behavior of a two-year-old who eats without spilling, or a five-year-old who gets ready for school without dawdling. Who benefits from this? Is it possible that telling our children theyve done a good job may have less to do with their emotional needs than with our convenience?
Rheta DeVries, a professor of education at the University of Northern Iowa, refers to this as sugar coated control. Very much like tangible rewardsor for that matter, punishments--its a way of doing something to children to get them to comply with our wishes. It may be effective at producing this result (at least for a while), but its very different from working with kids for example, by engaging them in conversation about what makes a family function smoothly, or what makes more work for a very busy Mommy. The latter approach is not only more respectful but more likely to help kids become thoughtful people.
The reason praise can work in the short run is that young children are hungry for our approval. But, we have a responsibility not to exploit that dependence for our own convenience. A Good job! to reinforce something that makes our lives a little easier can be an example of taking advantage of childrens dependence. Kids may also come to feel manipulated by this, even if they cant quite explain why.
2. Creating praise junkies.
To be sure, not every use of praise is a
calculated tactic to control childrens behavior. Sometimes
we compliment kids just because were genuinely pleased by
what theyve done. Even then, however, its worth
looking more closely. Rather than bolstering a childs
self-esteem, praise may increase kids dependence on us. The
more we say, I like the way you... or Good
______ing, the more kids come to rely on our
evaluations, our decisions about whats good or
bad, rather than learning to form their own judgements. It leads
them to measure their worth in terms of what will led us to smile
and dole out some more approval.
Mary Budd Rowe, a researcher at the University of Florida,
discovered that students who were praised lavishly by their
teachers were more tentative in their responses, more apt to
answer in a questioning tone of voice (Um, seven?). They
tended to back off from an idea they had proposed as soon as an
adult disagreed with them. And they were less likely to persist
with difficult tasks or share their ideas with other students.
In short, Good job! doesnt reassure children;
ultimately, it makes them feel less secure. It may even create a
vicious circle such that the more we slather on the praise, the
more kids seem to need it, so we praise them some more. Sadly,
some of these kids will grow into adults who continue to need
someone else to pat them on the head and tell them whether what
they did was OK. Surely this is not what we want for our
daughters and sons.
3. Stealing a childs pleasure
Apart from the issue of dependence, a child
deserves to take delight in her accomplishments, to feel pride in
what shes learned how to do. She also deserves to be able
to decide when to feel that way. Every time we say Good
job!, though, were telling a child how to feel.
Sure, there are times when our evaluations are appropriate and
our guidance is necessary. But, a constant stream of value
judgements is neither necessary nor useful for childrens
development. Unfortunately, we may not have realized that
Good job! is just as much an evaluation as Bad
job! The most notable feature of a positive judgement
isnt that its positive, but that its a
judgement. And people, including kids, dont like being
judged.
I cherish the occasions when my daughter manages to do something
for the first time, or does something better than shes ever
done it before. But, I try to resist the knee-jerk tendency to
say, Good job! because I dont want to dilute
her joy. I want her to share her pleasure with me, not look to me
for a verdict. I want her to exclaim, I did it!
(which she often does) instead of asking me uncertainly,
Was that good?
4. Losing Interest
Good painting! may get children
to keep painting for as long as we keep watching and praising.
But, warns Lilian Katz, one of the countrys leading
authorities on early childhood education, once attention is
withdrawn, many kids wont touch the activity again.
Indeed, and impressive body of scientific research has shown that
the more we reward people for doing something, the more they tend
to lose interest in whatever they had to do to get the reward.
Now the point isnt to draw, to read, to think, to
createthe point is to get the goody, whether its an
ice cream or a Good job!
In a troubling study by Joan Grusec at the University of Toronto,
young children who were frequently praised by the mothers for
displays of generosity tended to be slightly less generous on an
everyday basis than other children were. Every time they had
heard, Good sharing! or Im so proud of you for
helping, they became a little less interested in sharing or
helping. Those actions came to be seen not as something they had
to do to get that reaction from Mommy again. Generosity became a
means to an end.
Does praise motivate kids? Sure. It motivates kids to get praise.
Unfortunately, thats often at the expense of commitment to
whatever they were doing that prompted the praise.
5. Reducing achievement
As if it werent bad enough that Good job! can undermine independence, pleasure, and interest, it can also interfere with how good a job children actually do. Researchers keep finding that kids who are praised for doing well at a creative task tend to stumble at the next taskand they dont so as well as children who werent praised to begin with.
Why does this happen? Partly because the praise creates pressure to keep up the good work that gets in the way of doing so. Partly because their interest in what theyre doing may have declined. Partly because they become less likely to take risksa prerequisite for creativityonce they start thinking about how to keep those positive comments coming.
More generally, Good job! is a remnant of an approach to psychology that reduces all of human life to behaviors that can be seen and measured. Unfortunately, this ignores the thoughts, feelings, and values that lie behind behaviors. For example, a child may share a snack with a friend as a way of attracting praise, or as a way of making sure the other child has enough to eat. Praise for sharing ignores these different motives. Worse, it actually promotes the less desirable motive by making children more likely to fish for praise in the future.
Once you start to see praise for what it isand what it doesthese constant little evaluative eruptions from adults start to produce the same effect as nails being dragged down a blackboard. You begin to root for a child to give his parents a taste of their own treacle by turning around to them and saying (in the same saccharine tone of voice), Good praising!
Still, its not an easy habit to break. It can seem strange, at least at first, to stop praising; it can feel as though youre being chilly or withholding something. But that, it soon becomes clear, suggests that we praise more because we need to say it than because out children need to hear it. Whenever thats true, its time to rethink what were doing.
What kids do need is unconditional support, love with no strings attached. Thats not just different from praiseits the opposite of praise. Good job! is conditional. It means were offering attention and acknowledgment and approval for jumping through hoops, for doing things that please us.
This point, youll notice, is very different from a criticism that some people offer to the effect that we give kids too much approval, or give it too easily. They recommend that we become more miserly with our praise and demand that kids earn it. But the real problem isnt that children expect to be praised for everything they do these days. Its that were tempted to take shortcuts, to manipulate kids with rewards instead of explaining and helping them to develop needed skills and good values.
So whats the alternative? That
depends on the situation, but whatever we decide to say instead
has to be offered in the context of genuine affection and love
for who kids are rather than for what theyve done. When
unconditional support is present, Good job!
isnt necessary; when its absent, Good
job! wont help.
If were praising positive actions as a way of discouraging
misbehavior, this is unlikely to be effective for long. Even when
it works, we cant really say the child is now
behaving herself; it would be more accurate to say
the praise is behaving her. The alternative is to work with the
child, to figure out the reasons shes acting that way. We
may have to reconsider our own requests rather than just looking
for a way to get kids to obey. (Instead of using Good
job! to get a four-year-old to sit quietly through a long
family dinner, perhaps we should ask whether its reasonable
to expect a child to do so.)
We also need to bring kids in on the process of making decisions. If a child is taking forever to get out the door in the morning, them sitting down with him later and asking, What do you think we can do to solve this problem? will likely be more effective than bribes or threats. It also helps a child learn how to solve problems and teaches that his ideas and feelings are important. Of course, this process takes time and talent, care and courage. Tossing off a Good job! when the child is on time takes none of those things, which helps to explain why doing to strategies are a lot more popular than working with strategies.
And what can we say when our kids just do
something impressive? Consider three possible responses:
Say nothing.
Some people insist a helpful act must be
reinforced because, secretly or unconsciously, they
believe it was a fluke. If children are basically evil, then they
have to be given an artificial reason for being nice (namely, to
get a verbal reward). But, if that cynicism is unfoundedand
a lot of research suggests that it isthen praise may not be
necessary.
Say what you saw.
A simple, evaluation-free statement
(You put your shoes on by yourself or even just
You did it) tells your child that you noticed. It
also lets her take pride in what she did. In other cases, a more
elaborate description may make sense. If your child draws a
picture, you might provide feedbacknot judgementabut
what you noticed:This mountain is huge! Boy,
you sure used a lot of purple today!
If a child does something caring or generous, you might gently
draw his attention to the effect of his action on the other
person: Look at Abigails face! She seems pretty happy
now that you gave her some of your cookie. This is
completely different from praise, where the emphasis is on how
you feel about her sharing.
Talk less, ask more.
Even better than descriptions are questions. Why tell him what part of his drawing impressed you the most when you can ask him what he likes best about it? Asking What was the hardest part to draw? or How did you figure out how to make the feet the right size? is likely to nourish his interest in drawing. Saying Good job!, as weve seen, may have exactly the opposite effect.
This doesnt mean that all
compliments, all thank-yous, all expressions of delight are
harmful. We need to consider our motives for what we say
(a genuine expression of enthusiasm is better than a desire to
manipulate the childs future behavior) as will as the
actual effects of doing so. Are our reactions helping
the child to feel a sense of control over her lifeor to
constantly look to us for approval? Are they helping her to
become more excited about what shes doing in its own
rightor turning into something she just wants to get
through in order to receive a pat on the head?
Its not a matter of memorizing a new script, but of keeping
in mind out long-term goals for our children and watching for the
effects of what we say. The bad news is that the use of positive
reinforcement really isnt so positive. The good news is
that you dont have to evaluate in order to encourage.
See my comments on this article
Here are some of his books, with descriptions from his website
| Unconditional Parenting : Moving from Rewards and Punishments to Love and Reason | Amazon page | |
| Amazon page | ||
| Amazon page |
Beyond Discipline: From Compliance to Community |
Most parenting guides begin with the
question "How can we get kids to do what they're
told?" -- and then proceed to offer various
techniques for controlling them. In this truly
groundbreaking book, nationally respected educator Alfie
Kohn begins instead by asking "What do kids need -
and how can we meet those needs?" What follows from
that question are ideas for working with children
rather than doing things to them. One basic need all children have, Kohn argues, is to be loved unconditionally, to know that they will be accepted even if they screw up or fall short. Yet conventional approaches to parenting such as punishments (including "time-outs"), rewards (including positive reinforcement), and other forms of control teach children that they are loved only when they please us or impress us. Kohn cites a body of powerful, and largely unknown, research detailing the damage caused by leading children to believe they must earn our approval. That's precisely the message children derive from common discipline techniques, even though it's not the message most parents intend to send. More than just another book about discipline, though, Unconditional Parenting addresses the ways parents think about, feel about, and act with their children. It invites them to question their most basic assumptions about raising kids while offering a wealth of practical strategies for shifting from "doing to" to "working with" parenting - including how to replace praise with the unconditional support that children need to grow into healthy, caring, responsible people. This is an eye-opening, paradigm-shattering book that will reconnect readers to their own best instincts and inspire them to become better parents. (From http://www.alfiekohn.org/up/index.html) |
| No Contest : The Case Against Competition | |
Most parenting guides begin with the question "How can we
get kids to do what they're told?" -- and then proceed to
offer various techniques for controlling them. In this truly
groundbreaking book, nationally respected educator Alfie Kohn
begins instead by asking "What do kids need - and how can we
meet those needs?" What follows from that question are ideas
for working with children rather than doing things to
them.
One basic need all children have, Kohn argues, is to be loved
unconditionally, to know that they will be accepted even if they
screw up or fall short. Yet conventional approaches to parenting
such as punishments (including "time-outs"), rewards
(including positive reinforcement), and other forms of control
teach children that they are loved only when they please us or
impress us. Kohn cites a body of powerful, and largely unknown,
research detailing the damage caused by leading children to
believe they must earn our approval. That's precisely the message
children derive from common discipline techniques, even though
it's not the message most parents intend to send.
More than just another book about discipline, though, Unconditional
Parenting addresses the ways parents think about, feel about,
and act with their children. It invites them to question their
most basic assumptions about raising kids while offering a wealth
of practical strategies for shifting from "doing to" to
"working with" parenting - including how to replace
praise with the unconditional support that children need to grow
into healthy, caring, responsible people. This is an eye-opening,
paradigm-shattering book that will reconnect readers to their own
best instincts and inspire them to become better parents. (From http://www.alfiekohn.org/up/index.html)