A middle school mom, Ann Wentworth of Fon du Lac Wisconsin wants these books banned from her daughter’s school district. She’s petitioned the school (at the expense of local taxpayers) and lost the first request for censorship. She keeps adding books to her list. I imagine every time she reads one it ends up going [...]
Five Reasons to Stop Saying “Good Job!” By Alfie Kohn Hang out at a playground, visit a school, or show up at a child’s birthday party, and there’s 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 [...]
After close observation of their own children, with a combined age of 61 years, observations of many other children in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Israel, Greece, Italy, Swiss, France, Holland, Belgium, England, Scotland, and the Bahamas, and numerous reports throughout recorded history, the authors have determined that a widely-distributed behavioral disorder has somehow been overlooked [...]
Thoughts on Punishment by Sidney Craig, Ph.D. The most commonly used and socially acceptable parental response to a display of “irrational” behavior (a temper tantrum, for example) is to punish the child for it. Most parents operate according to the widely held belief that the child will not repeat a form of behavior for which [...]
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