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...

What can we surmise about the likelihood of someone’s being caring and generous, loving and helpful, just from knowing that they are a believer? Virtually nothing, say psychologists, sociologists, and others who have studied that...

Most parents want to know what they can do to make their children do as they’re told,

Students get the message bout what adults want. When 4th graders in a variety of classroomswere asked what their teachers most wanted them to do, they didn’t say, “Ask thoughtful questions” or “Make responsible decisions”...

We think of ways that we can control them, whether it be with a spanking or a gold sticker or a parent constantly saying, ‘Good job, good job, good job.’

Even before i had children, I knew that being a parent was going to be challenging as well as rewarding. But I didn’t really know.I didn’t know how exhausted it was possible to become, or...

When we do things that are controlling, whether intentional or not, we are not going to get those long-term outcomes,

Many of our elected officials have virtually handed the keys to our schools over to corporate interests. Presidential commissions on education are commonly chaired by the executives of large companies.

Sometimes we have to put our foot down, … but before we deliberately make children unhappy in order to get them to get into the car, or to do their homework or whatever, we need...

The more we want our children to be (1) lifelong learners, genuinely excited about words and numbers and ideas, (2) avoid sticking with what’s easy and safe, and (3) become sophisticated thinkers, the more we...

Unconditional Parenting: Moving from Rewards and Punishments to Love and Reason.

Like any other tool for facilitating the completion of a questionable task, rewards offer a “how” answer to what is really a “why” question.

What is equally striking to me is this … there isn’t a sense of a community solving problems together, rather there’s punishment for aberrant individuals.

How we feel about our kids isn’t as important as how they experience those feelings and how they regard the way we treat them.

You have to give them unconditional love. They need to know that even if they screw up, you love them. You don’t want them to grow up and resent you or, even worse, parent the...

I applaud Sudbury Valley’s focus on freedom, but not what I take to be an inattention to community, … Sudbury has a libertarian bent, and the worldview seems to see all adult involvement as an...

You have to welcome their arguing with you, not to the point of disrespect, but if they are going to stand up for themselves, they need to learn to argue effectively,

People will typically be more enthusiastic where they feel a sense of belonging and see themselves as part of a community than they will in a workplace in which each person is left to his...

When test scores go up, we should worry, because of how poor a measure they are of what matters, and what you typically sacrifice in a desperate effort to raise scores.