Alfie Kohn Quotes about Children

If children feel safe, they can take risks, ask questions, make mistakes, learn to trust, share their feelings, and grow.

If children feel safe, they can take risks, ask questions, make mistakes, learn to trust, share their feelings, and grow.

Alfie Kohn

Children, Mistake, Feelings

Alfie Kohn (1999). “Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's, Praise, and Other Bribes”, p.255, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Children learn how to make good decisions by making decisions, not by following directions.

Alfie Kohn

Children, Learning, Decision

"The Homework Myth". Book by Alfie Kohn, 2006.

Children, after all, are not just adults-in-the-making. They are people whose current needs and rights and experiences must be taken seriously.

Alfie Kohn

Children, Taken, Rights

Alfie Kohn (2006). “Beyond Discipline: From Compliance to Community, 10th Anniversary Edition”, p.81, ASCD

If a child is off-task...mayb e the problem is not the child...maybe it's the task.

Alfie Kohn

Children, Tasks, Problem

The value of a book about dealing with children is inversely proportional to the number of times it contains the word behavior.

Alfie Kohn

Children, Book, Numbers

Alfie Kohn (2011). “Feel-bad Education: And Other Contrarian Essays on Children and Schooling”, p.110, Beacon Press

Some who support [more] coercive strategies assume that children will run wild if they are not controlled. However, the children for whom this is true typically turn out to be those accustomed to being controlled— those who are not trusted, given explanations, encouraged to think for themselves, helped to develop and internalize good values, and so on. Control breeds the need for more control, which is used to justify the use of control.

Alfie Kohn

Running, Children, Thinking

Alfie Kohn (1999). “Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's, Praise, and Other Bribes”, p.49, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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 to weigh whether what we're doing to make it happen is worth the possible strain on our relationship with them.

Alfie Kohn

Children, Order, Feet

Most of us would protest that of course we love our children without any strings attached. But what counts is how things look from the perspective of the children

Alfie Kohn

Children, Strings Attached, Perspective

Alfie Kohn (2011). “Feel-bad Education: And Other Contrarian Essays on Children and Schooling”, p.159, Beacon Press

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.

Alfie Kohn

Children, Teaching, Responsibility

Alfie Kohn (2006). “Unconditional Parenting: Moving from Rewards and Punishments to Love and Reason”, p.174, Simon and Schuster