a provocative challenge to the conventional wisdom about discipline

Yesterday I read 23 insightful, provocative pages of an insightful, provocative book, Unconditional Parenting, by Alfie Kohn. The guiding premise of the book is that children deserve their parents' unconditional love and that this love must be given freely and not earned. Human beings tend to approach interpersonal interactions as transactions and often, in practice if not in principle, consider acts of affection privileges to be earned by "good behavior." These ways of thinking lead parents to withdraw their affection and attention to punish children for and prevent children from "misbehaving." Kohn relates a story about his daughter that illustrates that by remaining affectionate and attentive to children even when they are "misbehaving," parents are not encouraging children to transgress or "teaching" them that they can "get away with" things. One night, shortly after Kohn's son was born, Kohn's 4-year-old daughter refused to take a bath after dinner and yelled loudly enough to wake up her little brother. Kohn asks the reader whether he and his wife should have followed their nightly routine of cuddling their daughter and reading her a story before bed. Kohn argues yes, for several reasons. Briefly: contravening those with a "they'll-never-learn" mentality, who might say that Kohn's daughter needed to be physically or emotionally isolated from the family for a time lest she get the message that bad behavior incurs no consequences, Kohn insists that that way of thinking assumes the worst motivations of children, that if given an inch, they will take a mile, that they are not perceptive or wise or social enough to get the very message that Kohn and his wife intended to send. Kohn's and his wife's love for their daughter was undiminished by her behavior. She needed to know that, and they needed to show her. Kohn and his wife had great faith in their daughter. They trusted her. They prioritized many really good things, such as honoring their relationship with their daughter and modeling patience and forgiveness, over the shallower goal of extinguishing her behavior.
I hope I'll get to write more about how Alfie Kohn has challenged me to love unconditionally and to show that love even when my fall self tempts me not to.