The Myth of the Spoiled Child

Challenging the Conventional Wisdom about Children and Parenting

By: Alfie Kohn

Narrated by: Alfie Kohn

Somehow, deeply conservative assumptions about how children behave and how parents raise them have become the conventional wisdom in our society. It's widely assumed that parents are both permissive and overprotective, unable to set limits and afraid to let their kids fail. We're told that young people receive trophies, praise, and A's too easily, and suffer from inflated self-esteem and insufficient self-discipline. However, complaints about pushover parents and entitled kids are actually decades old and driven, it turns out, by ideology more than evidence.

With the same lively, contrarian style of Alfie Kohn's best-selling books about rewards, competition, and traditional education, The Myth of the Spoiled Child systematically debunks the story that we hear with numbing regularity. Kohn uses humor, logic, and his familiarity with a vast range of social science data to challenge media-stoked fears of spoiling our children. He reveals that the major threat to healthy child development isn't parents who are too indulgent but those who are too controlling.

©2014 Alfie Kohn (P)2014 Tantor

Best Parenting book out there

Alfie Kohn has immense passion for helping people understand and improve their responsibility as parents. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to parent in a way to raise successful and happy children. I wish my parents could have read it.

good theories, no tangible or practical ideas.

This has a lot of good ideas in it, address is a lot of the things that I remember struggling with this a child, & a lot of things I see many children struggling with. It challenges much of the conventional, unquestioned wisdom that we see spouted all around. Unfortunately the ideas seemed primarily workable with adolescent or older children, and no advice about how any of these ideas can be implemented are provided. Therefore it is not a book on parenting, but rather a book addressing a social philosophy.

Proof, undeniable and forthright, pass it on!

Loved it from every angle. The facts, the science and the clarity, impeccable.
Just listen.

Insighful

Finally, advice on parenting I can agree with and serves the child in the best sense.

Phenomenal

Honestly this should be required reading for every parent out there. He delivers his message flawlessly, and carefully breaks down the evidence to support it. Highly recommend.

incredible book!!!!!

Alfie Kohn did it again!
So helpful and eye opening.
Must read for everyone.
Much help with digesting my childhood, my upbringing and school situations.
Gave me hope and idea how to save our future kids from all of that I still working on resolving in myself.
Hope all of Alfie's books will be available in audiobook format, we could spread the word much faster. <3

Mind blown!

Excellent views backed with solid research! If all
Parents could listen and apply these ideas, our world would change! Spoiled children are produced by the model used currently, not by empathetic or attachment parents! Let's raise a generation of reflective rebels!

Dispelling myths

Another excellent Alfie Kohn book that deconstructs social presuppositions and stereotypes. Alfie digs deeper than our shallow values normally go and gets to more important foundations of what we want to see in children. A 'well-behaved' child sounds nice, but what does that mean? And what do studies reveal about non-autonomous, non-visionary, non-opinionated children who simply "do what they're told"? He didn't mention Nazi Germany; the connection was obvious.

I appreciated his chapter on how to raise a rebel, like, intentionally raise them to rebel. I was that kind of child myself, but I got the impression from society that something wasn't quite right with me, and I'd never amount to much because I probably wouldn't pass the (debunked) 'marshmallow test'.

Narration by Kohn was, as always, a perfect blend of Rick Moranis and Wallace Shawn. It works.

Highly recommend

Such a great parenting book. Definitely makes you think. I plan on listening to it all over again.

Wish my parents....

I've been a fan of Alfie for a couple of decades and this is one of his best books so far. He has a wonderful way of shredding common wisdom and waking us up from a lifetime of unconscious parenting/teaching practices and beliefs.