Quote

When children ask for an explanation of what we have told them to do, we commonly fall back on “Because I said so!” This answer is tempting when we have run out of patience, but really it is no answer at all. It says, in effect, “I don’t have a good reason for making you do this— or I don’t care enough to explain the reason to you— but you have to do it anyway because I’m more powerful than you are”… When a child is bullied into acting the way we demand, he will often resist. But this is not because he is “hard to handle”; more likely it is because he has been treated as a thing to be handled.

Quote ID: 01567

Author

Alfie Kohn

Source

Punished By Rewards

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