FooFoo, thank you so much for your response on the other thread. I find this fascinating.
As mentioned, I am struggling at the moment with my DS 9. He is ultra-alph-male - v. sporty, v. driven at school, can't stand failure of any kind, practises things for hours and hours with a concentration that would be well beyond me, thinks of himself as a leader (no idea where that comes from), has to "succeed" at everything - in short, puts himself under lots of unnecessary pressure.
I would much prefer that he should step back a bit, take things a bit easier and enjoy life more. I hope he knows that we love him unconditionally - I tell him often enough that we love him for who he is not what he does, but it makes no difference - I honestly think this is about him and not his upbringing (though his counsellor in 20 yrs time will no doubt think differently).
My starting point as a parent is to want my DCs to feel happy to grow up and away from us their parents, to feel free to try new things and develop their personalities and characters and to push the boundaries a bit. We actively encourage negotiation and often reward it with a concession just on principle, and we often compromise on punishments following a good argument. I'm so absolutely not trying to make us sound perfect, which we are very far from being - some days I am hoarse from screeching and go to bed hating myself for the horrid mother that I am - but we really do honestly try our imperfect best.
Our problem is that DS takes everything too far. He thinks he's invincible and (sometimes) he holds me and everyone else in contempt. For one example, one day a while ago, he gave his 5yo sister a massive kick under the kitchen table, lied about it in an aggrieved tone of voice as if he honestly hadn't done it when I told him I'd seen him and that was not acceptable, continued to deny it upon calm challenge by me, started shouting and swearing at me on his way up the stairs when I sent him to his room until he was ready to apologise, shouted down from the top of the stairs that I was an aehole and he hated me, shrugged and rolled his eyes at me when I calmly went to remonstrate with him that this behaviour was not what was expected of a 9 yo, then continued to lie and showed such contempt to me that lost me all my careful control up to that point... He ended up forcefully ejected outside for his own safety. That's one example of lots of times when he keeps pushing and pushing, knowing perfectly well that it's not going to be great for him as a consequence, but he doesn't seem able not to push it and I haven't found any effective way to react other than to create a list of rules of "non-negotiable irreducible minimum standards of behaviour", which are posted on our fridge and in the children's bedrooms, breach of which is punishable by restriction of privileges.
How would you apply Kohn's unconditional parenting in such circumstances? I'm genuinely interested - as sometimes I've wondered whether I just haven't applied enough rules in DS's early life and whether I've given him too much freedom to develop in his own way - but I haven't read the book so I've probably been doing it wrong!
Actually I suspect that the fundamental answer is that different parenting styles are suitable for different personalities of children, and that we each struggle and experiment till we find what works for the child in question - I'm still in the struggling experimental stage so all advice welcome...