Unconditional parenting

[Simic]

Has anyone read Alfie Kohn's "Unconditional parenting" and/or is experimenting with parenting like this or has been doing it for years? I've been thinking myself a lot about how I want to parent (I have a four year old and a one year old) and this book has really hit a chord with me. I want to make my children feel that they are loved unconditionally but that's not an easy thing to do on an everyday basis - it seems easier than it is. Of course, I do love them unconditionally, but from my own experience as a child I know that making them realise that is a whole different matter.
Alfie Kohn's book repeats a lot of what I myself feel deeply - the questions I have are on the "how" side... How do I show my child that I love her unconditionally, no matter what decisions she takes or what she is doing, when she is at that moment sitting on her baby brother's head, hitting him :O).
I would just be interested in some descriptions of concrete situations where any of you felt you did some great "unconditional parenting"...

Simic, there are quite a lot of past threads on this, with some concrete descriptions that you might find helpful.

this one

this one

this one

this one

There are others, but those seem the ones with the most 'content' and examples in. Hope that helps.

Read it and loved it! He used an example of saying 'You did it' instead of 'Well done' or 'that's very good' or whatever when they achieve something that they were trying hard to achieve, which I now try to do. I must admit though that I do say no more than I'd like to as a short-cut. Especially if my ds is pulling at another child. But overall he seems to have his own boundaries because he was always allowed to eat what he wanted and climb where he wanted when he was younger. But that's because we did control his surroundings so that he was presented with healthy food and so now. Now that he's around people giving him chocolate I do step in and say 'that's enough for now'.

I think that it's good to aspire to, but difficult to implement in it's entirety.

I'll look back over the other threads with interest.

Thanks so much for that, ApuskiDusky.

That's great for a "newbie" to Mumsnet like me!

I've just read it too and also love the idea but am a bit stumped on the how to! DD is only 19 months though so I reckon I'm really just training myself (and DH) at this stage

Thank you for the links - I was partly pottering around in the Parenting forum because I've sometimes seen UP threads in here in the past (in fact this is where I heard of it).

I've also just read "How to talk so kids would listen", which I found fascinating and which was very much a how to guide. It seemed to me to have similar sorts of ideas to UP, though happy to be corrected on that!

I'm finding it really hard not to keep praising DD and also because she also does quite simple things at the moment I'm struggling to say "You got that food on your fork and into your mouth!" (for example) without sounding really sarcastic!