Kids need to learn to make good choices

You know, kids learn to make good choices not by following directions but by making choices

I liked this sentence so much that I wanted to find out more about its author, Alfie Kohn. After reading several reviews, good and bad, at Amazon, I ended up ordering Unconditional Parenting and making worse the backlog of books on my table.

While skimming over its intro, I liked a fragment by Barbara Coloso, on teenagers whose parents complain 'he was such a good kid, so well behaved, so well mannered, so well dressed. Now look at him!':

From the time he was young, he dressed the way you told him to dress; he acted the way you told him to act; he said the things you told him to say. He's been listening to somebody else tell him what to do... He hasn't changed. He is still listening to somebody else tell him what to do. The problem is, it isn't you anymore; its his peers.