The following is excerpted from a review on Amazon.com of Alfie Kohn's book, Punished by Rewards:

In my own personal case, I am the mother of a very oppositional 11 year old. Over the years, I have used rewards (and punishments) to get him to behave, and as he's gotten older, he's only become more belligerent and angry. However, two weeks after embarking on "Punished by Rewards," I have backed off trying to control my son. While Kohn doesn't offer that many alternatives to rewards (he claims that each situation is unique and that one-size-fits-all discipline or behavior programs are presumptuous and, by definition, cannot work for everyone), somehow my relationship with my son is really improving as a result of my having read the book. My son and I hung out in our backyard this afternoon, hammering and sawing to make a ladder for a structure he's building, and we got along beautifully.

While Alfie Kohn's book is controversial...or at least behavioral psychologists don't seem to like it, rewards can be just as insidious as punishments in that they are designed (contrived) as an artificial means of controlling behavior. Both strip the dignity from the individual, by treating him or her as a stupid, insensitive idiot in desperate need of manipulation. There is something else entirely different at hand when one's feedback is from the real world and the reward comes in the direct sense of accomplishment.

This is something I've discussed previously in the blog. When you place a nail on a board, drive it in straight with a hammer, connecting two pieces of wood together strongly and without splitting the wood, there is a sense of accomplishment (effectance or efficacy) that leads to a desire to repeat the activity. When the nail bends, or the wood splits, the feedback isn't from an individual in the form of criticism, but simply the dispassionate response of the material. These are the rewards and "punishments" presented by the real world, and something quite different from the behavioral manipulations often offered in the artificial learning environments we call school.

Reading the review above and seeing the shift in parental attitude, I see that Alfie Kohn's book offered some magic. A hammer, saw, wood, and loving hands may have played their magic as well. The photo above is one more from Jim Marsh's Woodworking bus.