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Psychology. Nonfiction. In a world of modern, involved, caring parents, why are so many kids aggressive and cruel? Where is intelligence hidden in the brain, and why does that matter? Why do cross-racial friendships decrease in schools that are more integrated? If 98% of kids think lying is morally wrong, then why do 98% of kids lie? What's the single most important thing that helps infants learn language? NurtureShock is a groundbreaking collaboration between award-winning science journalists Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman. They argue that when it comes to children, we've mistaken good intentions for good ideas. With impeccable storytelling and razor-sharp analysis, they demonstrate that many of modern society's strategies for nurturing children are in fact backfiring--because key twists in the science have been overlooked. Nothing like a parenting manual, the authors' work is an insightful exploration of themes and issues that transcend children's (and adults') lives.… (more)
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Some Neat Things I Learned:
* Praising a child for being smart is detrimental, praising them for specific
* Sleep is really important. Not enough sleep can make kids and teens stupid and fat. Thus, high schools should start later.
* Kids lie. A whole lot.
* Kids' brains develop at highly different rates. So if they take intelligence tests before 3rd grade, the results are meaningless. Therefore, elite private schools who test young kids for entrance to their school are not only taking in tons of kids who's brains will grow slowly and fall below their standards, they are missing "slow blooming" smart kids.
* Responding to a child's babbling and vocalizations frequently greatly increases language acquisition.
Pros: Fascinating and amazingly interesting, even for someone without kids or isn't planning on having them. Chapter on language is especially engaging.
Cons: Will probably make you feel like a bad parent. Breaks the high school writing tip of "don't introduce new information in the conclusion." No in-text cites. There's further information on some chapter material in the notes section at the back but they were not mentioned in the beginning of the book, so I missed them. Only selected resources and references provided.
Grade: A-
The chapters almost always start with an intersting anecdote that seems unrelated to the topic, but explains things perfectly as you read through the chapter. Some of the topics covered are, lying, praise, self-esteem, teen rebellion, sibling relationships, how kids view race and much more.
The authors found that there are two biases that had to be overcome before these studies could be done properly, understood clearly and implemented in the lives of children:
1. Things work in children the same way they work in adults (The Fallacy of Similar Effect)
(It shouldn't be hard to see this is false, and yet the studies get overlooked in favor of what is best for adults - such as when school starts, zero-tolerance policies, discipline and praise, diversity training and the list goes on.)
2. Positive traits in children oppose or ward off negative behavior (The Fallacy of the Good/Bad Dichotomy)
A few examples would be assuming children with good self-esteem are less agressive than kids with bad self-esteem - its the opposite, assuming that children who clearly understand what lies are and why they are bad lie less. (They lie more convincingly and more often.) Cause and effect are tricky things.
It is a really long read (as is this review - I apologize) but is jam packed with so many goodies that I'll be referring back to it for a long time. I'm afraid to lend it out. I wish I had a few more copies!
Praise efforts, not intrinsic qualities.
Make sure children get enough sleep, in a consistent pattern.
Talk about race with children, because they're noticing on their own and they may come to erroneous
Adults are bad at telling when a child is lying, and need to respond when their children lie.
Siblings fight, but this isn't necessarily harmful or the sign of a bad relationship, and they rarely fight over parental love or attention.
Having conversations with babies helps them learn language.
I was surprised by the research into teen arguments with their parents: apparently its often motivated by a desire to connect and find agreement. It's not necessarily a sign that they're trying to destroy the relationship or that they don't respect the parent (if they truly don't respect their parent, they'll ignore them and do what they please).
And I hadn't heard that no early test for intelligence (emotional, physical, or whatever) is particularly good at predicting later intelligence or achievement; kids' intelligence scores aren't reliable until 11 or 12, because neurons, the cerebral cortex, and connections between nerve capsules are still developing, often very rapidly in short periods of time during childhood. Too, children use different clusters of their brain to think. "Smart" kids are the ones who have shifted processing to the same network as adults. The authors make a compelling argument that testing for "gifted" programs should take place later in childhood; testing preschoolers miscategorizes well over half (the authors say 73%) of children.
The ideas are interesting, but I was annoyed at the tendentious, breezy way the authors talked about the included studies. They flit from one to the next, proclaiming a single interpretation as the One Truth and then hustling along to the next topic. The lack of critical thought frustrated me and made me doubt their conclusions.
My favorite chapter, that I think every parent should read, is Why White Parents Don’t Talk About Race. I have long railed against the notion of color-blindness being a sincere or realistic perspective and this chapter helps explain why. When parents don’t talk about race, it leaves children confused and often thinking any mention of race must be bad because their parents never talk about it.
This book is more about how children’s brains work and doesn’t have that many specific techniques that a parent could just lift out of the book and put into practice. However, if a parent has a better understand of how her child’s brain works and what her thought processes are, then she will be better able to come up with ways of dealing with her child that works for her family.
I think this is definitely one book every parent should have in his/her arsenal.
I'd buy this for a parenting collection.
Although the authors seemed to say they weren't looking for the answers to make super kids that's what they seemed to come back to again and again. For example, some research shows that the more we connect/touch our kids when they are beginning to learn language the sooner we can have them talking. Why do we need to have kids doing things earlier and earlier? The very first child he talks about in the book who struggles with some things in first grade I thought why does he have to learn it in first grade?
So although I found the book interesting. I am concerned what do we do with this information? If we use this info to "help" kids learn faster is this a good thing? If I answered this question the answer is no. So what do we do with this information? Thankfully this is not a parenting book. So hurray for that. I am so done with parenting books. So you can decide what you want to do with the information.
My only complaints are that it doesn't ask deeply enough what is a healthy adult, and thus what we should be doing to bring children to that. Also, often doesn't ask if some of the results might turn out differently over longer term
As the parent of a 6 month old, I found the chapter on speech particularly illuminating. We noticed a difference in our daughter's vocalizations as soon as we started responding to her more in the way Bronson suggests.
Another interesting bit was the contention that there is no teen "identity-crisis". Again the teen chapter played to my prejudice that parents who are tyrants and lay down strict rules with no exceptions will not be successful at nurturing kids, especially in the teen years. They likely will have a full blown rebellion on their hands. Although as we learned in the book for teens the easy route is just to lie.
One thing the book left me wondering about is whether talking & reacting to your baby at the right moment to increase their vocabulary, Using the Tools curriculum with young children, essentially doing everything right really makes any difference when the young person reaches say age 18 or 22. Are these young adults happier, smarter and more productive people in the long run? I hope so.