Recently, Sara forced me to read NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children.

It was fascinating. Basically, each chapter tackles a commonly held myth or practice about raising kids, and then shows factually why it isn’t true. In fact, sometimes the exact opposite is true. It is Freakonomics for child raising.

There were numerous topics of interest, so I want to talk about some of them here, but I assure you that there are plenty of things I won’t discuss. So don’t let this discourage you from reading the book (in other words, there are spoilers, but everything’s not totally spoiled!)

Chapter 1: The Inverse Power of Praise

In a nutshell, the more you praise your child for their intelligence, the more they give up in the face of a challenge (Basically, I am either intelligent enough to do something, or I am not. I got this far because I was so smart, but maybe this is as far as my smarts can take me.) So instead, you should praise how hard they tried, or at least praise something specific that they did well.

When you say it like that, it is obvious; but doing it is quite another matter. It is really hard to keep from saying things like, “You’re so smart!” We mean well when we say that, but good intentions are not enough. Still, this makes sense to me and it has already changed the way I praise my children.

Excerpt – “The Inverse Power of Praise”

Chapter 2: The Lost Hour

Those kids today have all sorts of trouble: staying off my lawn, depression, ADHD, obesity, etc. But what if all of those things had one common source: kids today get an average of an hour less of sleep per day than they did thirty years ago.

Again, when it’s spelled out, it’s obvious. But I can see how it would be really easy to let certain things slide, especially when kids have so many extra-curricular activities. The research was pretty startling, including one study that showed, for every 15 minutes of missed sleep per night, the child’s score on schoolwork is effectively reduced by one letter grade. 15 minutes! Yikes! Don’t let your kids miss sleep!

Excerpt – “Snooze or Lose”

Chapter 3: Why White Parents Don’t Talk about Race

The interesting thing was that white folks didn’t talk to their kids about race, not because they were afraid to talk about race (although that might have been part of it), but because they hoped by not mentioning race at all, they would teach their kids not to notice race. So, like so many things in the book, their intentions are good. But, by not talking about it, they were just leaving their kids to come up with their own conclusions (usually not good ones).

Another interesting thing was that students in multi-cultural schools are actually less likely to have a friend of a different race. Who would have ever guessed that? It seems so counter-intuitive. But having many different races ends up just splintering the kids into groups, based on race. In other words, kids don’t start out as a blank slate, they start out as racist (or, they start out as people who see similarities and differences).

This chapter gave me a LOT to think about!

Excerpt – Even Babies Discriminate

Chapter 4: Why Kids Lie

I think AskMoxie summarized it best (see below for links to her other posts on NurtureShock)

Essentially, we’re all liars, and we’re raising liars because we don’t understand how they see our interactions, and because we reward them for telling us what we want to hear.

Some other interesting things to me were that parents can’t tell when their kids are lying, even though they think they can, and that kids think saying something wrong is the same as lying (this is something I can actually remember from when I was a kid, that other (younger) kids would say, “So and so lied!” and I remember thinking, “There is a difference between lying and being wrong”)

The hard part as a parent is to remember to penalize lying about being naughty as much as the actual act of being naughty. Say the kid colored on the wall and then lied about it; the usual response is that the kid gets in trouble for coloring on the wall. We might say, “And don’t lie either!” but the punishment is greater for the act than for lying. So that sends the message that lying isn’t really all that bad. Actually remembering to do this is harder than it seems.

The stuff about the “boy who cried wolf” story not working as a deterrent to lying was very interesting as well. I had already tried using that story on Evie!

Excerpt – Are Kids Copying Their Parents When They Lie?

Chapter 5: The Search for Intelligent Life in Kindergarten

This one wasn’t too crazy. Basically, schools are testing for “gifted” kids earlier and earlier, but it turns out that those tests basically give no indication whatsoever about the child’s future intelligence. They miss as many as 70% of the kids who actually turn out to be gifted. And, in most programs, once you’re in, you’re in: kids who turn out not to be gifted don’t get dropped, and kids who turn out to be gifted later on don’t get added.

No surprise to me here, although it does fly in the face of almost every gifted and talented program or school curriculum. I imagine it also comes as quite a shock to a lot of parents who were proud of their “gifted” child.

Excerpt – Early Testing in New York City Schools Called Faulty

Chapter 6: The Sibling Effect

This chapter wasn’t as interesting to me either. Basically, some kids fight, some kids get along. Children treat their brothers and sisters worse than they treat their friends.

The one thing that surprised me was that children with siblings are no better at getting along with other children than children without siblings. It turns out seeing relationships (like those of their parents) are more important than their own relationships (like those with their siblings).

Excerpt – Play Time for Siblings Matters More than When They Fight

Chapter 7: The Science of Teen Rebellion

I thought this chapter was amazing. Obviously I haven’t dealt with the teenage stuff yet, but it wasn’t so long ago that I can’t remember being one myself. And basically, this chapter demonstrates that there are biological reasons why teenagers are the way they are (rebellious, bored, reckless, grumpy, etc.)

There were far more interesting things than I will mention here, but one interesting thing was that the objection to parental authority peaks towards the beginning of the teenage years (14 or so) rather than at the end, like you would assume.

Another interesting thing was that, while fighting with their teenagers stresses out a parent, to the teenager it is the exact opposite. Teens who fight with their parents are happier, healthier, and lie to their parents less. Basically, arguing is a sign of respect, because otherwise they would just lie and it would be much easier for them.

Basically, the chapter refutes the “lets be friends” theory of parenting. The parents with more rules were lied to less. The parents who tried to be more permissive with their kids did not get any more information about what the kids were actually up to.

Very interesting chapter, but it made me a little frightened of being a parent through those teenage years!

Excerpt – Why Counting Blessings is so hard for teenagers

Chapter 8:  Can Self-Control be Taught?

Another very interesting chapter. Basically it showed that programs to teach kids things, such as D.A.R.E., are more or less ineffective (at least for at-risk kids). However, there was one particular education system that was extremely effective at taking at-risk kids and turning them into model students. The reason this program was effective was that it actually exercised the self-control sections of the brain which ultimately provided skills for kids to do better (be less distracted / more focused, etc.)

This confirmed my belief about play based preschools, that kids brains are designed to learn by playing, not be being “instructed”. Kids early in their development need to be handled differently than, say, college students.

This chapter was jammed full of interesting examples at how kids can be taught more effectively, even at home.

Excerpt – How Long Does Your Child Play With Their Favorite Toy?

Chapter 9: Plays Well with Others

This one started with a real shocker: kids who watched violent tv shows were slightly more aggressive than those who didn’t. However, the kids who watched educational tv shows were way, way more relationally aggressive (verbal abuse, controlling behavior, being bossy, etc.). So educational shows were actually worse for kids than violent tv shows!

This was attributed to the fact that, in order to teach kids a lesson, the educational shows spend the vast majority of an episode establishing a conflict, which is resolved in the last few minutes. Kids learn equally from all aspects of the show, which means they are exposed to a lot more bad behavior than conflict resolution. Especially if their attention wanes and they don’t even make it to the lesson at the end!

This applies to a lot of books I’ve read with Evie as well. Sometimes I’m reading a book and I think, “Why are you putting this idea into kids heads!” Sure, at the end of the book they talk about why it was wrong, but I can’t help but think, “But I wouldn’t have needed to teach her that lesson, because she never would have thought to do that before reading this book!”

Another interesting point was that children need to see the resolution of a conflict. So if the parents are fighting, they might take the fight into their bedroom to “protect” the kids. In reality, the best thing they could do is let the kids see how the conflict was resolved. That allows the kids to see healthy conflict resolution and model their own skills accordingly. Certainly something to think about!

Chapter 10: Why Hannah Talks and Alyssa Doesn’t

The first part of the chapter talks about the popular Baby Einstein DVDs, and why they don’t work. There was a big to do about this not too long ago, so it wasn’t news to me. However, it was interesting to see why they don’t work.

I guess the overall thrust of the chapter was that talking to your baby isn’t as important as listening to your baby. It’s not about how many words your baby hears, it’s more about giving them feedback for their efforts and letting them direct the learning. This makes a lot of sense to me, because in my observation since having kids, parents don’t really listen or understand what their kids are really trying to tell them. They tend to assume the kid is a tiny version of an adult and they try to understand them or relate to them on that level.

In fact, that might be the overall message of the book: young kids are not just tiny adults. They have special needs, modes of learning, brain chemistry, etc. So, just because something seems logical, doesn’t mean it is actually effective. It *would be* effective if kids worked like adults. But they don’t. So they need their own ways of doing things.

Whew!

Let me assure you that, despite the length of this post, there are waaay more things in that book than I’ve talked about here. If you have kids or deal with kids on a regular basis, I would strongly recommend this book.

Over on AskMoxie, they’re doing a sort of book club thing with NurtureShock, with really good discussion of a new chapter every Friday. So far, you can see Chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5.

There are also posts on the topic on Babylicious.