NurtureShock by Po Bronson

NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children by Po Bronson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book is supposed to be about the application of science in child-rearing. It's basically about how science can disproves common sense all the time, and how it important it is to do control studies to test our beliefs. That part I like. The actual studies this book covered however, with the exception of one, weren't actually all that interesting.

The first study was the most interesting and important. It studied how praising children is not necessarily beneficial to their learning, development, and achievement. It also explained why. This one was major. I also found the chapter on helping siblings get along interesting and possibly helpful in the future.

The following studies interested me less: how hurtful even a small lack of sleep can be to children(duh); how ignoring race doesn't make children less racist- discussing it does; kids lie way more than parents realize and it's part of their development; testing kids in kindergarten is a poor measure of their future success (duh); why teens arguing with parents is a sign of respect; how to teach children self-control (interesting, but this seemed pretty difficult to implement on your own); why high emotional intelligence is not correlated with good behavior; and how to get babies talking sooner.

One thing that bothered me in particular is that each study dealt with a particular time period in the child's development but the book wasn't organized chronologically. It was strange reading about babies verbalizing after reading about teens in high school.

Anyway, the book is pretty good, but maybe just look up the study on praise and you'll be doing pretty well on your own.

View all my reviews