NurtureShock
by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman
Hatchett 2009
"New Thinking About Children"
In this bestselling book Bronson and Merryman have looked at the most recent research on children's behavior and how they interact with their parents. Based on their findings they feel that adults have many misconceptions about how children should be raised and taught. They come to the following conclusions.
Praise: Praise does not necessarily result in better behavior. Heavily praised students have a shorter attention span, lose motivation for learning, and fear failure. In college, they drop out of classes if they think they will get a mediocre grade,and have trouble choosing a major. It is better to talk plainly about deficiencies even if negative and help the child improve.
Sleep: Our students need more sleep. Today's young people get 1 hour less sleep than they did 30 years ago. Our high school start time does not match biological rhythms of teenagers.
Race: White parents must talk to their children about race as preschoolers. They need to explain why people come in different colors. They need to be in mixed race cooperative groups before 2nd grade. After that racially based social divisions are hard to change.
Lying: All teenagers lie, even the best of them. Children want to be seen as good. Lying is normal behavior designed to protect self-worth and avoid making the adult angry at them.
Giftedness: Intelligence testing at young ages doesn't work. It is wrong 73% of the time.
Sibling Rivalry: Siblings don't fight to get parental attention. They fight because they don't know how to be friends.
Rebellion and Aggression: Teenage rebellion and parental conflict are not as common as thought. 75% of teenagers report having happy relationships with their parents. Corporeal punishment and discipline do not cause aggression if treated as the normal way a parent disciplines. Irregular parental permissiveness/anger on the other hand does effect aggression levels. Aggressive students are not insensitive rather they are highly sensitive. Most surprising, they say most socially effective children - the popular ones - use a combination of kindness and aggression to achieve the right balance of power with their peers. These students are ranked as well-liked both by peers and their teachers.
Self-Control: Children can be taught self-control skills by asking them to mentally talk to themselves and make an analysis and then make a choice. They look mostly at a commercial preschool program called Tools of the Mind, but actually many of the activities are similar to what good teachers already do in preschool. One thing that is different, that teachers may wish to think about, is the preschoolers have to make a play plan before going to the center of their choice. The "plan" is a drawing of what they will do in the center with a an attempt at a sentence.Then they go play for 45 minutes staying in character the whole time.
Bullying: There is no evidence that bullying is on the increase. Good children become anxious when zero tolerance of bullying behaviors are put in place because they fear they will break the rules by mistake. This is because all children, especially the popular ones, occasionally tease, name call, or exclude. Its part of being immature at social relations. Aggression in older children is not related to peer rejection, but fed by the need for peer status.
Language Development: It is not exposure to talking that teaches infants to talk. Rather is is the mix of motion and sound that a parent makes in response to the infant's own output. Infancy is a critical period for language development but toddlers can catch up.
All of these ideas come from the research the authors have chosen to present to us, and give us interesting food for thought. However as we munch, we must be careful before jumping on their bandwagon. Written in a bright, breezy way, the book lacks the scholarly attention to the actual procedures of the studies, and a balanced presentation of conflicting studies that would be found in a scholarly work. Also many of the studies they look at are in progres and one of a kind. So let the ideas stew and challenge some of our basic beliefs, but use common sense and hold off throwing out everything we already do - just yet. Reviewed by Joan Koster 2010