Nurtureshock by Po Bronson & Ashley Merryman

(review by Julie)
Over the last few months, my sister has been relaying snippets of Nurtureshock: New Thinking About Children to me- things like how sleep loss plays a role in childhood obesity and makes it harder to remember positive thoughts and how praising a child for being smart can cause them to NOT be willing to put forth effort. Those little jewels were so fascinating to me that I had to read the book myself. When I found out it was written by Po Bronson, I was even more excited. I loved his book What Should I Do With My Life . Now that I've read Nurtureshock, I've been going back through the book to take notes on some of the applications I don't want to forget. I'm struggling to keep the notes short enough to be useful.

Bronson and Merryman have researched numerous studies (the "Selected Sources and References section alone is 62 pages long!) from all corners of the globe and complied them into ten chapters about children. Each chapter offers new insights and applications for how we understand kids. These insights are largely a "restoration of common sense," (p. 7) yet they were often contrary to popular opinion. I found myself constantly vowing to change my own actions with children while wondering why I ever believed any different. For example, when we tell kids "Don't tattle," we're setting up patterns of withholding information from adults which can encourage kids to be less than honest about other things. Instead, when a child tattles, we should help him develop coping mechanisms for what's bothering him by suggesting another way for him to handle the situation. So, I could say something like, "Did you ask him not to poke you? Perhaps you'd like to find a different friend to play with."

From their ten chapters, Bronson and Merryman see a two pronged pattern. First, kids are fundamentally different from adults in ways we never understood before. For example, kids spend ten times as much of their night in short-wave sleep than an adult, which makes sleep loss affect their weight and their learning more intensely than it would in an adult. Second, what's good for a child isn't always the opposite of whats bad for them. For example, lying is bad and should be discouraged, but it's also a developmental milestone for a kid to understand the truth vs. a lie enough to formulate a lie and control what the say enough to pull off the lie.

The first two chapters were the most interesting to me and, while the rest of the book was worth reading, I wasn't compelled to re-read it all to my husband. There were a few chapters that seemed to drag a little bit, so I give this book 4.5 stars out of 5. I have to admit that this might have been because I have young children (2yr and 3mo) and those slower chapters seemed to deal more with older kids and teens. I'd really like a copy for myself, but read the library's instead.