Max S. Dunn

Book: Nurture Shock

Posted by: Max Dunn on March 10, 2010 09:03:29

NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children
by Po Bronson, Ashley Merryman 

We all intuitively know the best way to raise our kids, right? Well, many of the things we think we know are completely wrong.

Take for instance praise. We all know that it is good to praise our kids, telling them how smart they are, right? Not always! Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman and done extensive research looking at many studies around this issue and discovered that praise is only a positive, motivating force when done correctly. When we praise our children for their intelligence, it actually causes them to underperform because they learn that it is important to look smart and avoid taking any risks that might damage this image. However, if we praise our children for their effort, they are more likely to attempt new and difficult things, put in more effort and perform better.

NurtureShock contains other parenting nuggets like:

• Getting enough sleep is vitally important to all aspects of our kids development and health
• Teenagers that argue are actually showing respect since the ones that don't argue are just probably just lying and doing whatever they want anyways
• Parents arguing in front of their kids is actually good for their social development, as long as it doesn't get out of hand and as long as our kids see them resolve the argument 

There is lots of other good stuff in this book and I would highly recommend it to anyone with kids.