NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children by Po Bronson

NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children

Po Bronson
336 pages
Twelve
Jan 2011
Parenting & Families WSBN
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One of the most influential books about children ever published, Nurture Shock offers a revolutionary new perspective on children that upends a library's worth of conventional wisdom. With impeccable storytelling and razor-sharp analysis, the authors demonstrate that many of modern society's strategies for nurturing children are in fact backfiring--because key twists in the science have been overlooked. Nothing like a parenting manual, NurtureShock gets to the core of how we grow, learn and live.<br><br>Released in hardcover in September 2009, Nurture Shock remained on the New York Times best seller list for three months, and was one of Amazon's best selling books for 2009. The book has become a worldwide phenomenon with editions published around the world - in fifteen languages, to date. <br><br>In addition to Bronson and Merryman's writings on praise -- first made famous in New York magazine -- there are nine more equally groundbreaking chapters. Among the topics covered:<br><br>Why the most brutal person in a child's life is often a sibling, and how a single aspect of their preschool-aged play can determine their relationship as adults.<br><br>When is it too soon - or too late - to teach a child about race? Children in diverse schools are less likely to have a cross-racial friendship, not more - so is school diversity backfiring?<br><br>Millions of families are fighting to get their kids into private schools and advanced programs as early as possible. But schools are missing the best kids, 73% of the time - the new neuroscience explains why.<br><br>Why are kids - even those from the best of homes - still aggressive and cruel? The answer is found in a rethinking of parental conflict, discipline, television's unexpected influence, and social dominance.<br><br>Parents are desperate to jump-start infants' language skills. Recently, scientists have discovered a series of natural techniques that are astonishing in their efficacy - it's not baby videos, sign language, or even the richness of language exposure. It's nothing you've heard before.

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A Mom's Opinion

A portion of this review appears in the comments section under a one star review by Achilles. I just finished reading this book and was curious about what others thought. Evidently, the majority of readers enjoyed it as much as I did and for a variety of excellent reasons. The few one star reviews were surprisingly strident, imperious, patronizing and overbearing. They pronounced the book as "biased" ~ which merely means that it had a point of view, as most non fiction books do, but that was not a reason for one star; another said it was a "waste" because they felt the authors made assumptions about who would read it ~ in my opinion, such assumptions are only logical when you expect to make money on the book ~ in marketing we like to know our intended audience ~ but again, surely not a reason for one star; yet a third felt the conclusions were "facile" but for all the wrong reasons; while a fourth angrily focused on merely 3 pages. Achilles, your review requires a category of its own. It seems a few brave souls have addressed you with their comments. What struck me was that some of the arrogance, rage and fury over this book seems disproportionate to its content ~ which is clearly stated in the preface: "as a society, collectively, we never recognized..." as the real thing that "many important ideas have been right under our noses". The introduction tells us that the book will discuss "why our instincts about children can be so off the mark". This invites us to indulge in a good read and think about what they say. It doesn't impose radical concepts upon us ~ but an offer to contemplate some ideas. As a parent I found this very intriguing and felt that the authors generously presented us with some well written, engaging and at times compelling information. As Shannon Davis pointed out in her comments, this was "not meant to be a child rearing guide". As E.W. Price states, "the authors are journalists presenting information in a fairly narrow area of research and t...

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