Nurture Shock

Perusing the baby section in a local bookstore, I noticed one relatively new release on the shelf with a catchy title: "Nurture Shock" by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman. I read a chapter in the store to evaluate the caliber of the book and was immediately impressed by the authors' clear and concise writing as well as the quality of their descriptions and interpretations of the relevant research.

Each chapter of this book corresponds to a different parenting experience, paradigm, or question. The aim of the authors is to reveal the cases, in which parents' intuitions or the popular beliefs on the subject are not supported, but actually negated, in research.

I read the chapters applicable to children from newborns to preschoolers, as that is my present interest. The structure of the book allows the reader to read each chapter as a stand-alone topic paper, which is nice.

Here are some nuggets of wisdom from the research reviewed and cited by Bronson and Merryman:

1. Praise effort, not intelligence.
A child that is told he or she is intelligent will seek confirmation for this. This has two note-worthy implications: a) the child will tend to shy away from challenges from fear of failure and b) the child will be more likely to cheat from fear of failure. On the flip side, praising effort helps the child rebound from failure and teaches him or her to exert effort for good performance.

2. Don't sacrifice your child's sleep for activities (or anything else). Avoid the weekend shift.
Sleep deprivation in children correlates to lower IQ, lower emotional well being, higher levels of obesity, etc. Also, sleep deprivation messes with your child's memory formation in a sick way: positive experiences tend to be forgotten while negative experiences continue to be easily recalled.
Your child may not be sleep deprived, but you might shift the child's sleeping schedule with your own on weekends. Research shows that this also is not good for your child's brain development: every hour of weekend shift correlates to a drop in 7 points on IQ tests. So, it is in your child's best interest to maintain consistency in waking and bedtime hours across all days of the week.

3. Preserve marital harmony. When your child witnesses a conflict, resolve it in front of him or her.
Children tend to be more aggressive when they witness or detect marital conflict. For their benefit, resolve conflicts, of which they are aware, in their presence. This will do two things: it will a) temper their heightened aggression from the conflict and b) teach them how emotionally mature people who love each other make peace after a disagreement.

4. Socialize your child. Don't be content with other kids doing it.
Being around adults is good for children. A child that spends most of his or her time with peers tends to be more aggressive in order to obtain social standing in the group. Keep a child grounded by socializing him or her with different age groups, and especially with adults. By spending time with your kids, you will be able to exert influence over their learned behaviors, rather than letting their peers socialize them for better or (more likely) for worse.

There are a lot more insights and some very powerful research findings in the book. I highly recommend it.