NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children
Author: Po Bronson
Rating: â 4/5
Date Read: 2016/03/29
Pages: 336
âThey fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.â
-Philip Larkin, from This Be The Verse
A few years back, I caught an informercial for a product called âYour Baby Can Read.â Supposedly, the program can teach babies to read before theyâre even able to talk, despite the fact that scientific evidence strongly suggests that babies canât learn language from television. The product seems to have been pulled by the producer, but that hasnât stopped me from using the hilarious infomercial when teaching psychology. Itâs just another example of the flawed idea that children need to be doing everything faster and earlier, with no regard to whether reading Harry Potter is developmentally appropriate at age two.
I was not an early reader. I wasnât a particularly late reader either, but I certainly wasnât reading before kindergarten, or even much in kindergarten. My parents read to me, and sometimes I memorized books so that I could parrot them back to my parents, but that was pretty much it. Around first grade I had some sort of a-ha moment, and, after that, I read voraciously. Still do. This was a pretty normal developmental trajectory. Now, with increased pressure on parents to put their kids on the Harvard track by preschool, my reading would probably be a huge cause for concern.
Developmental Psychology is one of the most relevant classes that most people skip in college. College students spent so much of of their time trying to figure out how to not accidentally create a human fetus that they seem to forget that this might be something theyâll want to do on purpose later in life. One great opportunity offered by Developmental Psychology classes is understanding exactly what your own parents did wrong while raising you; this is not because it comes in handy during Thanksgiving arguments, but because it helps to humanize your parents. They were just doing the best they could, but they didnât know what they were doing. No one does.
More importantly, though, Developmental Psychology clarifies some of the bizarre processes by which children learn and grow. It can help future parents realize that itâs better to provide clear rules instead of trying to be your kidâs friend, although itâs best to keep these rules reasonable and open to negotiation. It can help people understand what so-called normal development really looks like, so that theyâll be able to tell when thereâs actually a problem. Hopefully, it can help quell the crazy over-scheduling of kids, which I have to believe wouldnât be happening if parents understood how important sleep actually is.
Anyway, this book is not as good as a Developmental Psychology class, and there were a few points where I didnât feel like they explained the research literature as well as I would have liked, but itâs still a good resource for anyone who has to deal with kids. Of course, my boyfriend was very happy to hear that I was only reading this for teaching purposes. Not surprising, really. Parenting sounds terrifying.