Do you think that the more you tell children how smart they are, the better they will perform in school? Do you believe it is better not to let your children watch you argue with your spouse? Do you feel that the less you mention race to your child, the more your child will grow up to think that people of all races are equal? Do you assume that the main reason kids are overweight nowadays is that they are watching too much television and spending too much time on the computer?
If you’ve answered yes to all of these questions, then perhaps you should consider reading the book, “NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children.” Authors Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman explain why your answers to these questions are wrong and provide evidence from world-renowned scholars and scientists that shed light on some surprising research.
Published in September 2009, “NurtureShock” spent three months on the New York Times bestseller list. According to online retailer Amazon.com, it was “one of its best-selling books for 2009 and has become a worldwide phenomenon with editions published around the world — in 15 languages, to date.”
The book was released three years ago, but the information is still timely in helping parents raise children in the electronically complex age of computers, television, and the Internet. Bronson and Merryman have also written numerous parenting articles for publications such as Time, Newsweek, and New York Magazine.
Singing a different tune of praise
“NurtureShock” continually explains research data based upon how a child’s mind works — not how an adult believes a child is thinking. One such example is in the first chapter of the book, called “The Inverse Power of Praise,” which states that when parents praise children for being smart, parents are unintentionally telling them, “this is the name of the game: look smart, don’t risk making mistakes.” As a result, these children don’t take many risks for fear of making errors and looking bad.
Instead, researchers suggest parents praise children for their effort, which will motivate kids to try harder and make them feel more in control of their work. Leading a study at Columbia University about the effects of praise on children, Dr. Carol Dweck concluded that, “Emphasizing effort gives a child a variable that they can control. They come to see themselves as in control of their success. Emphasizing natural intelligence takes it out of the child’s control, and it provides no good recipe for responding to a failure.”
Learning from parents’ interactions
“NurtureShock” spends many chapters discussing how differently children think and act in comparison to adults. However, children’s own behavior, the book states, is still very influenced by the interactions they observe between their own parents.
As an illustration, Dr. E. Mark Cummings of the University of Notre Dame has “found that children’s emotional well-being and security are more affected by the relationship between the parents than by the direct relationship between the parent and child.” He further explained that even when parents argue in private, children are still aware conflict occurred.
Alternatively, Cummings suggests parents disagree in front of their children so that their kids can see how adults resolve their disputes. Taking note of Cumming’s findings, Bronson and Merryman observed, “Being exposed to constructive marital conflict can actually be good for children — if it doesn’t escalate, insults are avoided, and the dispute is resolved with affection. This improves their sense of security, over time, and increases their social behavior at school as rated by teachers.”
Talking about race
Another interesting subject discussed in “NurtureShock” is the idea of parents discussing race with children. A 2007 study in the Journal of Marriage and Family found that out of 17,000 families with kindergarteners, 75 percent of the white parents almost never discussed race with their children, while nonwhite parents were three times more likely to talk about it.
Since the election of President Obama in 2008, more parents are telling their kids that people of different races can attain the same successes as white people, but the topic is still not as easily broached in families as is the concept of gender-equality, in which women can achieve anything men can.
In an attempt to examine these feelings, doctoral student Birgitte Vittrup conducted a study at the Children’s Research Lab at the University of Texas in 2006 where she asked parents to talk to their kindergarten-age children about race. Only when the parents spoke openly about their own interracial friendships did their children’s interracial attitudes improve. When parents vaguely mentioned the idea of “everybody’s equal,” their kids did not change their ways of perceiving other races.
Studies from other researchers have pointed to “the possibility of developmental windows — stages when children’s attitudes might be most amenable to change.” For example, one study found that when a racially diverse group of first-grade children were asked to learn together in a classroom, they subsequently spent more time playing with each other at recess.
When the same trial was performed with an ethnically diverse group of third-graders, the children were not affected by the classroom experiment and spent recess time playing within their own racial crowd. Remarking on the behavioral differences between the age groups, Bronson and Merryman deduced, “It’s possible that by third grade, when parents usually recognize it’s safe to start talking a little about race, the developmental window has already closed.”
The effect of sleep
One of the most enlightening discoveries discussed in “NurtureShock” that appear easiest to change is the effect lack of sleep has on childhood performance. One chapter of the book, aptly titled “The Lost Hour,” focuses on a well-known study led several years ago by Dr. Avi Sadeh at Tel Aviv University.
After observing the behavioral patterns of a group of fourth- and sixth-graders, Sadeh found that children who received just one extra hour of sleep a night had significantly higher test scores in school, while a sleepy sixth-grader performed at the same academic level as a fourth-grader.
Studies on children’s sleep patterns have also been widely conducted throughout the United States. Lack of sleep seems to particularly affect teenagers since it has been found that kids sleep less once they enter high school.
Dr. Fred Danner of the University of Kentucky authored a national study among high-schoolers that found 60 percent of freshman average eight hours of sleep a night. When that number fell to 30 percent by sophomore year, the teenagers’ moods also noticeably declined. Dr. Danner, thus, was able to make the correlation that when teenagers sleep less than eight hours a night, their rate of clinical-level depression doubled.
Researchers worldwide are also attributing a lack of sleep to other childhood problems such as obesity and ADHD. Scholars from Japan, Canada, and Australia have all performed tests that ultimately demonstrate that kids who get less than eight hours of sleep a day have a 300 percent higher rate of being overweight than those who get a full 10 hours of sleep. A recent research study at public schools in Houston, Texas, found that among middle-schoolers and high-schoolers “the odds of obesity went up 80 percent for each hour of lost sleep.”
Most parents are likely to blame television and computers for the obesity epidemic among children, but Bronson and Merryman claim sleep loss can be just as much the culprit.
“While obesity has spiked exponentially since the 1970s, kids watch only seven more minutes of TV a day. While they do average a half-hour of video games and Internet surfing on top of television viewing, the leap in obesity began in 1980, well before home video games and the invention of the web browser. This obviously doesn’t mean it’s good for the waistline to watch television. But it does mean that something — other than television — is making kids heavier.”
Parents and educators alike have taken heed to these statistics and, consequently, more school districts are opening their schools an hour later. When the town of Lexington, Ky, decided to open its school an hour later, teenage car accidents dropped 25 percent in comparison to the rest of the state. When the local high school in Edina, Minn., changed its start time from 7:25 to 8:30 am, its students reported feeling more motivated and less depressed. As a result, they scored noticeably better on their SAT tests the following year.
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Children’s reactions to praise, their parents’ relationship, the concept of racial equality, and a lack of sleep are only a few of the many topics written about in “NurtureShock.” Bronson and Merryman have devoted chapters to more newly discovered research that will fascinate parents, including why it is emotionally healthy for teenagers to argue with their parents and why physically caressing babies while talking to them increases their ability to absorb information.
Bronson and Merryman don’t spout their ideas sloppily. Every one of their observations is carefully crafted with academic research to support it. No matter how comfortable or confident you are as a parent, “NurtureShock” is a book definitely worth paying attention to.
Allison Plitt is a contributing writer for New York Parenting Media and lives in Queens with her 6-year-old daughter. Feel free to share your ideas with her about topics for articles or resources for families at allisonplitt@hotmail.com.
