NutureShock by Curious Dad

I've mentioned before that mainstream media is too wordy and that blogs are a great substitute. Canadian blogger Curious Dad has recently posted a great example of this. He read the book NutureShock and did a series of five posts on what he thought was most interesting. I'll take it one step further and do one post on what I thought was interesting about what he thought was interesting:

1) Praise your kids less and their effort more

The book makes a convincing case that telling a kid they're just plain smart makes them think they don't have to try very hard to succeed -- that, indeed, trying too hard may actually show that you're not smart after all. It's much better for us, as parents, to praise a child's effort, teaching them that working hard pays off.

I told my classes on the first day that they would never hear me praise their intelligence, only their effort. No matter how much I encourage it, they aren't going to get any smarter, but they can always worker harder.

2) Send your children to bed an hour earlier

Basically, lack of sleep affects kids much more dramatically than it does adults. One study cited in the book found a sixth-grader deprived of just one hour of sleep a night performs about the same academically as a normal fourth-grader. And the book cites examples of school districts that, after pushing back their start times by an hour or so, saw their standardized-test scores soar.

I've also thought that tired parents make bad parents. You're better off sending the kids to bed early to spend the time with your spouse or catch up on your own sleep.

3) It's a good sign if you and your teenager fight all the time

That's because teenagers are expert liars and many find it easier to just nod submissively when their parents tell them what to do and then ignore them and sneak out after curfew. In contrast, a teenager who constantly puts up a big fight actually recognizes their parent's authority to make the rules and is trying to make a case for why they should be changed.

I find this to be true in my own life. Students who struggle in my class are the ones that have silent or absent parents. And even though my own mother and father weren't always great communicators, I knew they truly cared.

4) Talk to your kids about race

If you don't explicitly explain racial differences to your kids -- and why they don't matter -- there's a good chance they'll just assume their own race is best.

You're talking about it with your words/actions already. Might as well make it clear.

5) Educational TV may be worse than violent ones

In many educational TV shows, the book's authors argue, the main characters are pretty mean to each other for the first 28 minutes of the show -- then make up and learn the "moral of the story" in the last two. Preschoolers simply aren't sophisticated enough to interpret the first 28 minutes in light of how the story concluded. They just see mean behaviour and copy it.

Not sure if I buy it, but it makes a good argument for having discussions with your kids after they watch TV and movies.