NurtureShock (the best parenting/child studies book I have EVER read)
Nurtureshock: New Thinking about Children
This is the best parenting/child development book I have read ever!! I just cannot recommend this book enough. Every time I think about it I want to grab whoever is next to me and tell them that this book is so important and each individual who has any contact with children at all should read it. I wish you could see the full extent of my smile and how I was nodding up and down with my head like a car dash toy pretty much the whole way through NurtureShock. It is sickingly good.
There were several chapters that gave me the chills as I read them, one is the first chapter which is titled The Inverse Power of Praise, and subtitled "Sure, he's special. But new research suggests that if you tell him that, you'll ruin him. It's a neurobiological fact". Okay, so you can probably see where that is going-but the amount of research and time proved what I have known since day one with my boys. My oldest is very smart and educational success comes easily, however I have noticed that he is much quicker to give up than his younger sibling if he doesn't get it right the first time. That is a key of this chapter, that the way we praise our children makes a world of difference as to if they will quit or try until they get it. I can't tell you just how important this chapter is to me, especially since I am staying at home with the boys and we are homeschooling. The second I got this info I tried it and it is completely true- he started to be proud of how hard he was working and not give up as quickly!!
Another chapter (Chapter 3) Why White Parents Don't Talk About Race, subtitled "Does teaching children about race and skin color make them better off or worse?" was shocking! This one will BLOW YOUR MIND. Study after study shows that children DO notice racial differences even if their parents never mention it at all. What this does is it causes them to think that they aren't supposed to notice these differences either-but since they do notice they begin to think all sorts of negatives about why their parents don't want to discuss it.
This chapter as well proved to be completely true in our home. We have been around people of different races, they have friends with different skin tones so I figured-hey why cause distinctions where there shouldn't be any and thus ignoring the issue. I mostly did this because I really had no idea how to talk about it or what to say. Immediately after reading this chapter in the book I began telling the boys about different races, and that we needed to be sure to treat all people equal no matter if they have dark skin, light skin...and so on. Jackson's face lit up and he said, " I was wondering why all those men who play football looked like they have dark skin but I think they are just dirty-they probably smell bad too". I could not believe I was so naive as to think kids could figure out such a difficult issue without my guidance. I guide them in everything else! My negligence could have been really bad if I hadn't figured it out while reading this book. Kids will make guesses as to why others are different and without a parent's guidance they will generally make very wrong assumptions. Now I tell all my friends-"Don't hide race from your kids, they see it!". My kids are 5 and 3 and they noticed already. I now am an advocate for discussing race with children!!
Those are just two of the chapters in the book and you see how it gets me going!? The other chapter titles are:
1. The Inverse Power of Praise "Sure, he's special. But new research suggests that if you tell him that, you'll ruin him. It's a neurobiological fact"
2. The Lost Hour "Around the world, children get an hour less sleep than they did thirty years ago. The cost: IQ Points, emotional well-being, ADHD, and obesity"
3. Why White Parents Don't Talk About Race "Does teaching children about race and skin color make them better off or worse?"
4. Why Kids Lie "We may treasure honesty, but the research is clear. Most classic strategies to promote truthfulness just encourage kids to be better liars",
5. The Search for Intelligent Life in Kindergarten "Millions of kids are competing for seats in gifted programs and private schools. Admissions officers say it's an art: new science days they're wrong, 73% of the time"
6. The Sibling Effect "Freud was wrong. Shakespeare was right. Why siblings really fight"
7. The Science of Teen Rebellion " Why for adolescents, arguing with adults is a sign of respect, not disrespect-and arguing is constructive to the relationship, not destructive"
8. Can Self-Control Be Taught? "Developers of a new kind of preschool keep losing their grant money-the students are so successful they're no longer "a-risk enough" to warrant further study. What's their secret?
9. Plays Well With Others "Why modern involved parenting has failed to produce a generation of angels"
10. Why Hannah Talks and Alyssa Doesn't "Despite scientists' admonitions, parents still spend billions every year on gimmicks and videos, hoping to jump-start infants' language skills. What's the right way to accomplish this goal?"
Again after I wrote all those out I thought, " I need to read Nuture Shock again!!!" Uh-oh! I really just can't tell you how much I think this book will blow you away. I didn't %100 agree with every single thing, but really about %99 of it for sure. I can almost guarantee that you will probably want to underline and pass this book around to your friends. It is the best parenting book that I have read ever. EVER. And captivating to read too- you will understand for the first time so many things that you thought you already knew. A MUST READ.
- ISBN: 9780446504126
- Subtitle: New Thinking about Children
- Author: Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman
- Publisher: Twelve
- Subject:Parenting, Child rearing, Child Development, Children's Studies
- Copyright:2009
- Publication Date:September 2009
- Pages:336
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Into the Beautiful North
Into the Beautiful North
by Luis Alberto Urrea
342 pages
Published by Little Brown and Company
Fiction
Luis Urrea is a master story teller at its best. He effortlessly interweaves mystery, intrigue, heartache, love and humor in a way that shows his true ingenuity as an author. In Into the Beautiful North he tells the story of Nayeli, and a group of her close friends and an adventure they are determined to live out. When they realize their town is lacking in male companions and defenders (after watching the Magnificent Seven) they take it into their own hands and head across the boarder to the US where so many of their men have gone for work with the intention of bringing some back. The town of Sinaloa is on the verge of being attacked by narcs and other such lawless men who have also been noticing the lack of men. Nayeli and her clan must be quick, but the boarder patrol has other plans for them.
Into the Beautiful North brought me from far away lands of wonder in little towns in Mexico to discovering even the country I live in under a new hue. The theme of illegal immigrants is a big one in this read, and I enjoyed that Luis Urrea refrained from putting himself on either side of the debate, mostly he just allows the reader to simply learn of details of illegals without feeling the need to defend ones stance. I like learning just through people, seeing the picture just a little better through someone elses' eyes, mostly the emotional side of it impacted me this time.
The plot and story are so fun and interesting to read but the characters are also very well developed, I enjoyed every second of Into the Beautiful North and I know I will be coming back to read more books by Luis Alberto Urrea very soon. I thought It was going to be a book of hardship and darkness, because so much international fiction seems to be used as a way to open the world's eyes to the deadliness of the world, this book was so far from gloomy while never neglecting reality. I applaud Urrea for this amazing novel, which shatters stereotypes of international fiction. Let me say though, that just because of the lightness of the book, that does not mean it is lacking in depth, the characters go through scary times.....but it is the overlying theme of endurance and purpose that strings the reader from page to page just to get to that very last drop. ENJOY!
90/100
Do you love international fiction too? Please share! Could you give me some other titles that are hopeful like Into the Beautiful North? I get the point of bringing up heaviness in novels, but after you have read a lot of them you either become jaded or you can't stop crying. Maybe that is just me, is it?
Oh, make sure you check back in for some author event photos of when I got to meet Luis Alberto Urrea in person! I'll give you the whole scoop on him, check back tomorrow.
Follow Me
Follow Me
by Joanna Scott
432 pages
Fiction
Little, Brown and Company
April 22, 2009
When a young girl longs to learn of her family, of her heritage she is in for an exciting narration from her grandmother (AKA Sally Werner). She makes the young girl promise to never tell another soul what she is going to tell her, as she has never told anyone herself. In her grandmother's words she pieces together the mystery of her father's choices, and mostly the choice he made to leave her, a choice she lives with daily. Her family secrets are what make up a history of hardship and difficulty, however at the same time she realizes that within her family's history fanciful legends and tales hold the same value as the truth. However when she is confronted with her father, a man she had never known because of his choice to (after a failed suicide attempt) leave both she and her mother for a better life, she learns that he has another story all together about her grandmother. But could the elaborate story that her grandmother entrusted to her may only be fiction after all?
Follow Me is an interesting portrayal of family difficulties, discrepancies in family history and more than anything the lives that become that history. Since lives are lived only by one person, and seen by others in a much different light than one intends, history of the living is difficult to nail down. Follow Me is a novel of mysteries, family secrets and after a full dose of half-truths and some lies, there is a family history that evolves.
My thoughts are scattered on this read. I did enjoy the writing, it was as fluid and practical as it was elegant. Joanna Scott is an amazing storyteller and an extremely gifted writer, the tale flows from her words with ease. The only problem was that sometimes it seemed like it was too at ease, too leisurely, and I wished to learn faster. I found it interesting, but felt myself lagging behind in the thrill of it. I didn't completely fall head-over-heels with Sally Werner either, who this story is really about. For me it was mostly that somehow I felt I needed to be guarded against her because her choices made me nervous, and when I was allowed to know her thoughts about herself they were so harsh- that it just made me distrust her. By far the biggest fault of the book, which may be my own, is that I just lacked that personal bond with the characters. I did enjoy this read though, just not as much as I had hoped when it started out.
When you don't connect with the characters, does it make it harder for you to fall in love with the book? Do you find it harder to connect with characters you feel consistently make the wrong choices?
Some other perspectives:
Peeking Between the Pages
Bermudaonion
My Friend Amy
S. Krishna's Books
Booking Mama
Caribou's Mom
Savvy Verse & Wit
