PARENTING FOR HIGH POTENTIAL

Infants

2 Comments to “Infants”

1. 
   Bijit
   December 24, 2012 at 1:31 pm

   Disclaimer: I do not have children. I am very ciruous myself to hear what parents with children will think of this book. I got this book because I teach college, and in the last two years it seems that the students have really changed stuff that used to work no longer does. I’m looking for answers. For example, this book discusses why adolescents lie a problem I’ve run into many times. *Part* of their argument (I don’t mean to oversimplify their point) is that teenagers have learned that a)telling the truth will get them in trouble b) getting away with lying saves both them and their parents from aggravation and c) there’s really no worse penalty for getting caught for doing X *and* lying about it than there is for doing X thus there’s no harm in trying, at least, the lie. This makes absolute sense with the scenarios I see semester to semester. Now that I know where it’s coming from, I can consider better how to manage it as in, make clear that the penalty for lying in this class will be much worse than just getting a zero on the paper. This book has also, though it wasn’t a main point of the book, reinforced to me something I’ve felt for a long time: that education should shape the whole person, beyond academics. Schools are were young people spend most of their time and have most of their social interactions it makes perfect sense that schools should also get involved in teaching good human being’ skills. The surprise in this book comes from the fact that all of our old notions of how to create good human beings are apparently completely unsupported by science. We think praise is good turns out indiscriminate praise can actually cause students to underperform! We think arguments are all bad turns out they’re not! We think violent TV programs are the ones we want to shield our kids from turns out that more schoolyard cruelty came from groups who watched safe’ cartoons like Arthur. What I appreciated was that this book didn’t (to me, at least) take an alarmist tone stop that, you’re ruining your child!!! Instead it shows the assumptions, challenges them, brings in science and then goes on to humanize the results Bronson’s little discussions with his son in the race chapter were insightful and awfully cute, and really drove the points home. His open discomfort with the praise issue hit all the points I’d imagine I’d go through in praise withdrawal.’ One thing I wanted, simply, was more! More science! They kept the science parts as short and general-readership-friendly as they could, which is a great choice to sell books that will reach the largest audience, but me, I wanted more than little blurbs of studies. Not that I wasn’t convinced, but I wanted to see a bit more for myself. I am planning on passing this book on to my friends (especially those with young children) and having some really great discussions about it. This would be a great pick for a bookclub or discussion group.

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   • 
     Kevin
     February 11, 2013 at 4:29 am

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