NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children

by Po Bronson

Young children draw conclusions that may make parents cringe, even if they’ve seen a few counterexamples. Children are not passive absorbers of knowledge; rather, they are active constructors of concepts. Bigler has seen many examples where children distort their recollections of facts to fit the categories they’ve already formed in their minds. The brain’s need for categories to fit perfectly is even stronger at age seven than at age five, so a second grader might make more distortions than a kindergartner to defend his categories. To a parent, it can seem as if the child is getting worse at understanding a diverse world, not better.