Christine’s review of NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children > Likes and Comments

great review, Christine.

Thanks, Nate! I wrote it quickly, so I'm glad it makes sense.

I agree, a well written piece of criticism.

This is a well written review, but I happen to disagree 100%. I loved this book and feel it is highly valuable. Wish I had the time to write why in detail like you did. Hope to get to it soon.

Just curious if you are a parent, teacher, child-care provider or any other individual that intensively interacts with a child or children on a daily basis; and if so, have you actually tried out any of these techniques?

It's possible that some aspects of the research presented by the journalists may benefit a specific child or family so this book may be a useful tool beyond "entertainment purposes."

I agree with you that the "best way to make decisions about anything is to weigh multiple instances of evidence, to never rely on one event." And that includes not relying on a single book review either.

Therefore, I encourage others to read the book (no matter how many stars are given in the rankings) and see how it compares with your own parenting philosophy and if any of the ideas are worth further exploring and implementing. Self-examination of one's parenting assumptions can be worthwhile; for that reason alone, this book goes beyond mere entertainment by providing some provocative views for one to consider.

Hi Tanya, thanks for your discussion.

I am a mother of 2 and I have a B.S. degree in Developmental Psychology and a Master's degree in Educational Psychology. I've worked in education, research, and technology, and have 20 years of work experience. I've been a peer reviewer of different journals over the years. I'm quite well-versed in academic and pop psychology research and research techniques. It's my field.

There are no techniques in this book, just "reviews" of different educational programs. This isn't a parenting book, it's a social critique of our education system. Parenting advice is another thing altogether. I have other suggestions for that topic elsewhere.

I enjoy a good critique of the educational system, believe me. But this is a pop culture book written by non-experts being passed off as an academic tone written by well-worn PhD's.

It won't hurt anyone to read the book, though, of course. But serious people -- or people who are looking for parenting advice -- should look elsewhere.

Thanks Michelle! I'm happy someone out there of like mind read this book. Probably most academics ignore it because it's obviously fluff, and non-academics don't hear why it's fluff. I agree that some advice can be damaging. It's hard to tell which advice is legit & which isn't. This book is just plain silly. I hope no-one takes it as a reason to overhaul their child's education!
Thanks for responding.

I really don't understand why you pegged the authors as having a conservative agenda. If anything, I assumed the opposite because they 1. are concerned that children grow up non-racist, 2. do not endorse punishment-based disciplinary systems, 3. discourage academic tracking, 4. do not emphasize innate differences between children but rather their capacity to change at different ages, 5. discount IQ as am important measure of intelligence (contrast "the Bell Curve"), 6. do not mention religion as important in child-rearing, and 7. have a positive interpretation of teenage argumentativeness. I would appreciate your explaining your reasoning on this point. Doing tutoring through a church-based program is not an indicator of political ideology--these programs may be sponsored by churches of any political stripe.

Also, as someone who has studied IQ academically (BA sociology, master's of social work), I am surprised that you would endorse it as a measure of "giftedness". IQ was developed as a measure of mental retardation, and is not a good measure of exceptional ability, not to mention the issues with gender and cultural bias that have been raised over the years with IQ tests.

Have any of you spent any time in a middle school classroom for more than a few hours? You have lots of degrees, but little real-life application to the situations they bring up in the classroom. Being tested positive as gifted is a disservicd to a young person unless they are told nobody cares how smart you are.

What your review shows us is your own bias, your own inability to incorporate new information into your narrow world view, and your extreme prejudice against what you feel is a "conservative" piece of journalism. It does not, however, analyze the contents of the book, nor do you use specific findings to negate theirs. If you had read it in it's entirety you would have made note that they infuse both hard and soft sciences. Your review is a sniping, snarky, petty and malicious little thing.

I really appreciated your review. I feel like I got a few interesting viewpoints from the book, and while I do not take it as a parenting how-to, it did make me review some of my own parenting. Good to be reminded to take it with a grain of salt.

I do agree with Ruth in that I didn't read NurtureShock as coming from a conservative point of view at all, nor as an indictment of education. The chapter about sleep, for instance, dismisses early school start times as existing solely for their cost-effectiveness, which is quite a liberal contention.

If anything, the book should be taken piecemeal. I found most, not all, of the essays to be informative and falling in line with how I hope to raise future offspring. Each person's results may vary depending on the chapter.

I'm pretty liberal and I fail to see how working for a church automatically makes a person conservative. I don't think they necessarily had a conservative bent or agenda in their writing, they seemed more interested in just debunking some of the conventional wisdoms held on child-rearing.

Wow, what a great discussion! Thank you, Christine, for writing such a detailed and thoughtful review. Thank you, also, for sharing your credentials. I suspected you were in the field (as am I), but it was helpful as far as giving more context to your review.
My only question, which is the same as Ruth’s, is why do you feel the book has a conservative agenda? I haven’t read it yet, so I cannot ask the detailed questions that Ruth did. But if the points she raises are correct, it does not sound as though the author’s agenda is conservative, but rather liberal, at least according to common opinion. Would you mind elaborating on where you find the conservative bias?

Anne, thanks for coming to my review and commenting. When reading the book, it reeked of "voucher" discussions, whether or not the authors intended it to do so. I see where you and other commenters are confused by my claim of conservatism, and I understand that Bronson and Merryman are far from Republican pundits. Nevertheless, while I was reading the book, all I could see was the fuel a conservative could use to twist the meaning of the examples cited to say: "break down state-sponsored education." Yes, the conservatism wasn't up front, per se, but the disrespect of the public school system is food for conservative thought. The authors should have realized this. That's why I called them irresponsible. They were myopic and unprofessional in their subject and tone. There are a lot of great things about public education, teachers and, yes, testing (though I hate no child left behind... I'll leave that for another day). We writers and experts need to be more aware what our writing may be used for. Unfortunately, the voucher camp wouldn't have to spin much of this book to use it as supporting structure to their anti-state-education stance.

Thanks again for commenting.

-Christine

Thank you, Christine, for addressing the ‘conservative” question. I particularly appreciate your addressing my question when I didn’t even read the book! lol
I will be reading it anyway, but now I'm going to wait before recommending it to my favorite parent (my boyfriend, whose 9-year-old son is likely to become my step-son).

When asked by parents for well-written, useful guides to parenting, I've always recommended Faber & Mazlish's HOW TO TALK series, and Phelan's 1-2-3 MAGIC series; I feel that together they merge the teaching of emotional awareness and control with solid, appropriate (and necessary!) behavioral methods. The first chapter of NURTURESHOCK, which I read online, supports Faber & Mazlish's (and their mentor Haim Ginott's) assertions that excessive praise can do as much damage to a child’s developing sense of self as the lack of praise (or no praise accompanied by persistent negative judgment). I liked the idea put forth in NURTURESHOCK of praising effort over the individual, which HOW TO TALK doesn't address directly. As a clinician (and as a parent of two grown children) I have always preferred to validate their feelings and let children come to their own conclusions about themselves, but if one must praise sometimes--and I believe every parent should praise but judiciously--let it be for effort.

Regarding vouchers; your view now makes perfect sense. In the main, proponents of the educational voucher system tend to be quite conservative, and supportive of conservative outcomes.

Thanks again, Christine.

I guess I still don't see how this book really advocates school choice/vouchers. I suppose it does have a decent criticism of public school's gifted and talented programs. It also praises Tools of the Mind curriculum which is being implemented in a variety of schools including the public school that I work for. (and it's not really the magic bullet that the authors make it out be but that's a whole other review) I guess we can agree to disagree.

I found the critique too harsh, Msjess. You can't advocate tearing down an entire system, especially one that has its successes, without seeming to have an anti-state-education agenda. Po told me personally that he is not at all a conservative, but he should have metered the tone of his book as more of a public-education advocate instead of a harsh critique. He and Merryman wanted to sell books, not enhance the opportunities for students in schools. Contrast this book to Paul Tough's latest book that also takes a critical eye to the school systems but offers an enhanced skillset that may help.

I think we will have to agree to disagree.

Thank you for this thoughtful review. This book is making the circles in my daughter's preschool class, and it is nice to get an opinion from someone in the field. Thanks, again.

Re8ecca, thanks for telling me. I read the book like I think many a teacher would read it. There are good points for discussion, though, so I'm sure that's why the book is making the rounds at your daughter's preschool. We just have to be careful what we quote, because not everything is backed up by solid evidence. Good luck! -Christine

I appreciate the points you make in your review. Although I'm enjoying the book, I feel that the authors are overstating many of their conclusions which frequently appear to be relying on correlational evidence at best. I'm not seeing any acknowledgement of the limits of correlation when trying to make statements about causality, or about complicating factors in any of the studies they're citing.

Khaya, really good points about causality/correlation. The authors would rather people believe what they are writing, so they leave out the most important part - how to analyze a study or even just anecdotes.

I would have liked to see some specific citations in your review for the substantive points you raise:

1) Where do the authors "conduct their own research"?
2) What body of literature points to the problems with Tools of the Mind?
3) Where does the book claim to be primary scientific literature instead of a summary of some recent results?

In addition, in your sixth paragraph you claim that "[t]he authors do their best to rip up school district decisions on testing, anti-obesity and anti-bullying programs " and then go on to address an orthogonal point about "the majority of IQ testing and other educational programs" being based on large meta-analyses. It would be more interesting if you have a specific citation which shows that the authors' claims about testing, anti-obesity and anti-bullying programs are flawed in some way.

You write as though you have knowledge of the field, yet unlike Bronson and Merryman you fail to provide supporting evidence for your claims.

Well, true, but the book isn't all that long. I'd be pretty much quoting the whole book.

When a person asks for such specific references, I assume they haven't read the book and would just like to turn to specific pages. While I understand the desire to skip the work, I encourage you to read the book in total. The authors make their own research efforts clear. Also, a simple Google search will show you the critiques of Tools of the Mind. And a review of the first few chapters will show you the authors' summary of their lofty opinions of their own work.

Critiques that ask for page numbers of citations in a review are an attempt to discredit the review. Unfortunately, it isn't a strong attempt. Instead, you should have looked up Tools of the Mind yourself and addressed the critiques to which I referred. You should have found the places where the authors cited research and listed which researchers were responsible and asked me pointedly where they were the authors of the research (You wouldn't have been able to do this, but in practice it would be a more effective criticism of my work).

Your tone accuses me of being lazy and/or incorrect in my references, but you fail to do the most basic analysis of the book against my claims. It's overly simplistic, pedantic and pedestrian to fall back on the "where are your references?" accusation.

Ha. I thought you meant me, seeing that you rated the book with 5 stars. Sorry.

"tools of the mind", conservative? wha??? it's so opposite the current conservative anti-recess, anti-play, strict, regimented, sit-down & shut-up style of teaching young children. conservatives would be the last ones to approve of the play-based "tools of the mind". this is something i hear progressive and open-minded people talking about on NPR, along the lines of, self-regulation is learned from play, but we've taken it away from kids, and they need it back so they can learn self-regulation naturally, like they have for eons. pretty different from the conservative approach that would choose to try enforcement and punitive measures to drill self-regulatory functions into kids. "tools of the mind" is the sort of thing i'd expect Sir Ken Robinson to approve of. what an unexpected thing to hear someone say, that this is part of the conservative agenda. :\

I've said in other comments that the tone of the book caters to education vouchers, charter schools and other conservative approaches that systematically take funding away from the public school system. This book attacks the public school system, and even if the authors deny playing into the hands of the anti-public school movement, they have provided ammo for its fight.

That being said, I agree with you that children's play is very important. Your view of a conservative approach to education: "anti-play, strict, regimented, sit-down & shut-up style of teaching" isn't informed and relies on stereotypes. That isn't a conservative approach to education, that is a punitive approach. If you are interested in Educational Psychology, I suggest you take a course and read actual educational books, not this pop crap irresponsibly thrown together to gather some manufactured controversial attention. These people aren't learned in the field, either, and taking advice from them is a bad choice.

oh, actually, that style i described was my own experience in elementary school (shared by many, many people i know). as a kid i always thought something was wrong with me b/c i found it hard to sit still for such long periods of the day, and fidgeted like crazy. and this was *with* recess multiple times a day. nowadays more and more kids are being given stimulant medications to calm them down & make them more suitable for these sitting-still situations, and they've also yanked recess, so it's not hard to extrapolate based on my own experience how awful that is for fidgety kids like me. the idea of incorporating play and movement into the lessons themselves just sits right with me because i don't believe we should try to train kids into things so diametrically opposed to their constitutions, such as sitting still if that is hard for them.

i still can't sit still, but it isn't considered a problem anymore; no one fusses at me now when i shift and fidget. it would be ridiculous to do so, yet they routinely do this with our kids.

furthermore, i heard great praise of "tools of the mind" elsewhere, too. from someone who talked about how it trains kids at executive function/self regulation in an organic way. i'm also a big fan of unschooling, so it's no big shocker that i like the sound of "tools of the mind". i'm certainly not getting any fully formed opinions from this book. and as a highly educated empiricist myself, i didn't find this book troubling. i found it interesting the same way i find an issue of "scientific american mind" interesting.

Hadn't even thought of it as a conservative bias until you said that, and it definitely confirms my discomfort with the book.

I have not read this book yet, but thank you for taking the time to review the book. I will be skipping it for now and keeping in mind to read critically if and when I get around to it. Do you have any books that would fall into this same category that you would recommend?

In all sincerity this sounds like a great book. An idea that could support another (school vouchers) does not indicate support for said idea.