Story Lover

by Po Bronson & Ashley Merryman

I first saw this book at Indigo when I was shelving other titles and what got me was Po Bronson’s name. I’ve read 2 of his previous books and really fell in love with not only what he had to say, but the fact that he didn’t say it all. Most of his first 2 books were accounts from other people’s lives. They were simply answering a question that he proposed to them. This book was a bit different, but I still really enjoyed the way the information was presented. Here are little summaries of each of the chapters. Definitely should reread some of these chapters as the Bunny grows up. Especially Chapter 8, 9 and 10.

1. The Inverse Power of Praise: Sure, he’s special. But new research suggests if you tell him that, you’ll ruin him. It’s a neurobiological fact. I had heard something along these lines before. I think Jess was telling me about it. And I think this one, above all else, really resonated with me. I think effort and its adult counterpart, work ethic, are much more important than base smarts or intelligence. True character is drawn from working for something, not having it already. They noted that it’s important to give focused and specific praise based on effort, not smarts.

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. I thought this chapter was pretty fascinating as well. They reported kids as young as 10 years old having emotional breakdowns because their lack of sleep wouldn’t allow them to process their emotions or cope with stress. Apparently this is especially important for high school aged adolescents and that some schools throughout the US have adopted later starting times to allow kids to sleep longer. They claim that a lot of the stereotypical teen behavior are also characteristics of chronic fatigue. Interesting. The most interesting thing was that during sleep, negative memories are processed by the amygdala (which remains unaffected during sleep deprivation), while positive and neutral memories are processed by the hippocampus (which is hit hard by sleep deprivation), so people who don’t get enough sleep have no problem recalling negative memories and struggle with pleasant ones. I wonder if that’s why I have so many argh moments.

3. Why White Parents Don’t Talk About Race: Does teaching children about race and skin color make them better off or worse? I thought this chapter was the most uncomfortable by far. I can understand why parents have such a hard time talking to their children about race, you just never really know what’s right or wrong to say. I think that by being a visible minority, I get a bit of leeway, but not much. One study was pretty fascinating though. They took a preschool class and arbitrarily divided it and gave one half red t-shirts and the other half blue t-shirts. Over time, when asked, the children would reply that all the kids from their own colored shirt team were nice or smart, but that only some of the kids from the other colored shirt team were nice or smart. They instinctively divided the kids into us and them. Researchers claim that they same is happening with race and that by not talking about it, we’re leaving kids to make up their own minds and assumptions, leading to the us and them mentality. Also, that the more diverse and large a population is, the more likely you’ll get kids to cling or cliche with kids of their own race, rather than making friends with kids of other races.

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. Honesty was always a huge thing in my house growing up. My dad would literally go berserk if he thought we were lying to him. And what the researchers find interesting is how parents teach their kids to lie in some situations (to be polite or not hurt another’s feelings), yet continuously tell their kids that it’s not right to lie. They say that this sends mixed messages, especially if kids see their parents engaged in little white lies themselves. most of the time kids lie to avoid punishment or to please their parents. So apparently the best scenario is to enforce the worth and value of honesty by telling your kids it will make you happy if they told the truth and to try and remove the fear of punishment. They use George Washington and the story of the cherry tree as a prime example.

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 says they’re wrong, 73% of the time. I didn’t think this one was as interesting. It seemed completely fascinated by the idea that rooting out a gifted child was super important and the right thing to do. I do think it’s crazy to think that you can find a gifted child at age 5 and they’ll stay gifted all their lives. It’s also crazy to think that children don’t evolve into their gifts at later ages. I think effort has a lot more to do with being gifted than base smarts and that children who work hard can absorb and progress just as well as children who are gifted.

6. The Sibling Effect: Freud was wrong. Shakespeare was right. Why siblings really fight. I got a little confused on this one. But it was really interesting to learn that siblings don’t fight because they’re jealous of their parents attention of one another. Looking back on my childhood, I don’t really remember that many fights. There were moments of jealousy, but not anything that dug in deep and festered. My brother was a major stink, but I think it was more because he was bored and I was just too easy of a victim. The lessons I’ve come away with are that siblings fight because they know that their brother or sister will be there the next day and the day after (while friends can come and go as they wish), they fight over things and that things aren’t always fair and they fight over previous fights. It’s important to teach siblings how to get along and care for one another.

7. The Science of Teen Rebellion: Why, for adolescents, arguing with adults is a sing of respect, not disrespect – and arguing is constructive to the relationship, not destructive. One researcher (Linda Caldwell) found that if you can teach teenagers how to NOT be bored, they are less likely to turn to drugs, sex and mischief for entertainment. And that it’s not the parent’s job to over schedule their children to try and prevent boredom, that usually just makes them more likely to get bored. I also thought it was really fascinating that if a teenager argues with their parents, it’s more a form of respect than disrespect. And that makes a lot of sense to me. It’s only with very close friends that I’d bother confronting them about something that bothered me or hurt me. I wouldn’t bother with a stranger or someone I didn’t care about to begin with. The same is true with kids and confronting their parents. If they didn’t have some respect and comfort with them in the first place, they wouldn’t even bother. They’d just go right ahead and do what they wanted in the first place. It’s important though for the parent to compromise when their teen makes a valid argument though, because if parents stay too firm on things because their stubborn, it will erode their teen’s respect and willingness to confront them.

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 “at-risk enough” to warrant further study. What’s their secret? I wonder if they have Tools of the Mind programs in Toronto. I want the Bunny to go to one. I wonder if the all-day kindergarten classes that have started in Toronto incorporate some of these tactics. Things to keep in mind for the Bunny: individual ‘play plans’ (outlines for what they’re going to do or play over the upcoming hour or day), letting kids choose their role in upcoming activities (because motivated kids will focus and sustain play and activity longer than unmotivated or forced kids), ‘clean-up song’ (specific song that when played kids immediately know they should start cleaning up and they also know how much longer they have because they’re familiar with the song), ‘buddy reading’ (read to the Bunny and afterward give the book to the Bunny and have them tell the story back to me), ‘private speech’ (where they talk to themselves on what to do, eventually they’ll internalize the dialogue, example: Start at the top and go around…) and play Simon Says (helps kids learn restraint).

9. Plays Well with Others: Why modern involved parenting has failed to produce a generation of angels. Interesting observation that childrens’ educational videos are actually teaching them bad social interaction. Most educational videos start with a negative interaction, like one character teasing or hurting another character; and end with the two characters reconciling. However, because children don’t remember something that happened half an hour ago, all they were really absorbing were more and more ways to be hurtful to each other. Researchers found this to be almost more detrimental to kids than watching violent shows. It’s important for kids to see their parents resolve conflict. So, if you start an argument in front of your kids, finish it in front of them as well, otherwise they never understand that people who love each other can work things out. Kids who are empathetic and understand the feelings of their peers can manipulate them just as well as they can console them. Jails are full of people who have empathetic sympathies than the general population. Try to integrate kids with other age groups, because otherwise it’s just the 12 year olds leading other 12 year olds.

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? Baby Einstein videos don’t work. It’s important for parents to respond immediately to a child’s sounds. Touch or verbal response are both important to progress vocalization and later verbalization. Pay attention to your child and follow their lead (respond to what they’re looking at), rather than lead them (by telling them what to look at). When teaching them a new word by object, move the object around and say the word in a sing song manner. Have different people say the same words, kids learn what’s the same by weeding out the differences (such as voice, tone, intonation). Don’t crisscross words by assuming you know what the child is saying. If it says bah bah, it probably doesn’t mean bottle, especially when it’s holding and looking at a spoon. They’re just sounds. Respond to the spoon. Otherwise, the kid will think the spoon is called bottle. Kids remember and learn the last word best. So change the sentence structure around a bit so that the subject is sometimes the object and the object is sometimes the subject.