Book review. NurtureShock: New Thinking about Children

“NurtureShock: New Thinking about Children”
Student’s Name
Institutional Affiliation
Course Name/Number
Instructor’s Name
Due Date
 
Book Review
“NurtureShock: New Thinking about Children” is a psychology book composed by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman in 2009. Entailed in this book is a collection of ten counterintuitive and significant discoveries in child development. Bronson and Merryman argue that our societal norms and parenting “instincts” around raising children are often ill-advised. They discuss research on racial attitudes, confidence, sibling conflict, sleep, teen rebellion, lying, aggression, intelligence, gratitude, and language acquisition, and the wrongness of received wisdom.
After reading the book, I discovered a few psychology-related facts. The first was from chapter two of the reading and it stated that: If children do not get ample sleep, their emotional, physical, and cognitive development will suffer. Children’s brains develop rapidly, and most of this development occurs in their sleep state. Accordingly, sleep deprivation has more serious consequences for children than adults (Crabtree, 2008). Exhausted children cannot recall what they learned in class, they have challenges with paying attention and impulse control (Bronson & Merryman, 2009, p. 27). A shocking statistic revealed in this chapter is: “losing an hour of sleep is equivalent to losing two years of cognitive development and maturation” (Bronson & Merryman, 2009, p. 28). Many of us have seen children acting up and knew it was because they were exhausted. There is science to support that now.
Secondly, I learned that early IQ tests are poor predictors of future academic success. This lesson was derived from chapter five of the reading. Five-year-old children often take aptitude and IQ tests to be admitted to selective private schools and gifted programs. However, such tests taken at a tender age...