About: Bronson and Merryman present research showing that many parenting "instincts" are dead wrong. Racism, praise, language, lying, intelligence, rebelling and self-control are all covered.

Some Neat Things I Learned:

* Praising a child for being smart is detrimental, praising them for specific actions or working hard is better.
* Sleep is really important. Not enough sleep can make kids and teens stupid and fat. Thus, high schools should start later.
* Kids lie. A whole lot.
* Kids' brains develop at highly different rates. So if they take intelligence tests before 3rd grade, the results are meaningless. Therefore, elite private schools who test young kids for entrance to their school are not only taking in tons of kids who's brains will grow slowly and fall below their standards, they are missing "slow blooming" smart kids.
* Responding to a child's babbling and vocalizations frequently greatly increases language acquisition.

Pros: Fascinating and amazingly interesting, even for someone without kids or isn't planning on having them. Chapter on language is especially engaging.

Cons: Will probably make you feel like a bad parent. Breaks the high school writing tip of "don't introduce new information in the conclusion." No in-text cites. There's further information on some chapter material in the notes section at the back but they were not mentioned in the beginning of the book, so I missed them. Only selected resources and references provided.

Grade: A- ( )

Lots of great information here that I will use to inform my own parenting. The book is very readable and is backed up by solid research.

I was a little annoyed by the authors trying to fit this book into the seemingly trendy new genre of "counter intuitive researchers disproving common myths," as these books often come across as more style than substance. But I guess it's what sells books these days. ( )

Great book and answered a lot of questions for me. I'm a Montessori teacher and often get children who don't want to attempt something I have for them. It's possible that they've been told how smart they are and now don't want to fail or look stupid in front of grown ups. And that's just the first chapter! ( )

Having no children, and thus no parenting experience, but lots of niece and nephews, and thus lots of judging of other people's parenting, this was an absolutely fascinating read. I did learn some things to apply to my own interactions with my nieces and nephews. Most significant in my eyes, however, is how things that "everyone knows" to be true are actually quite false. If we cannot trust the newspaper reporting - or even the actual researchers' reporting - of a scientific study to be telling us a reliable truth, how much else of what we read and hear as discovered by science is also untrue? I am going to be reading such reports a lot more critically from now on. ( )

Not quite as shocking as advertised, but full of interesting information. ( )