NurtureShock: New Thinking about Children, Po Bronson & Ashley Merryman

I was made aware of this book by a friend whose book club was reading it. Aside from the single long black hair I discovered part way through (which reminded me how very public library books are), I loved this book. I recommend it (and have many times already) to any parent, grandparent, teacher or anyone who will ever have a role in a child's life. I read many tidbits out loud to Ben (as I do frequently with many things that make it onto my reading list), and really wanted to share information from every chapter with him, or I wanted him to read it himself. He said that I should take notes for him. Unfortunately, this entire book is already so condensed that every paragraph is of worth. Each chapter tackles a different topic, such as "the inverse power of praise", sleep habits and how it affects kids, why kids lie and "why white parents don't talk about race".

The race chapter and the included study results were particularly interesting to me and inspired a rather shocking interaction with my own child. It is important to read the book to get the details but the gist of it is that in our efforts to be "colorblind" and not discuss and or acknowledge racial diversity we are instead leaving children to draw their own conclusions about race relations. After reading this particular chapter, while putting the children to bed (earlier than usual, based on the readings in a previous chapter) I decided to ask if the kids "liked people with brown or black skin"? Ever diplomatic (and fresh off of Black History Month at school), Avery responded in the affirmative and gave specific examples of one of her friends whose skin was "beautiful". Miles shook his head no and continued to work on the puzzle in his lap. I thought for sure that he must have misunderstood and asked the same question again, to which he continued to say no and continued to work on his puzzle. I then brought up names of his friends from church with brown and/or black skin who he did agree that he liked. But no one else. I didn't have to say anything because Avery unleashed on him, I'm fairly sure she was quoting Martin Luther King in her rant. He still wouldn't budge. When I asked him why, he said..."they might snatch me". Cue explosion in my head.

On one hand, I am glad my child has some fear that a snatching could indeed occur. On the other, very large hand, I am appalled that he would attribute this possibility to a certain group of people, and I've done a search of the child predators in our area, and they are dominantly old white men (and we live in a diverse area). But back to the study, this is what the book found; That unless you tell your children explicitly, that you yourself do like people of other races, then they won't get it. No matter how much Little Bill you have them watch or even if they see you with friends of varying color. So right then and there I bore my testimony that their dad and I do indeed like people with brown skin and black skin. The next day I repeated the initial question to Miles and he decided that he does in fact like people with brown skin and black skin. I don't know why that was so scary to talk about, but I'm glad I did. (There are a lot of other studies in this chapter, involving intricacies of how children shape ideas of race, the introduction of Black Santa, etc.. Interesting stuff)

Read it.

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The Moral Landscape: How Science Determines Human Values, Sam Harris

I picked this book because the title sounded interesting. I started it on CD because that's what the library had available, but three discs in I went in search for the hardback because I needed to see if it was his delivery that I was struggling with or if it indeed was failing to deliver substance. One thing I hate is wasting time, my own time, others time, watching others wasting their own time (subjective I know), but especially my own time. Which is what Sam Harris did to me by making this into a book and not an article. Because, besides one novel thought that he had in the first 100 pages (that I wrote down in own of my many notepads but can't find) I found it to be a super tedious endeavor. The title promised a book about how science can help us be better people, and what it delivered was extreme examples of injustice and conjecture. I was hoping for more of a day-to-day application of his scientific discoveries. He's probably a great thinker and neuroscientist, he just happens to be a very poor storyteller. (I am apparently in the minority on this, as I just checked Amazon's reviews of the book and it has a bunch of positive reviews, including the first one which calls it "A provocative feast"!) . I almost gave up on it but I skimmed through and thought it got better around page 138. I also thought his Acknowledgements section showed some personality. And I liked that there were nearly 100 pages of Notes, which made the book much shorter than I had originally thought.