Olivia: Alright, Jackson, I've got a pop quiz for you. What percentage of American parents think it's important to tell their kids they're smart? Jackson: Oh, that’s got to be high. It’s like the first rule in the modern parenting handbook. I’m going to say 90%. Olivia: You are incredibly close. It's 85%. And according to the book we're diving into today, nearly all of them are wrong. Dangerously wrong. Jackson: Dangerously? Come on. How can telling your kid they're smart be dangerous? That feels completely backward. What book is making such a wild claim? Olivia: That bombshell comes from NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman. And what's so fascinating is that these two aren't psychologists; they're award-winning science journalists. They spent years digging through thousands of academic studies, and what they found was that so much of what we assume is good parenting is based on flawed ideas, not actual science. Jackson: Okay, so they're like investigative reporters for parenting. I like that. The book sounds like it’s designed to make every parent on earth feel a little bit guilty. Olivia: A little bit, maybe! But it's more about illumination than guilt. It was a massive bestseller when it came out, stayed on the lists for over six months, and really shook things up because it challenged these deeply held beliefs. And the first belief it absolutely demolishes is the one we just talked about: the power of praise.

Jackson: Right, let's get back to that. How on earth is telling a kid "You're so smart!" a bad thing? It seems like the most basic way to build their confidence. Olivia: That’s what everyone thinks. But the science shows the exact opposite. The authors introduce us to the work of Dr. Carol Dweck at Columbia, who ran this absolutely stunning experiment with 400 fifth-graders in New York. It’s one of those studies that, once you hear it, you can never un-hear it. Jackson: Okay, I’m ready. Hit me with it. Olivia: So, the researchers take kids out of class one by one and give them a fairly easy nonverbal IQ test. After the test, every single child is told they did really well. But they're given one of two different types of praise. Half the kids are praised for their intelligence: "You must be smart at this." The other half are praised for their effort: "You must have worked really hard." Jackson: Seems like a subtle difference. I can’t imagine that one sentence makes a huge impact. Olivia: Oh, but it does. For the next round, the kids were offered a choice. They could take a harder test, where they were told they’d learn a lot, or they could do an easy test, just like the first one. And the results were staggering. Of the kids praised for their effort, 90% chose the harder test. They wanted the challenge. Jackson: Wow. And the "smart" kids? Olivia: The overwhelming majority of them chose the easy test. They didn't want to risk doing something that might challenge their "smart" label. They wanted to guarantee they'd look smart again. Jackson: Whoa. So right away, the "smart" label made them play it safe. It made them afraid of challenges. Olivia: Exactly. But it gets even worse. In the next round, there was no choice. All the kids were given a test that was designed for kids two years older. It was incredibly difficult, and every single one of them failed. Jackson: That sounds brutal. A room full of miserable fifth-graders. Olivia: It was. But how they handled the failure is the whole point. The kids who were praised for their effort thought the failure was because they just didn't focus hard enough. They got super involved, tried every possible solution. Many of them even said, unprompted, "This is my favorite test!" They saw the failure as a puzzle to be solved. Jackson: And I’m guessing the "smart" kids didn't have the same reaction. Olivia: Not even close. They saw the failure as proof that they weren't smart after all. The researchers said you could see the strain on their faces. They were sweating, they were miserable. The "smart" label had become their identity, and this failure shattered it. Jackson: This is actually kind of heartbreaking. It’s like that one little sentence of praise set them up for a total meltdown. Olivia: And here's the final blow. For the last round, they gave all the kids another test that was just as easy as the first one. The kids praised for effort—the ones who had just failed but were energized by it—their scores improved by 30%. But the kids who were told they were smart? Their scores dropped by 20%. They did worse than when they started. Jackson: That is absolutely insane. One failure, after being told they were smart, made them perform worse on something they were already good at. Olivia: Yes. Dweck's conclusion is that when we praise kids for intelligence, we're telling them the name of the game is "look smart, don't risk making mistakes." But when we praise effort, we're giving them a variable they can control. It puts them in charge of their own success. Jackson: Okay, so what does praising effort actually sound like in the real world? Because just saying "You tried hard!" can feel a bit patronizing, you know? Olivia: That's a great question. The book says it's about being specific and process-focused. Instead of "You're a natural artist," you could say, "I love the colors you chose for the sky," or "I saw how you kept working on that drawing until you got the hands just right." It’s about praising the verb, not the noun. The action, not the trait. Jackson: Praising the verb, not the noun. I like that. It’s concrete. Okay, my mind is officially blown on the praise thing. It feels like another area where we think we're doing okay is sleep. We all know it's important, but is it that big a deal?

Olivia: It's a huge deal. The book calls this chapter "The Lost Hour" because on average, kids today are getting an hour less sleep per night than they did thirty years ago. And the science on what that lost hour does is just staggering. Jackson: I believe it. I feel like a zombie if I miss an hour of sleep. But for kids, whose brains are still developing, I imagine it's much worse. Olivia: Infinitely worse. The book highlights a researcher from Tel Aviv University, Dr. Avi Sadeh. He did an experiment where he had some fourth- and sixth-graders get just one hour more sleep a night for three nights, and another group get one hour less. Then he tested their cognitive performance. Jackson: And what did he find? Olivia: He found that the performance gap caused by that one-hour difference was bigger than the gap between a normal fourth-grader and a normal sixth-grader. His conclusion is a quote that should be on every refrigerator in the country: "A loss of one hour of sleep is equivalent to the loss of two years of cognitive maturation and development." Jackson: Hold on, say that again. One hour of lost sleep is like losing two years of brain development? That sounds like a sci-fi horror movie. Olivia: It's terrifyingly real. And it's not just about academics. Lack of sleep affects emotional regulation, impulse control, everything. The book points out that many symptoms of sleep deprivation in kids—irritability, lack of focus, hyperactivity—look almost identical to the symptoms of ADHD. Many kids might be misdiagnosed when they're actually just chronically exhausted. Jackson: And that was research from before every kid had a smartphone glowing in their face all night. The problem must be exponentially worse now. Olivia: Absolutely. But here's where it gets even more interesting. The authors tell the story of Edina, Minnesota, an affluent suburb that decided to change its high school start time from 7:25 AM to 8:30 AM. Jackson: An entire hour later. I bet the parents were thrilled. Olivia: Some were, some weren't. There were logistical headaches. But the results were, in the words of a College Board official, "truly flabbergasting." The average SAT scores for the top 10% of students went up by over 200 points in a single year. Jackson: Two hundred points? That's not a small bump. That's a life-changing difference. Just from an extra hour of sleep? Olivia: Just from aligning the school day with teenagers' natural biological clocks. Their bodies don't produce melatonin until later at night, so they're biologically programmed to be night owls. Forcing them to wake up at 6 AM is like forcing an adult to wake up at 4 AM every day. And it wasn't just test scores. In Lexington, Kentucky, when they moved their start time an hour later, car accidents among teen drivers dropped by nearly 25% compared to the rest of the state. Jackson: So it's a public safety issue, too. It seems like such an obvious fix. Why isn't every school in the country doing this? Olivia: That's the million-dollar question. It's logistics, bus schedules, sports practices... a lot of adult problems get in the way. But the science is crystal clear. We're systematically sleep-depriving an entire generation and then wondering why they're struggling. Jackson: Wow. Okay, so we've debunked praise and sleep. What's the next piece of conventional wisdom NurtureShock is going to shatter for me? Olivia: This next one is maybe the most uncomfortable, but also one of the most important. It’s about how we talk to our kids about race. Or more accurately, how we don't.

Jackson: Oh boy. Yeah, I can feel the discomfort already. This is a topic that feels like a minefield. You're afraid you'll say the wrong thing and make everything worse. Olivia: And that's exactly the problem the book identifies. The default strategy for most well-meaning white parents is what they call the "color-blind" approach: just don't mention race, and hopefully your kids won't develop prejudice. Jackson: Right, the idea is that if you don't point out differences, they won't see them. It sounds logical on the surface. Olivia: It does, but it completely backfires. The book details this fascinating and slightly awkward study by a researcher in Austin named Birgitte Vittrup. She wanted to see if multicultural TV shows could improve kids' racial attitudes. She recruited about 100 white families with kids aged five to seven. Jackson: Okay, what was the setup? Olivia: She had three groups. One group just watched the videos. A second group watched the videos and then the parents were instructed to have a conversation with their kids about interracial friendship. The third group just had the conversation, no videos. Jackson: And what happened? Olivia: Well, first, five families in the conversation groups dropped out immediately. They were just too uncomfortable with the idea of talking to their kids explicitly about race. Jackson: Wow. That says a lot right there. Olivia: It really does. But for the families who stayed in, the results were a total bust. The kids' attitudes didn't improve at all. Vittrup was devastated, thinking her dissertation was a failure. But then she looked closer at the recordings of the parent-child conversations. She found that the parents were just giving these vague, useless platitudes. They’d say things like, "Everybody's equal," or "People are the same on the inside," and then quickly change the subject. They were avoiding the topic, even when they were explicitly told to discuss it. Jackson: They were just checking the box, but not actually engaging. Olivia: Exactly. But here's the kicker. Buried in her data, Vittrup found six families—just six—who had actually had real, explicit conversations. They talked about what it means to be friends with someone who has a different skin color. And for the children in those six families? Their racial attitudes improved significantly. Jackson: So it's the explicit conversation that matters. The silence is the real problem. Olivia: Precisely. The book argues that children are natural categorizers. They notice skin color, hair color, eye color. It's one of the first things they see. If adults are silent about race, kids are left to form their own conclusions, and they often fill in those blanks with stereotypes they pick up from the world around them. Jackson: That makes so much sense. By trying to be "color-blind," parents are accidentally leaving their kids to navigate this incredibly complex topic all on their own. Olivia: Yes. The book's argument is that diversity isn't enough. Diverse schools, diverse TV shows—they don't automatically create better racial attitudes. In fact, some studies show that in more diverse schools, kids can actually self-segregate more. The missing ingredient is the explicit conversation, guided by adults, that gives them a framework for understanding difference, fairness, and history. Jackson: It's a tough lesson. It means parents have to get over their own discomfort for the sake of their kids. It's not about having all the perfect answers, but just being willing to have the conversation. Olivia: Exactly. And that really ties together the whole message of the book.

Olivia: What connects the ideas of praise, sleep, and race is this central thesis of NurtureShock: our deeply-held instincts about what's best for children are often scientifically wrong. Jackson: And not just a little wrong, but 180-degrees wrong. It’s like we're navigating with a compass that points south. Olivia: That’s a perfect way to put it. We think praising intelligence builds confidence, but the science shows it creates fragility and a fear of failure. We treat sleep as a negotiable luxury when our kids are busy, but the science shows it's the absolute bedrock of their cognitive and emotional health. Jackson: And we think silence on race will prevent prejudice, but the science shows that our silence actually allows it to grow in the vacuum. Olivia: Exactly. The authors, Bronson and Merryman, did such a brilliant job as journalists by not just reporting the science, but by showing the human stories behind it. You feel the anxiety of the "smart" kid, you see the "flabbergasting" jump in SAT scores, you feel the parents' awkwardness in that race study. Jackson: So the big takeaway isn't a new, rigid set of parenting rules. It's more of a mindset shift. It's about being willing to question our own assumptions, even the ones that feel most natural, and to be humble enough to look at the evidence. Olivia: It's about trading our good intentions for good ideas—ideas that are actually backed by science. It encourages us to be more like scientists in our own homes: observe, question, and adapt based on what actually works for our unique kids. Jackson: I love that. It’s less about being a perfect parent and more about being a curious one. Olivia: Precisely. And it makes us wonder, what's one parenting 'truth' you've always followed that maybe needs a second look after hearing this? We'd love to hear what resonated with you. Let us know your thoughts on our socials. Jackson: This is Aibrary, signing off.