Kids : How Biology and Culture Shape the Way We Raise Our Children

Rating:
Summary: Great book! I encourage all parents to read it!
Review: Without a doubt this is a book every parent should read as an aid in the never-ending process of tuning what we called our "parenting style". It's eye opening and revealing. The author compiles a fair and diverse amount of research in such controversial topics as "the especial place of childhood in human evolution", "acquisition of language", "development of the cognitive capacities" and "boy and a girl differences", that makes the book very well documented, interesting and appealing to every parent. Besides her very fluent and catching writing style, Small colors the text with her own anecdotes as a parent of a young child and her own dilemma about her "participation" in her child developmental process. This is an every day dilemma for every parent: Can I make my baby smarter?, what is "a smart kid" anyway? Can I really make a difference in his/her natural biological developmental path?, in what sense?, Should I even care to intervene in some aspects? How about the whole debate between nature and nurture influence? who's right? what's right? Am I doing wrong? Are there alternatives to what I believe to be the unique and better way to raise a child? Which ones? What should be our goal as parents?. This book will give you a broaden perspective on parenting and your role in providing the right "environment" for your child's innate and very human potential. I like that I can see my style within the worldwide frame of child rearing. I like that I can know more about how other people around the globe do it and works too, how other people do it and doesn't work as much, how everything is relative to culture and that there is a lot for us to learn from other groups, and a lot other groups could eventually learn from us. I like that I have found answers and more sense to some of my own and very amateur observations of the way people raise their kids. The pros, the cons, the trade-ins. The book contributes to clarify the perspective of a natural child rearing: what did nature intended for us to do as parents? Why did nature intended for human babies and children to have such relatively long very depending periods of life? How did nature intended for us to "care" for our young? What is the whole idea? After reading this book, even though I understand that we are "culturized" beings and that my family will develop within the context of a certain culture (whether I like it or not, whether I'm totally aware of it or not), I have the power to enhance our life with other people's view. I agree with Small, that even though much of our problems or "not very good" practices are culture based, that still doesn't make them right. I agree that in the West we are driven to have our young children behave as the adults we want them to become...and that it's not necessarily right. We, unrealistically, expect young children to sit still, don't talk back, and understand and follow the rules of a "modernized" society (politeness), we are concerned for the education of our children: we love to teach them colors, numbers and shapes, and we want them to be independent and individual achievers...we love competition and we as parents are great competitors, one against the others: who is best? "My baby walked at 9 months, how about yours?" "Mine says 25 words, counts to three and knows five colors and she is only 13 months, how about yours?"...like if that matter much on how happy and well develop our children are. But I understand that those are culturally based values and if we all understood that, it would be so liberating...those measurements wouldn't mean a thing to a parent in most of West Africa, and they are as human as we are. I couldn't put the book down and I'm still positively overwhelmed by all I read. The book is a great source of information and the insights of Small experiences (both professionally and personally) makes it worthwhile. I hope every parent, grandparent, child-care provider, teacher and just every one who is involved with kids could read this book.

Rating:
Summary: poor what a dissapointment
Review: Without a doubt this is a book every parent should read as an aid in the never-ending process of tuning what we called our "parenting style". It's eye opening and revealing. The author compiles a fair and diverse amount of research in such controversial topics as "the especial place of childhood in human evolution", "acquisition of language", "development of the cognitive capacities" and "boy and a girl differences", that makes the book very well documented, interesting and appealing to every parent. Besides her very fluent and catching writing style, Small colors the text with her own anecdotes as a parent of a young child and her own dilemma about her "participation" in her child developmental process. This is an every day dilemma for every parent: Can I make my baby smarter?, what is "a smart kid" anyway? Can I really make a difference in his/her natural biological developmental path?, in what sense?, Should I even care to intervene in some aspects? How about the whole debate between nature and nurture influence? who's right? what's right? Am I doing wrong? Are there alternatives to what I believe to be the unique and better way to raise a child? Which ones? What should be our goal as parents?. This book will give you a broaden perspective on parenting and your role in providing the right "environment" for your child's innate and very human potential. I like that I can see my style within the worldwide frame of child rearing. I like that I can know more about how other people around the globe do it and works too, how other people do it and doesn't work as much, how everything is relative to culture and that there is a lot for us to learn from other groups, and a lot other groups could eventually learn from us. I like that I have found answers and more sense to some of my own and very amateur observations of the way people raise their kids. The pros, the cons, the trade-ins. The book contributes to clarify the perspective of a natural child rearing: what did nature intended for us to do as parents? Why did nature intended for human babies and children to have such relatively long very depending periods of life? How did nature intended for us to "care" for our young? What is the whole idea? After reading this book, even though I understand that we are "culturized" beings and that my family will develop within the context of a certain culture (whether I like it or not, whether I'm totally aware of it or not), I have the power to enhance our life with other people's view. I agree with Small, that even though much of our problems or "not very good" practices are culture based, that still doesn't make them right. I agree that in the West we are driven to have our young children behave as the adults we want them to become...and that it's not necessarily right. We, unrealistically, expect young children to sit still, don't talk back, and understand and follow the rules of a "modernized" society (politeness), we are concerned for the education of our children: we love to teach them colors, numbers and shapes, and we want them to be independent and individual achievers...we love competition and we as parents are great competitors, one against the others: who is best? "My baby walked at 9 months, how about yours?" "Mine says 25 words, counts to three and knows five colors and she is only 13 months, how about yours?"...like if that matter much on how happy and well develop our children are. But I understand that those are culturally based values and if we all understood that, it would be so liberating...those measurements wouldn't mean a thing to a parent in most of West Africa, and they are as human as we are. I couldn't put the book down and I'm still positively overwhelmed by all I read. The book is a great source of information and the insights of Small experiences (both professionally and personally) makes it worthwhile. I hope every parent, grandparent, child-care provider, teacher and just every one who is involved with kids could read this book.