Smart Parenting, Smarter Kids
The One Brain Book You Need to Help Your Child Grow Brighter, Healthier, and Happier
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
Every week new discoveries about the brain make the news, often promising parents the latest “right” way to nurture their kids’ developing brains and behavior. And every day there’s a new technology that demands your child’s attention, a new game or toy that purports to make your kid smarter, and a new snack promising to be healthy as well as tasty. How’s a busy parent to make heads or tails of all these claims? You turn to Dr. David Walsh, an expert at translating the headline-making, cutting-edge findings into practical suggestions for parenting today. In his previous bestseller, Why Do They Act That Way?, Walsh showed how to manage the difficult teenage years by understanding how the adolescent brain develops. Now he’s written a complete guide to parenting from birth through the teen years, with recommendations that will help maximize any child’s potential.
Smart Parenting, Smarter Kids doesn’t just describe new research findings or explain interesting brain facts. It equips parents with usable information across a range of topics, like exercise, nutrition, play, sleep, stress, self-discipline, emotional intelligence, and connection. Some discoveries in neuroscience confirm age-old parental wisdom while others may prompt you to make immediate changes. Still other brain discoveries help explain behaviors that have puzzled parents forever, like why friendly, easygoing kids can become withdrawn and sullen dragons overnight when they enter adolescence, or why girls and boys tend to have such different classroom experiences.
Filled with helpful quizzes and checklists for easy reference, Smart Parenting, Smarter Kids gives specific advice about how to make the best daycare, preschool, and schooling decisions for your kids; for example, how to deal with stressful events as a family, and how to manage your child’s internet and media use. And all these findings across different fields of research work together in reaching the same goal: When children are guided to eat, sleep, play, exercise, learn, and connect with others in healthy ways, their minds blossom and they are able to reach their full potential—academically, socially, physically, and emotionally. These real-life applications in Dr. Walsh’s new book put science into practice with a personal plan that explains how (and why) you can parent with the brain in mind.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The focus of this book by psychologist Walsh (Why Do They Act That Way? A Survival Guide to the Adolescent Brain for You and Your Teen) is "parenting with the brain in mind." In clear and accessible language, Walsh reports, interprets, and applies recent neuroscience research to help parents understand their kids' behavior and foster optimum development and use of their children's amazing brains. Throughout, there is an emphasis on science made practical, as Walsh expands the scope of his previous book to cover a wider range of brain-related behavioral issues from infancy through adolescence. Reminding parents that kids' brains really are "under construction," he shares anecdotes from his own family life and clinical experience as he addresses major topics such as IQ and other ways to evaluate learning capabilities; how the brain processes information; the importance of play; and why learning self-discipline is important. Each chapter includes checklists, tool kits, conversation starters, and a list of dos and don'ts, plus a fill-in-the-blank space for parents to plan steps toward change. Citing much of the same research reported in Ellen Galinsky's Mind in the Making (including the famous marshmallow experiment, about delayed gratification), Walsh has delivered another entertaining and highly elucidating useful volume for the 21st-century parent.