Review of NurtureShock on "Say It Better" Blog

Here's an amazing review from Kare Anderson, Emmy-winning former Wall Street Journal reporter. Thanks Kare!

Two Awards

We recently were honored with two more awards for our work on the science of children.

The first is a Clarion Award, from the Association for Women in Communication.

The second is a Mensa Press Award, from the Mensa Education & Research Foundation, which we're told got a unanimous vote.

Thanks to these organizations for supporting science journalism!

Booklist Review for NurtureShock

“Intriguing analysis of conventional wisdom regarding child rearing. Each chapter tackles, and explodes, a separate concept concerning preschoolers through teenagers. The authors’ extensive research and incisive thinking make this a worthwhile read, whether you agree or disagree with their assertions.”

Kirkus Review for NurtureShock

"A provocative collection of essays popularizing recent research that challenges conventional wisdom about raising children...[Bronson and Merryman] ably explore a range of subjects of interest to parents... Their findings are often surprising. For example, in schools with greater racial diversity, the odds that a child will have a friend of a different race decrease; listening to "baby DVDs" does not increase an infant's rate of word acquisition; children with inconsistent and permissive fathers are nearly as aggressive in school as children of distant and disengaged fathers. Bronson and Merryman call attention to what they see as two basic errors in thinking about children. The first is the fallacy of similar effect-the assumption that what is true for adults is also true for children. The second-the fallacy of the good/bad dichotomy-is the assumption that a trait or factor is either good or bad, when in fact it may be both (e.g., skill at lying may be a sign of intelligence, and empathy may become a tool of aggression.) The authors also provide helpful notes for each chapter and an extensive bibliography. A skilled, accessible presentation of scientific research in layman's language." (Kirkus )

Learning To Lie

From Po & Ash:

This is an exciting week for us. Exactly a year ago that our praise piece hit the news stands, we're on our way to Boston to accept our AAAS award – and we have a new cover story for New York Magazine that hits the stands today.

The new piece, entitled "Learning to Lie," explores why kids lie. First considering the prevalence of teens' lying to their parents, on a wide variety of topics, we examine when lying begins for little kids: discussing the work of scholars such as McGill University's Dr. Victoria Talwar, we take a look at the developmental (cognitive) and environmental factors that come into play (such as parents and siblings). We then return to teens' lying – to examine how this lying is more about a teen's development of autonomy. And that surprisingly, it turns out that, for a teen, arguing is actually a good sign; it means the teen respects an adult enough to tell the truth about what's going on in her life.

We sincerely hope that you'll enjoy it.

"The One?" a short film by J.D. Beltran and Po Bronson

From Po:

Just posted on YouTube is the short documentary film on the science of love, "The One?" which was written, directed, and filmed by J.D. Beltran and Po Bronson, narrated by J.D., and produced and edited by J.D.

The film explores where humans get this longing for, or this notion of, a "One" - a special romantic partner. It's both a film about love and a film about science and a film about parenting. The film also explores how our early imprint of love from parents creates a natural bias that affects our perception of all those we fall in love with later in life.

Part 1:



Part 2:

AAAS Announces Winners of the 2007 Science Journalism Awards

From Po and Ash:

We're very honored. Yea!


From: American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

Contact:
Earl Lane, 202-326-6431. elane@aaas.org
Molly McElroy, 202-326-6434, mmcelroy@aaas.org

AAAS Announces Winners of the 2007 AAAS Science Journalism Awards

An inquiry into mysterious elk deaths in Wyoming, a profile of a largely unknown black chemist who was a pioneer in the synthesis of medicinal drugs from plants, and a look at the merits of telling children they are smart are among the winners of the 2007 AAAS Science Journalism Awards from the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Independent panels of science journalists chose the winners of the awards, which honor excellence in science reporting for print, radio, television and online categories. The awards, established in 1945, also include a prize for coverage of science news for children that is open to journalists worldwide. The judges awarded a special Certificate of Merit in the children's category this year as well.

"There is no higher recognition than the AAAS awards," said Po Bronson, co-author of the prize-winning effort in the magazine category. Bronson and Ashley Merryman won for their piece in New York magazine on the science of praising children. "The scientists we interview often titter amusedly, 'Well, your work's not peer-reviewed,' " Bronson said, "Now we can tell them, 'It kinda has been.'"

Jennifer Frazer, a winner for her stories on elk deaths in the Wyoming Tribune-Eagle, said the subject gripped her from the outset. "It had the allure of a detective story and an unlikely culprit: a small green lichen that most people wouldn't notice even if they walked right over it," Frazer said.

Katie Alvord, a freelance reporter who won in the online category for her stories on the changing environment of Michigan's Upper Peninsula, said the award "makes the intense work I did to write this online article series even more worthwhile." She added, "Especially for a small-town freelancer like me, it's a real boost to get this kind of recognition."

The winners included Kenneth Weiss and Usha Lee McFarling of the Los Angeles Times for an ambitious series that examined the profound disturbances that have been occurring in the ecology of the world's oceans.

"The Altered Oceans series was an unusual undertaking for a newspaper," Weiss said. "There was no single dramatic event like a hurricane or tsunami. No mass human deaths. Instead, we looked at the slow creep of environmental decay the kind of changes that most people never notice."

The AAAS Science Journalism Awards are sponsored by Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research & Development, L.L.C. The winners will receive $3,000 and a plaque at the 2008 AAAS Annual Meeting in Boston in February.

"Informed reporting is essential if the public is to remain engaged with the crucial science issues of the day," said Alan I. Leshner, the AAAS Chief Executive Officer and Executive Publisher of the journal Science. "The awards this year honor truly excellent work, both in national media and in some enterprising local outlets."

The list of winners:

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Large Newspaper - Circulation of 100,000 or more
Kenneth Weiss and Usha Lee McFarling
Los Angeles Times
"Altered Oceans"
July 30, 2006 - Aug. 3, 2006

The series described how industrial society has been overdosing the oceans with nutrients that have promoted the growth of harmful algae and bacteria. Plastic wastes have created a plague of floating detritus with widespread impact on sea life. The series also discussed how carbon dioxide is entering the oceans at a rate of nearly 1 million tons an hour, raising the acidity of seawater and threatening entire species. Natalie Angier, a Pulitzer Prize- winning science writer for The New York Times, said that the series gives "specificity and geography, a sense of place, to a part of the world we terrestrial species too often consider amorphous and unknowable." She said the series shows "the sort of passionate rigor we rarely see in newspapers these days." Frank Roylance of the Baltimore Sun, called it "a most compelling series, ambitious, important and surprising in many aspects. The writing was first-rate, the enterprise impressive."

Small Newspaper - Circulation less than 100,000
Jennifer Frazer
Wyoming Tribune-Eagle
"Getting to the Bottom of Mysterious Elk Deaths"
Nov. 26, 2006 and Dec. 3, 2006

A rash of mysterious elk deaths in Wyoming in 2004 left scientists and game wardens wondering what had happened. Frazer described the steps by which researchers determined that a poisonous lichen was the likely cause. In a two-part series, Frazer also described efforts to save the remaining elk and help the species recover. Calling her series an example of "superb local science writing," Robert Lee Hotz of The Wall Street Journal said Frazer "opens a window into the mysteries of field epidemiology, turning a story of doomed elk into a page-turner of a lethal botany and the consequences of ecology." Guy Gugliotta, a freelance science writer formerly with The Washington Post, said the series was a "compelling narrative detective story that shows how science can be put at the service of a community and why it matters."

Magazine
Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman
New York
"How Not to Talk to Your Kids"
Feb. 19, 2007

According to a Columbia University survey, 85 percent of American parents think it is important to tell their children that they are smart, helping to ensure that they do not sell their talents short. But in a cover story in New York magazine, Bronson and Merryman described a growing body of research which suggests that giving kids the label "smart" does not prevent them from underperforming. Rather, it may actually be a cause of their underperformance. The story noted that the impulse to offer praise "has become a sort of panacea for the anxieties of modern parenting." Roylance called the story a "terrifically written exploration of a topic of interest to any parent." He said it was a "surprising, counter-intuitive treatment, well-sourced and well-grounded in the scientific literature." Robert Boyd, a science writer in the Washington Bureau of McClatchy newspapers, called it a "beautifully written story of substantial importance to legions of parents *valuable that it appeared in a magazine not known for science articles." He added that the story "reports actual scientific findings, not just pop-psychology generalities."

TELEVISION

Llewellyn Smith, Stephen Lyons
WGBH/NOVA
"Forgotten Genius"
Feb. 6, 2007

The grandson of Alabama slaves, African-American scientist Percy Julian overcame racial discrimination to become one of the leading chemists of the 20th century. The winning WGBH/NOVA program told his remarkable and largely unknown story. The program describes not only Julian's early struggles to open doors traditionally closed to blacks but also his keen sense for how to do science. His work with steroids and alkaloids helped bring about a host of affordable and effective treatments for diseases like rheumatoid arthritis and glaucoma. The judges praised the program for its insights into Julian's personality and its clear explanations of the science that Julian pursued during his career as an academic and industrial chemist. Peter Spotts, science writer for The Christian Science Monitor, called the program "a superb profile of a little-known scientist that covers the science well but also raises profound issues. Not just informative, but moving." Christine Dell'Amore, an editor at National Geographic News, said "the producers' determination to portray Julian as an authentic person, with his own faults, gave credence to the story and allowed the viewer to relate to Julian as he moved through his career."

RADIO

Keith Seinfeld
KPLU-FM, Seattle/Tacoma
"The Electric Brain"
Jan. 9-11, 2007

In a thematic series, Seinfeld of KPLU-FM in Seattle/Tacoma described the electrical properties of the human brain and how scientists are finding new ways to use those properties to treat diseases and injuries. The judges were impressed by his clear, concise language and great use of sound in telling about important research in neuroscience. "While a drill whines in the background, cutting a hole in the top of a patient's skull, Keith Seinfeld carries his listeners into the story," said Jeff Nesmith, a Washington-based science writer for Cox Newspapers. "This kind of radio journalism seizes a listener's attention while it delivers an understandable account of complicated science." David Baron, global development editor for Public Radio International's "The World" program, praised the "vividness of the writing, the clarity of the scientific explanations, the superb use of sound, the dramatic storytelling." He said Seinfeld's work "hangs together beautifully as a series, with each story building upon those that came before. Well conceived and brilliantly executed, 'The Electric Brain' is radio science journalism of the highest order."

ONLINE

Katie Alvord
KeweenawNow.com
"Lake Superior Basin Climate Change" series
May 3, 2007; June 3, 2007; June 30, 2007

In a solid example of localized science reporting for a community-based Web site, freelance writer Alvord described the potential local impacts of global warming on a local Michigan community. Kathy Sawyer, a freelance science writer formerly with The Washington Post, said Alvord's "well-crafted and enterprising online package 'zooms in' to capture the effects of global climate change" on Michigan's Keweenaw Peninsula. "The writing, supplemented by telling photos, provides specific, graphic detail for an audience that might not get from any other medium such extensive information about what's happening in their environs," Sawyer said. Bryn Nelson, a freelance science writer, said Alvord delivered a "compelling, accessible and well-reported analysis of how a global phenomenon could be intensely local for a community in Michigan' Upper Peninsula, including its possible impacts on winter recreation, tourism, Lake Superior's water levels and even the moose population on Isle Royale National Park. Alvord also included the necessary nuances to balance the potential dangers against the remaining uncertainties."

CHILDREN'S SCIENCE NEWS

Mona Chiang
Scholastic Science World
"A Whale of a Mystery"
Jan. 15, 2007

Chiang told her young readers about an investigation by scientists into the puzzling death of a North Atlantic right whale that was spotted drifting off the coast of Nova Scotia. She described various clues that the researchers followed in trying to determine the cause of death. They eventually concluded that a large, blunt object had hit the whale on one side. Catherine Hughes, a senior editor for National Geographic Kids magazine, said the story met all the criteria. "The mystery is an immediate draw for kids, as is the compelling species, the ever-popular whale," Hughes said. "The scientific process used to solve the mystery both teaches and holds readers' interest." Susan Milius, a reporter for Science News, said Chiang "showed scientific process in action with vivid details. What's not to love about decayed whale flesh oozing like toothpaste?"

Certificate of Merit
The judging panel recommended a special Certificate of Merit for the runner-up in the children's news category. Sina Loeschke, a writer for GEOlino - a German science magazine for children - wrote an engaging piece about sea slugs. "With lively, imaginative writing and colorful pictures, the story deftly introduces readers to these unusual ocean denizens and cogently explains their biological quirks," said John Carey of Business Week. Loeschke's piece was published on Feb. 7, 2007.

# # #

The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is the world's largest general scientific society, and publisher of the journal, Science (www.sciencemag.org). AAAS was founded in 1848, and has 262 affiliated societies and academies of science, serving 10 million individuals. Science has the largest paid circulation of any peer-reviewed general science journal in the world, with an estimated total readership of 1 million. The non-profit AAAS (www.aaas.org) is open to all and fulfills its mission to "advance science and serve society" through initiatives in science policy, international programs, science education and more. For the latest research news, log onto EurekAlert!, www.eurekalert.org, the premier science-news Web site, a service of AAAS.

Po on "On Point"

From Ash:

This morning, Po was on the NPR show On Point discussing our sleep pieces. Also guests were Dr. Judith Owens, of Brown University, and the new superintendent of schools for Edina, Ric Dressen.

I think it's a really great discussion of the issues we've been writing about.

You can download the audiofile from the On Point program information website.

Naps and Other Make-up Sleep

From Ash & Po:

A couple people have asked us about naps (for school-aged and older kids) and sleeping in – great questions we'd wondered, too.

If your kid is tired, then, by all means, let the kid sleep in or take a nap.

Let's kill the myth that sleeping in or napping is part of "lazy afternoon." Physiologically, you can't sleep unless you actually need to sleep. That's the homeostatic pressure part of sleep at work. So there's nothing lazy about getting needed sleep. (Conversely, being awake and sleep-deprived will probably lead to more lethargy than if he'd actually just slept more.)

Moreover, sleep loss is cumulative, so the only way to make up for it is to get more sleep on another night or during a nap.

But – and this is the big caveat – don't treat sleeping in or naps as a cure-all. Instead, they are the sleep-equivalent of band-aids. They shouldn't be something that you rely on, instead of having a kid get a regular nightly sleep schedule.

Here's why.

Sleeping in and naps do help resolve the sleep debt, but they probably won't resolve the debt entirely. As an example, let's say that a particular teen does need the 9.25 hours a night recommended by many sleep experts. But he only gets seven hours on school nights. On Monday, he's down 2.25 hours. That's not great, but we've all been there, right? By the end of the week, he's short 11.25 hours of sleep – he's missed more than an entire night's worth of slumber. Even sleeping in until noon on Saturday will probably only have helped erase two or three of those lost hours.

Much more daytime sleep than that, however, will likely throw off a kid's circadian rhythm and homeostatic pressure – so he'll may have more trouble going to sleep in the evenings, and wake up already sleep-deprived the next Monday morning. (That's even more of a concern for a teen, whose circadian system already has a preference for nighttime wakefulness.)

The amount and quality of sleep a person needs in a given night is directly related to the mental and physical activity that a person did during that very day. To the point that if you learn more vocabulary, you likely will spend more time in REM stage sleep. Make-up sleep can't handle those sleep stage adjustments as well.

Naps also bring unique problems of their own. That horrible groggy feeling after some naps is called "sleep inertia" – the body can't wake up fully. That's a real issue, but scientists don't know why it occurs or what it means.

What they do know is that the brain can't do the same sort of work during a nap that it does during nightly sleep. Consider that a nice nap is about 25 to 45 minutes. That's only 1/4 to 1/2 as long as it takes to cycle through all of sleep-stages of non-REM and REM sleep, and the brain needs to process information throughout all the stages of sleep.

Interestingly, a nap works best if it's prophylactic: if you know the kid's going to have a late night, then an afternoon nap can help him stay alert later in the evening. But even that is of limited use: he'll be just as tired the following day as if he hadn't had the nap.

Ultimately, let them get that make-up sleep.

But the more make-up sleep they need, the more you should think about changing their overall sleep schedule.

One Real Cost We All Pay For Sleep-Deprivation

From Ash:

There's one aspect of sleep deprivation for adults that I think is so important, that I really think that if this blog post could be forwarded around enough, it could help save lives.

A study for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reported that, between 1999 and 2003, drivers falling asleep at the wheel were responsible for an estimated 1.35 million car accidents.

Sleepy drivers are just as impaired in reaction times and judgment as drunk drivers – to the point that the experts can actually give you equivalent blood alcohol measurements depending on how much sleep deprivation you've had.

But that's just a "drowsy driver."

A driver who actually falls asleep is even more dangerous than the drunk driver. Because if she's asleep, she's never going to hit the brakes, turn the wheel, or take any evasive action. The car just keeps going forward until it runs into something. So a fall-asleep crash is almost always serious and rarely just a fender-bender. Statistically, "fall-asleep accidents" are actually much more deadly than other types of crashes.

As we wrote in an earlier post, young adults, who are the most sleep-deprived, are disproportionately responsible for sleep-related car accidents: young adults are involved in 55% of the 100,000 fall-asleep crashes annually, even though they aren't even close to being half of the driving population.

Now, if you just did the math and realized that the national studies' numbers aren't consistent, that's because the 100,000 accident rate is based on police reports. But the police determine that sleep was the culprit only when they've ruled out every other reason for the crash to have occurred. So, for example, they rule out weather, alcohol, mechanical failure, etc. until there's no other possible explanation than the driver fell asleep. Thus it's a low estimate.

The 200,000+ accident annual figure comes from a nationally representative survey that asked people about their driving habits and sleep-related crashes. Not surprisingly, drivers were more willing to confess to fall-asleep crashes to the researchers than they were willing to admit to the police.

That's the kind of question that usually has an artificially low response though – because people don't like to admit that they are to blame for an accident. So that too, is a low estimate.

So how big a problem is this, really?

A couple of the sleep experts privately told me that if the real figures were known, we'd discover that more young people die in fall-asleep crashes than drunk-driving accidents.

Sleep Is For Wusses – An Idea Kids Are Learning All Too Well

From Ash:

Between Po and myself, I think we have interviewed at least 20 of the world's sleep experts.

Every one of them complained that exhaustion is a huge national health-issue. And every one of them also railed against the way our society sees that exhaustion as a virtue.

Indeed, our 24-7 society doesn’t tolerate sleepiness. We don't think of sleep as a biological imperative. Instead, we think of it as a character flaw – a sign of weakness. University of Minnesota's Dr. Mark Mahowald says that he's even heard parents say that exhaustion is actually good for children – because it teaches them a good work-ethic. Continuing with this logic, the parents actually argue that getting enough sleep would actually be bad for children, because valuing sleep would teach kids to be lazy. If nothing else, they argue, sleep deprivation will prepare kids for the exhaustion they'll face as adults.

Perhaps most tellingly – these parents also say that if they're tired, then their kids should be, too.

That’s what it really comes down to. For adults, sleep has become a luxury good; it’s considered an indulgence, not a necessity. And I'll be the first to admit that I myself have had that point of view – I'm one of those "Sleep When You're Dead" girls. Even as I've slathered the concealer on, trying in vain to cover up the circles under my eyes, I've considered those dark shadows as badges of honor.

We sell a story to ourselves that Sleep is for Wusses. And apparently, our kids buy into it, too.

For the past several years, a childhood friend of mine, Bridget Persons, now a San Diego, California high school English teacher, has given her students a district-mandated final exam. The students are supposed to read a couple articles on teens’ need for sleep, and then they're to write a persuasive letter to the Board of Ed as whether or not school start times should be changed.

Bridget’s school starts at 7:15 am. To get there, many of her students are already on school buses at 6am.

Her students never miss the irony. They’re taking a 7:15 am final exam about how teens’ brains are still asleep at 7:15. Between the readings and their own experience, the students are convinced that there’s a problem. They feel passionately enough about it that they always get into a big discussion after the test.

But out of hundreds of student essays she’s read, Bridget says only one student ever asked for more than a scant 15 or 30 more minutes of sleep.

They have this gut instinct that (correctly) even just 15 minutes or so more would help a little.

The kids all want even more sleep than that – they feel it would make a real difference – but asking for more than that just isn't something they feel they can do. Practically, they just can’t figure out how to fit sleep into their busy lives. Their school is a performing arts magnet; rehearsals frequently last until 8 pm. Home at nine with homework to do, an extra hour of sleep is an extravagance well out of their reach.

I don't know what grades they are getting on those essays, but it's clear that they’ve already mastered society's lesson: The show must go on.

On the Question, "How Much Sleep Does My Child Actually Need?"

From Po:

You might notice that in both of our sleep articles, we never come out and say, "here's how much sleep your kids needs - X hours." I don't think there's an easy answer to this, and I don't like pretending there's an easy answer when in fact it's complicated. Perhaps I'm most worry of the simple advice line, "your 5th grader needs 10 hours of sleep," because I don't think merely telling people this nugget will have any affect at all. I might as well be telling people "you need 5 million dollars to be financially secure." That isn't going to help them get from point A to point B - from where we are today, to where we need to be. So I emphasized, in the article, how every 15 minutes counts, and how a single hour can have dramatic consequences. I'm hoping the integrity of that science will push parents and children to find 15 minutes more, or a half hour more.

For the record, here's a simple chart we made which shows the gap between "what kids need" and "what they get." It uses data from Dr. Fred Danner at the University of Kentucky.

According to the sleep scientists, one of most-common incorrect assumptions is that you could draw a straight line from how much sleep your 6 year old needs to how much sleep an adult needs, and plot kids along that slope by age. I.e., as kids get older, they don't need as much sleep. While there's some slope from age 6 to age 12, the sleep scientists say that all teenagers, ages 12-18, really need 9.2 hours sleep. Their brains are still developing up until about the age of 21 (during later teen years, their brains appear to be pruning away unnecessary synaptic connections in the prefontal cortex, and this seems to improve their judgment of risk). At the end of puberty, the "phase shift" of delayed melatonin ceases.

How do the sleep scientists know that kids need 9.2 hours? Well, here they make a crucial assumption. They assume the body and brain will wake up when they've had all the sleep it needs. So they say teens "need" 9.2 hours by having experiments where the kids sleep a ton for weeks before coming into the sleep clinic - so they're entirely rested - and then letting them sleep all their bodies want in the clinic. The teens slept over 9 hours. In fact, at that point the researchers did wake up many of the kids.

So that might be how much the body wants, but is it fair to say that's what the body/brain really, truly needs? The scientists believe so. On the other hand, it's also fair to ask "at what point do we see a steep dropoff in performance, due to less sleep?" Is there a tipping point? The answer appears to be that we see minor consequences for only getting 8 hours sleep, but we see major consequences for only getting 7 hours sleep. One study of over 3,000 students in two school districts in Ontario, Canada demonstrated this dynamic. We didn't include this study in our New York article because the data is literally too hard to explain in just a few words, and you'll see why. Basically, they asked kids if they felt sleepy in the morning. 73% of the kids felt sleepy from 8 am to 10 am. They were performing worse than the "not sleepy" kids, but only slightly worse, nothing alarming. However, there was an additional subgroup who still felt very sleepy from 10am to noon. This group had real problems, from decreased grades to missing school and sports, etc. The rate of "sleep consequences" skyrocketed up 46% to 220%, depending on the variable. They were also getting less sleep - under 7.5 hours.

None of this can be taken as a rule and applied to individual kids. Some people need more, some need less. In sleep clinics there are children getting 11 or 12 hours sleep, yet it's still not enough. And we all have heard stories about a few uniquely driven adults who seem to thrive on 5 hours sleep.

One of the most interesting sub-analyses is being done by Dr. Oskar Jenni in Zurich. He has some preliminary data which, in a strange way, confounds the odds that students who get A's average 15 more minutes than the B's, who in turn average 15 more minutes than the C's. Despite those overall odds still holding true, Jenni has noticed that many very-gifted children actually need less sleep. He theorizes that smarter people actually can sleep less, because they have more efficient sleep systems. The more they sleep, the better it is for them - but they can do more with less, compared to others. (Note: this is very preliminary and untested. Please do not use it to justify letting your gifted child stay up late.)