Name: How children succeed
ISBN: 9780544104402

How children succeed

Why do some children succeed while others fail? The story we usually tell about childhood and success is the one about intelligence: success comes to those who score highest on tests, from preschool admissions to SATs. But in this book the author argues that the qualities that matter most have more to do with character: skills like perseverance, curiosity, conscientiousness, optimism, and self-control. The book introduces us to a new generation of researchers and educators who, for the first time, are using the tools of science to peel back the mysteries of character. Through their stories, and the stories of the children they are trying to help, the author traces the links between childhood stress and life success. He uncovers the surprising ways in which parents do, and do not, prepare their children for adulthood. And he provides us with new insights into how to help children growing up in poverty. Early adversity, scientists have come to understand, can not only affect the conditions of children's lives, it can alter the physical development of their brains as well. But now educators and doctors around the country are using that knowledge to develop innovative interventions that allow children to overcome the constraints of poverty. And with the help of these new strategies, as the author's reporting makes clear, children who grow up in the most painful circumstances can go on to achieve amazing things.

What Hacker News says

rahimnathwaniDec 2022

The book How Children Succeed may be good for anyone interested in more about executive function and character education.

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MarkMcSep 2019

"Their high school grades had turned out to be much better predictors of their academic ability and college potential than their SAT scores."

I have to admit I'm surprised by this, but it seems to be backed up by research: "As SAT scores are a more consistent indicator of aptitude, one might expect them to better predict a student’s chances of graduating college than high school GPA. But Chingos’ research shows exactly the opposite." [0]

By the way, I enjoyed reading Paul Tough's previous book "How Children Succeed" - if you are curious, here is a great excerpt from that book: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5721868

[0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/prestoncooper2/2018/06/11/what-...

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MarkMcJul 2019

Paul Tough's book, "How Children Succeed" [1] has a great section on how mother rats (called dams) can significantly counteract the stress of their offspring (called pups):

"Scientists in rat labs are always picking up baby rats to examine them or weigh them, and one day about ten years ago, researchers in Meaney’s lab noticed a curious thing: When they put the pups back in the cages after handling them, some dams would scurry over and spend a few minutes licking and grooming their pups. Others would just ignore them. When the researchers examined the rat pups, they discovered that this seemingly insignificant practice had a distinct physiological effect. When a lab assistant handled a rat pup, researchers found, it produced anxiety, a flood of stress hormones, in the pup. The dam’s licking and grooming counteracted that anxiety and calmed down that surge of hormones.

Meaney and his researchers were intrigued, and they wanted to learn more about how licking and grooming worked and what kind of effect it had on the pups. So they kept watching the rats, spending long days and nights with their faces pressed up against the Plexiglas, and after many weeks of careful observation, they made an additional discovery: different mother rats had different patterns of licking and grooming, even in the absence of their pups' being handled. So Meaney’s team undertook a new experiment, with a new set of dams, to try to quantify these patterns. This time, they didn’t handle any of the pups. They just closely observed each cage, an hour at a time, eight sessions a day, for the first ten days of the pups' lives. Researchers counted every instance of maternal licking and grooming. And after ten days, they divided the dams into two categories: the ones that licked and groomed a lot, which they labeled high LG, and the ones that licked and groomed a little, which they labeled low LG.

...

The researchers ran test after test, and on each one, the high-LG offspring excelled: They were better at mazes. They were more social. They were more curious. They were less aggressive. They had more self-control. They were healthier. They lived longer. Meaney and his researchers were astounded. What seemed like a tiny variation in early mothering style, so small that decades of researchers hadn’t noticed it, created huge behavioral differences in mature rats, months after the licking and grooming had taken place. And the effect wasn't just behavioral; it was biological too. When Meaney’s researchers examined the brains of the adult rats, they found significant differences in the stress-response systems of the high—LG and low-LG rats, including big variations in the size and shape and complexity of the parts of the brain that regulated stress."

[1] http://www.amazon.com/How-Children-Succeed-Curiosity-Charact...

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mikeleeorgMay 2018

The book "How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character" by Paul Tough is a nice primer on this topic. The book includes findings from the ACE (Adverse Childhood Experiences) study [1] that points at a link between adverse childhood experiences childhood trauma with health and social problems later in life.

Of course, growing up in poverty doesn't automatically mean you'll have a higher ACE level, nor does it mean you cannot change your outcomes, but it does tend to offer more traumatic experiences than children outside of poverty.

[1] https://www.samhsa.gov/capt/practicing-effective-prevention/...

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resdntalienJun 2015

Most of the books suck and aren't worth reading. The best perspective is this book called "How Children Succeed". Basically focus on the big things -- teach grit, curiosity, self-control, etc. That took alot of the stress out of everything and allowed me to focus on what mattered. The "Conscious Parent" was a good one too -- again focus on the everyday and don't be a helicopter parent is the message there. Lastly as more of a straight up playbook we read one of those French parenting books, "Bringing up Bebe" -- totally helped with toddler eating. What you expect when you're expecting -- throw it in the garbage.

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caminanteNov 2014

You're right and the article eventually gets to that but not before using some socioeconomic sizzle.

To recap, the article opens with a URM female getting shell-shocked in her first semester. She's overwhelmed and sinking. The author then jumps into broad socioeconomic analysis of outcomes. Fast forward 23 pages (!!!) in the article, and a re-direction to the actual success factors (Grit™)...you learn that she made it through the fall with a B+ in Stat and a reasonable 3.0 freshman GPA. I'm happy she turned the corner, but I...felt misled >_<.

Though I really enjoyed Paul Tough's book How Children Succeed, I take issue with his claim:

It is only students facing the particular fears and anxieties and experiences of exclusion that come with being a minority — whether by race or by class — who are susceptible to this problem. Those students often misinterpret temporary setbacks as a permanent indication that they can’t succeed or don’t belong at U.T.

It's not limited to minorities and women...UT's no joke -- like many colleges. The honors programs (there are many at UT) are lights out. It's a humbling experience, and it's not surprising to hear that the article's poster-child, who "never had to study for math tests [in high school and] aced them all without really trying" got pooped on freshman year. I don't have the numbers but plenty of kids, regardless of URM status, got/get their bell rung in UT freshman courses.

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