Book Commentary #1

How to Raise Kids Who Aren't Assholes

This is the first book commentary I have done here. I read a lot and I look forward to sharing my experience with many books over the coming weeks. Particularly on the topic of parenting, I’m relying on others’ experiences, having no first-hand education myself (only a few more weeks and this will change!). I titled this as a commentary because I don’t see it as a formal review, but rather a way to share my connection with a book.

The book I am writing about today is, How to Raise Kids Who Aren’t Assholes by Melinda Wenner Moyer. Like the books from Emily Oster (these will be future commentaries), Moyer uses scientific research to evaluate and suggest parenting strategies and styles. I like this paradigm because while anecdotes can be useful, high-quality science is more likely to impact my decision-making especially if the findings are counterintuitive or challenge my priors.

Moyer synthesizes the most robust scientific studies from some of the top researchers in psychology and social science while connecting findings to practical parenting tactics brilliantly. The book is incredibly well-referenced evidenced by the “notes” section having over 250 citations to articles and research studies.

The topics she explores include bullying, self-esteem, stereotyping, motivation, screen time, behavior modification, and many others. Alongside the fact-finding from academia, Moyer weaves in stories from her own life experience as a parent and those of her close ties. These examples ground the discussion in reality and often provide levity and disarm any expectations of parental perfection.

This is a book I plan to reread in a couple of years to refresh the concepts that cover later childhood development. Given that I can’t practice many of these tactics with a newborn, I’ll return to these ideas as I face them in my life.

I do want to talk about one specific idea from the book that I related to deeply from my own childhood. In grade school, I was one of the “smart kids.” I developed an expectation that I had to earn good grades without working particularly hard. This was both self-imposed as well as peer-encouraged. Things just kind of came easy to me for the most part academically. The first time I was blindsided with struggle was in high school chemistry. I remember taking the first exam and feeling a pit in my stomach as I answered the questions realizing that my general intuition and paying attention in class weren’t going to be enough to ace this test. When we got the results back a few days later, I was embarrassed to see that I had earned a “C.” C’s were not my style. I felt miserable and shaken by this abject failure. At the time, I thought that everyone would finally see that I wasn’t that smart and they wouldn’t like me anymore.

What I did after a few days of feeling bad about myself was to dedicate time outside of class to fill in my knowledge gaps and reinforce the concepts I hadn’t grasped. I spent more time studying chemistry than all other subjects combined. That effort paid off quickly. I improved my exam grades and participated enthusiastically in class. By the end of the term, I had earned an “A.” I was proud of the results I had achieved for the first time in my school career. Because it was hard and required a new level of effort and attention, the success was so much sweeter.

Now, to connect this story to Moyer’s book…She describes work from Carol Dweck that argues a strong benefit when parents highlight a child’s effort over natural ability or “smarts.” Dweck also describes a “growth mindset” in which ability can be improved versus an immutable “fixed mindset.”

In my chemistry class experience, by focusing on my innate ability (fixed mindset), I was setting myself up to take a blow to my self-esteem when I faced failure. Instead of my internal narrative being something like “Well I wasn’t prepared for how this material was going to be tested, I will change my studying strategy and do better next time,” it was more like, “Well you must not be as smart as everyone thinks you are; you’ve been uncovered as a fraud.” It was only when I embraced a growth mindset position that I could see how the setback actually enhanced my future learning and quickly became a positive experience. I have had the tendency my whole life to do things I know I could do well and make look easy. I don’t want to let people see me struggle. But, my greatest growth has occurred when I have overcome temporary difficulties and embraced the struggle.

If it isn’t obvious, I enjoyed this book a lot. The writing moved me along briskly and elicited strong thoughts and emotions as I considered my own experiences as a child and those that I will soon experience as a parent. Moyer also has a substack if you are interested in more of her work. I’m a new reader of her work and look forward to engaging with more of it.

If you have suggestions for books I should read in the future, please send them along!

One final note - as far as buying books, I am a hybrid purchaser. When I can, I like to purchase from The Painted Porch, an online bookshop with a physical presence in Bastrop, TX owned by author, Ryan Holiday. I also like to buy from Bookshop.org, an online bookshop that supports independent booksellers. With that said, I still order some books from Amazon, e-books on Kindle or Apple Books, or from the brick-and-mortar Barnes and Noble store in my area.

So long for now.

-Felix