Image by Pexels from Pixabay

October 4th, 2021

Raising kids is a mix of art and science and likely always will be. In this new book, Melinda Moyer looks at the science side of the equation.

The author writes: "One of the core questions I had was, “How do I raise my kids to be generous and kind?” A lot of what we hear is about the importance of teaching giving and generosity. But the research I kept coming across stemmed from how we talk about feelings. That’s surprising—why would that have anything to do with how generous children would become?

It became clear that helping our kids understand their feelings gives them the capacity to understand others’ feelings and helps them make decisions to help their friends and be more generous toward them. This is part of something called theory of mind—how to understand others’ feelings. Research suggests that the more parents talk about their feelings and other peoples’, the more kids are likely to be generous and helpful."

I am going to distill this book down for you over the next few months and also do a book review with Docsmo in a month or so.

Stay tuned,

 

Dr. M

Scientific American