Pages 300-330:
"Good things tend to go together. So do bad things. These are correlations. Educational psychologist Howard Gardner would have us believe that there are several different “intelligences” and that someone who was stinted on one might have gotten a generous helping of another. But the fact is that people who score low on tests of one kind of intelligence are also likely to score low on tests of other kinds. We are pleased when we hear about a child who is mentally retarded in most respects but who is a whiz at drawing or calculating: it appeals to our sense of fairness. But such cases are uncommon. Far more commonly, nature is unfair to mentally retarded children by giving them no talents and making them physically clumsy as well. That is why they compete in the Special Olympics instead of the regular Olympics. Good things tend to go together. People who score high on tests of one kind of intelligence are also likely to score high on tests of other kinds. The high score on one test doesn’t cause the high test on the others but there is a correlation between them."
"Typically, a patient comes into the psychotherapist’s office and complains that she (it’s more often a woman) is miserable. She talks to the therapist for a while and he decides it’s all the fault of the patient’s parents. They belittled her or smothered her or didn’t give her enough autonomy or made her feel guilty or sexually abused her. The therapist convinces the patient that whatever is wrong with her is not her fault, it’s the fault of her parents, and after a while she says, “Thank you very much, Doctor, I feel much better now.” The question that interests me is not the one about why the patient got better or if she really did get better; I’ll leave that to other writers. The question for me is: Why is the therapist so convinced it’s the parents’ fault? What does he see that makes him so sure?
First is the possibility that dysfunctional parents pass on their dysfunctional traits genetically. Psychotherapists don’t like this idea, perhaps because they think it means their patients’ problems are incurable.
Things that cause us distress or pleasure do not necessarily have the power to change our personalities or to make us mentally ill. Relationships mean a lot to us; parents are, without a doubt, important people in our lives. We care what they think of us. But that doesn’t make us putty in their hands. The fact that the patient feels strong emotions when she thinks about her parents is not evidence that they are responsible for whatever’s wrong with her."
"The Power of Parents to Choose Their Child’s Peers. It is the one power that nearly all parents have—the one way that they can determine the course of their child’s life. At least in the early years, they can determine who their child’s peers are.
You don’t have to do anything quite that drastic to have an effect on your child’s life. Just by moving to a different neighborhood, just by choosing your child’s school, you can change the course of a life. It’s a little scary, isn’t it?
On the whole, children learn more in schools that contain a higher proportion of smart kids; on the whole, children are less likely to get into trouble in neighborhoods where delinquency rates are low. But a kid with below-average intelligence might be rejected by his peers in a school where everyone else is above average. A kid from a poor home might be shunned in a place where everyone else is well-off.
If it were up to me, I would take the risk that my child might be rejected and put her or him into the best school I could find—a school with smart, hardworking kids. A school where no one makes fun of the one who reads books and makes A’s. Such schools do exist."
"The experiences of babies in traditional societies give us clues about what sort of environment the developing human brain was programmed to expect. Babies in these societies are not read to; they are not even talked to very much. They have plenty to look at and listen to, but every baby does. Although these babies learn very little during their two years in their mothers’ arms, that does not keep them from learning, when the time is ripe, all the things they need to know to become successful adults.
The reason why parents who read to their children have smarter children is that these are smarter parents. Their children are smarter because intelligence is partly inherited. If there were an environmental reason why parents who read to their children have smarter children, then we wouldn’t find a zero correlation in IQ between adult adoptive siblings reared by the same parents. There is no scientific basis for the belief that it is possible to make babies smarter by giving them fancy things to listen to or look at.
As for what you can do to influence your child’s personality, behavior, attitudes, and knowledge, I recognize that you might not be satisfied with my answer. Some people are not relieved to hear that they can stop blaming themselves for whatever they don’t like about their children. Some people find the news upsetting, especially if their kids are young. They want to feel that they can make a difference as parents. They want to feel that there is still something they can do to improve their child’s chances, some way they can change the things they don’t like about their child. If they work at it hard enough, surely there is something they can do! They have been sold a bill of goods. They have a right to feel cheated. Parenting does not match its widely publicized job description.
The idea that we can make our children turn out any way we want is an illusion. Give it up. Children are not empty canvases on which parents can paint their dreams. Don’t worry about what the advice-givers tell you. Love your kids because kids are lovable, not because you think they need it. Enjoy them."