"Your Brain on Childhood" novel

The novel Your Brain on Childhood: The Unexpected Side Effects of Classrooms, Ballparks, Family Rooms, and the Minivan was written by Gabrielle Principle. She is a professor at Urisnus College and the story explores the downside of a so-called normal childhood in today’s society. It confronts the way that parents in today’s society raise their children. Parents seem to try and teach their children with television programs, in the hopes that their child will become more mature and possibly more intelligent at a faster rate. In their later stages, parents push them into doing things such as, piano lessons or baseball practices simply because they believe that the brain will develop faster. Today’s society views the development of the brain as a race, when it is not. The brain must develop in its own way in its own time. It does not need all of the excess things to try and accelerate the development. This novel seems interesting because the author, Gabrielle Principle, tries to demonstrate how the childhood process could be naturalized, allowing brain development to occur at its own pace. I think that this would be an interesting story to read because it could open your eyes to something you don’t necessarily notice normally. We see the progression of society and technology as good advancements, but this novel could suggest that those advancements could be having a negative affect on the development of the brain in children. Maybe the author’s message is that children should not be forced to develop faster than their body wants to. We should just let the process of brain development occur as naturally as possible.