How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character

I loved the honest look at where the children that our society looks down upon come from. I loved that Mr. Tough explored what really goes on in our country and how we can fix it. As a child that grew up like most of the children in Paul Tough's book, it was a real wake up call as to how I can be a better mother to my children, so they are ahead of the game and that they have the skills necessary not only to survive, but thrive throughout their whole lives. It's a great book and one that I think everyone should read at least once.

Read the book.

I am not sure it was worth my time, to be honest. While there were some interesting tidbits and I generally agree with the book's premise, I think there are better books on a similar topic. I enjoyed Brain Rules for Baby more. This book is written by a journalist rather than a scientist or doctor and it shows. He clearly put a lot of time and effort in the book and it is loaded with interesting anecdotes, but I would have rather heard a book based in more science and data.

More studies and research and less personal stories.

I thought the narration was certainly adequate.

I think it reminded me that I should emphasize perseverance more to my children as they grow up.

This book raises some key points about what attributes in children predict success in adult life, and they are not what we tend to expect (name, not IQ). But it is also a somewhat scattered and unfocused book, sort of a sampling or anecdotes on the central theme. It spends a lot of time on the personalities and situations of the specific teachers, students, and researchers in the stories rather than driving home the central idea.

This is not really a parenting how-to book, and it tends to focus on older children, about age 10 or above. It is also not really a scientific book. It tends to feel more like journalism, maybe a very long article from a magazine.

although not a long book, it's long for what is in here, which is a rehash of many of the same experiemnts that are in lots of other similar books. In addition, there is little helpful here....yes, children who can postpone eating a marshmellow do better than those who can't, and this may be even more important predictor than intelligence, but as a father of several young kids, the key question remains....WHY do some kids have better self control and is this inherited or a changeable/teachable trait. No answers there. And the author even contradicts himself at the end, stating that "urturing" is important at an early age but that later one needs to balance being demanding vs. nurturing. Well, yeah, that's pretty much why parenting is so hard in a nutshell.

narration is adequate.

How Children Succeed by Paul Tough will force you to think about pressure we put on teachers to educate in the classroom when a host of determinate factors outside of the classroom may be more apt to tell whether a child "succeeds."

In what I can only describe as a Gladwellian analysis of characteristics of successful children, Tough goes far beyond the classroom and uncovers the necessity of harder to measure factors such as "Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character."

This book presents a necessary perspective to understand how we must change our approach from simply the education of a child, to a more holistic approach of "child development" that creates intuitive pathways to develop things like care, character, drive, and determination even in the midst of often bleak economic and social circumstances.

I highly recommend this book.

Paul Tough pulls together interesting research that highlights the power of non-cognitive abilities to improve educational outcomes. In addition to persuasive scientific evidence of how learnable character traits can boost achievement, Tough also supports the science with real life stories of children that have overcome enormous hurdles.

This is a simply told story that will keep your attention. It isn't pretentious in any way and the writing is accessible even when describing complex science.

If there is any flaw with this book it is that the conclusion feels flimsy. Tough spins a wonderful tale of how children beat the odds, but his idea that these findings somehow invalidate the school reform movement's focus on teacher quality and school-based interventions is off course. Focusing on poverty interventions outside of schools while also focusing on classrooms are not exclusive. It almost seems that Tough is unaware that he was making a welfare reform argument rather than school reform. And that is where his insights fall down. Even has he goes to great lengths to defend schools, he has very little grace with the human services sector.

The narration is great except for one major flaw. When a seemingly white sounding man adopts the accents of what is supposed to be inner-city black females - trouble ensues. At first it was funny. Then it was not.

I loved this book and recommended it to my co-workers. It was very inspiring and as an educator it gave me hope. It was current, relevant and full of ideas on how we can help are challanging disadvantgaged students with our everyday practices. It was easy to listen too and the stories of real people were engaging. I found it hard to stop listening and get out of the car and go into work.

I was expecting more of a point by point guide to raising kids to have "grit" rather than an exhaustive explanation of the psychology behind the topic. I experienced it as very technical reading that would perhaps appeal more to people in the field of education or psychology rather than parents. It referred time and again to many of the people one always reads about when reading about the field of positive psychology. While interesting, the stories used as examples were related dryly and were too long.There was a lot of information and clearly a lot of research done here, but it didn't translate well and became laborious to push through. The chapters and sections were randomly defined and erratic in their sequencing which was disorienting in the context of an audiobook.

No, but I will hesitate when thinking about picking up another book by this author.

The narrator was sub-par. His affectations of the "voices" and accents of the people from the case studies were presumptive and cloying. He put on what he interpreted as the voice of people in certain socio-economic circumstances while I bet he never met any of the people referred to in the book in order to actually know how they sounded...how does he know they spoke like that? The affectations were patronizing, and I imagine will offend some. At the very least they detract from the subject matter.

Was hoping for something more energetic and engaging, after hearing the TED talk by Ms. Duckworth, which was referenced many times in this book. Disappointed.

It has some good anecdotes and supporting tales, but I was expecting more guidance as a parent. Look for it to be entertaining and well written with relevant stories, but not as a parental guide on "How Children Succeed". Also, it was read fairly slowly - this was the first audiobook I listened to at 1 and 1/2 speed for the book's entirety. Performance was fine, just slower than I wanted.

Best - focusing on what people can do in regards to teaching character development in schools
Least - don't go off on tangents. Are we focusing on character development, or poverty?

The case studies were good but what can we learn from them? Seemed more like storytelling.

Stop. Mimicking. Characters. He would use a different voice for the students he talked about which was extremely distracting.

I wouldn't mind a documentary version of this because of how many different stories there were.

Overall a bit disappointed in the book. I suggest getting the 30 minute summary