Becoming Brilliant

What Science Tells Us About Raising Successful Children

By: Roberta Michnick Golinkoff, Kathy Hirsh-Pasek

Narrated by: Allyson Ryan

Length: 8 hrs and 51 mins

Publisher's summary

In just a few years, today's children and teens will forge careers that look nothing like those that were available to their parents or grandparents. While the US economy becomes ever more information-driven, our system of education seems stuck on the idea that "content is king", neglecting other skills that 21st century citizens sorely need.

Becoming Brilliant offers solutions that parents can implement right now. Backed by the latest scientific evidence, this book introduces the "6Cs": collaboration, communication, content, critical thinking, creative innovation, and confidence, along with ways parents can nurture their children's development in each area.

©2016 American Psychological Association (P)2017 Novel Audio Inc.

Brilliant evidence based book on emphasis of "creativity", and not to hinder children's natural growth.

I appreciate the fact that this book provided tremendous contemporary examples of people who took risk and allowed creativity.

For an helicopter mom like myself, it is eye opening to know that what I have been doing is setting up our children boundaries and for failure.

Creativity is so important, and open ended questions are so important in raising children.

I am so glad that I am stopped from my wrong track early enough to change the course of our children's upbringing.

If you are looking for a book on methods and tips on how tos. This is not the book for you. However it is an excellent book for you to have a greater vision on how you can foster and allow your children to become brilliant and confident beings.

Everyone Should Read This Book

The book is about child development and so much more. It speaks to Organization Development, Personal Development, and what needs to happen in Education for us to be prepared for the 21st Century, as well.

Absolutely Brilliant!

not much actual content

The book says that the 6Cs are important for succeeding in the 21st century and our current education is very far from this. Both pretty accurate statements. This is pretty much it.

Then the book goes into long, pointless repetition into all those skills... like creativity is important, they asked employers what they are looking for and they said creativity, schools do not teach creativity, creating is important, 21st jobs are not like in the past and they require creativity, if you are cars salesman you need to be creative since selling cars is now different and customers are more informed, creativity is really important, teaching to the test does not teach creativity, creativity is important, for example for <plug in profession X> because <plug in reason Y, but keep it to less than one sentence so we give many examples to proof creativity is important but make sure those examples do not add much to the conversations>, we strongly believe that in the 21st century creativity is important!

very informative

A very good overview of the current scientific understanding about how humans learn. Explained and reinforced what I observe as a preschool staff member. The authors describe what parents can do to develop and support their child's learning in ways that can be addressed by parents no matter their socioeconomic situation. Worthwhile reading for the parent committed to their child's education.

ECE/new mom here!

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

Definitely! I don't have a tonne of spare time so this was a great way to read the book but also get some other stuff around the house done.

What did you learn from Becoming Brilliant that you would use in your daily life?

The 6Cs make so much sense to me, as a mother, and as an Early Childhood Educator. I try to bring a lot of these concepts into my class, but it's good to see a specific structure with real examples.

So much filler!

The book has great concepts but it was excruciating to get through. So much filler and few distinct action items. Instead the book goes on and on and on with endless examples. I get it, examples help make the point, but really they were endless. A few would do. It’s like a realtor explaining the benefits of living indoors to someone who is already trying to buy a house!

The writer’s language and examples are dated too. Do I really need to be told what Wikipedia is? Think about your audience: probably people with young children who know what Wikipedia is!

I will try to find a pdf of the main points of the book because they do make sense. It was just hard to filter what those are with all the babbling on and on and on.

Loved it

A very interesting approach to education. It’s definitely missing the seventh element - and arguably the most important part - physical / kinesthetic intelligence, without mastery of which our children’s (and humankind’s in general) lives will be miserable. But because it doesn’t start with C - I guess it was left out. Otherwise - what a great book.

Roman
CEO, Splento

Great book!

Loved the book, amazing information to digest. Clear and loved the examples. I only wish the narrator would speed up, had to listen to it at a faster speed.

It's just orientative

was expecting more examples. it was a light listen. on hands book would be greatly appreciated.

Long winded

I found this to be long winded. There are other books I much prefer to this one. Cooperation and hands on learning are extremely important however I disagree with the book that facts are less important to learn. I believe they are equally important.

Good points but hard to get through & patronising

The book provides some good points about how to encourage children to develop but it can be quite hard to pick them out from amongst all the superfluous (and made up?) details. They hammer on about there being too much focus on content, and yet they reference hundreds of children's names for no reason other than to lend some sort of additional credibility to whatever point they're making at the time.