I also know that kids with fetal alcohol syndrome and fetal alcohol effect have a really hard time connecting cause and effect–which makes learning from mistakes a pretty tough thing to do.

One of the struggles that I have faced as an adoptive parent, and have found to be common to other adoptive parents, is being blamed for all the probloems, regardless whether they have their roots in things that you have nothing to do with. So, yes, good parenting makes a difference, but sometimes just not enough difference. Sometimes there is stuff that cannot be fixed.

“One of the strongest and most counterintuitive findings in this nascent field is that children with a sweet temperament, which is under strong genetic control, are the least likely to emulate their parents and absorb the lessons they teach, while fussy kids are the most likely to do so. Fussy children have a hypersensitive nervous system that is keenly attuned to its surroundings—including what Mom and Dad do and say.”

In college I was part of a fellowship group. There was one girl, who had a tendency to say yes to anything the leader said (very sweet person, not confrontational or argumentative), but then went ahead and did her own thing anyway. I on the other hand argued a lot and didn’t just go with the flow (I’m sure I tried her patience at various moments!), but did take to heart what the leader was saying. The leader did say that she appreciated the fact that she knew I was really listening to her.

Of course not all sweet kids are like the girl in my fellowship group, but I imagine that a number of them are (ooh, we’re all different! alert the presses! *grin*). Of course parents should learn to discern between the two. My parents always refer to my brother as the good kid because he was so sweet, social, and uncomplaining as a youngster. On the flip side, he turned out to be more susceptible to peer pressure, the one who started smoking and drinking and getting moving violations and poor grades.

Yeah, I know, the plural of anecdote is not data.

What is the larger thrust of this type of research?

It’s goal is to negate human free will – and therefore it is part of the Gramscian attack on Western notions of personal choice, responsibility, and morality.

We have seen similar false assertions about the genetically determined nature of male/female/homosexual behavior, addiction, violence, temperament, and intelligence – all of them straining to uproot the notion that we humans can chart our own course in life, that we can choose how to act, learn and change.

When one finally looks at the scientific evidence, one always sees a much more complex picture – one in which genetic factors influence, but do not determine, behavior. Yet that’s not how the media reports it.

http://www.amazon.com/What-You-Change-Cant-Self-Improvement/dp/1400078407/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1219015345&sr=8-1

The author has other interesting books as well.

And here is a short video to get an overview of his work:

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/martin_seligman_on_the_state_of_psychology.html

And if you haven’t browsed TED, I highly recommend it!

There are a wide variety of parenting techniques that all have their benefits and drawbacks.

What works with one kid, might not work with another. What works with young kids, might backfire with the same kid when they hit their teenage years.

The way I figure it, their are a range of good parenting techniques about a mile wide. With some kids, anything in that range will work, with others only a sliver of those techniques will work. Here is the catch though, you only find out what worked after the fact.

Most kids are brought up by their genetic parents. Therefore this proposed survey can’t distinguish between genetic influences on personality and parental influences on personality. First thing to do to test the hypothesis at question is to look at the relationship between adopted kids and their adoptive parents’ life outcomes.

The other thing that jumps out from your proposed design is that some independent measure of parental outcomes would be good.

And the idea that a particular genetic difference will result in a particular behavioral change is a bit suspect. While genetics no doubt influences outcomes, there is a long and complex relationship between them. Brains are plastic, not static, which means that they are not built at birth, but rather, grow from a seed.

But all of that said, let’s take these results at face value. Let’s suppose that (among other things) children with fewer dopamine receptors are less able to learn from mistakes. Then it would follow that there *are* learning styles, as Howard Gardiner suggested. That, some children – such as these – do not learn as well by doing (trial and error), but rather, by hearing (being told).

Contra people like Willingham – http://www.hoover.org/publications/ednext/3261311.html – it would be the case that the way we learn influences what we can learn. It is not simply the case that there are different kinds of knowledge (linguistic, musical, interpersonal, etc.) but that these are also different ways to learn, that would correspond with these forms of knowledge.

And if this is the case, then it follows that the idea that there is a single way to teach children – and, indeed, a single way to test them – is absurd. Children with fewer dopamine receptors, say, may have the same knowledge as other children – that ‘Paris is the capital of France’, say – but it would be unreasonable to attempt to teach this knowledge to them in the same way, nor to test them for this knowledge in the same way,

What we learn and how we learn are influenced by a wide range of factors. The child’s genetic structure is one of these factors, and rapidly becoming one of the easiest to detect. The nutrition a child receives, pre- and post-natal, is another factor. The child’s exposure to varied environments, including the provision of role models and exemplars to follow, is another.

All of these have an impact on what we should teach and how we should teach it. Supposing that any single intervention – small schools, quality teachers, phonics – will resolve an education deficit is absurd and irresponsible.

The only effective intervention is also the most difficult – across the board improvements in a child’s social and physical environment (good nutrition, quality experiences, positive social connection) along with personalized learning programs designed address the child’s strengths (in both learning domain and learning methodology) where possible and weaknesses where necessary.

Go to any decent college and ask the kids there questions about their parents, then go to any jail and ask the prisoners the same questions. I think in most cases, not all, their answers will be very different.