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Raising kids is no easy feat. Ask any parent.

They don’t come with directions. Often, it’s only instinct. And like playing a high-stakes game of Twister, you stumble and fall as often as you get what I call The Look, The Grumble or The Conversation full of exclamation marks about, well, everything.

Read “NurtureShock,” the bestselling book from writers Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman , and you’ll realize you got some things all wrong.

But you’re far from alone.

Parents and teachers at Canterbury School, a private Episcopal school in Greensboro, read “NurtureShock” as part of a school-wide read, and they’re bringing in Bronson later this week to talk about it.

You can bet the questions will come. The word “nurture shock” means the panic parents feel when that mystical, magical fountain of knowledge about raising kids doesn’t kick in.

All parents know that.

“NurtureShock” is no manual. It’s full of family anecdotes and the science of the brain. For three years, Bronson and Merryman dug into dozens of studies and found out how children and teens react to race, praise, lying, arguing and the lack of sleep.

So, to pluck a phrase tossed out by Bronson and Merryman in their text, let’s unpack some of what they mean:

• General praise can backfire and lead to image-conscious kids who won’t take risks.
• The more diverse a school, the more segregated its students.
• In an attempt to promote truthfulness, parents end up encouraging kids to be better liars.
• And the teen brain in a nutshell — fearless to jumping off roofs but terrified of having its love of Nickelback exposed. And if they argue with you, be happy. It’s a sign of respect.

“I know it’s science, I know it’s human development, I know it’s kids,” said Bronson, a 45-year-old father of two , “but it’s fun to tell stories and show how all this conventional wisdom gets it all wrong.”

It’s sure been the talk at Karen Smith’s dinner table.

“Mom,” said her 14-year-old son Cole. “You need to quit reading that book.”

“Well,” responded Karen, the 50-year-old mother of two. “I think we should get more sleep and see what happens and see how much better we all feel.”

In the 327-page world of “NurtureShock,” sleep matters. It’s not just about improving test scores and finding emotional stability. The lack of sleep also is linked to the rise in obesity and attention-deficit disorder.

Mary Ann Waterstradt feels vindicated. She has taught second grade at Canterbury for 17 years, and for 17 years, she’s called the houses of her students to make sure they were in bed by 8:30 p.m.

It worked.

But Waterstradt also feels vindicated about what else she found from “NurtureShock” in her classroom: praise-proud children leery of risks and hovering parents helping their children a little too much.

“I had a parent of a younger child come in after school started one day and said, 'Oh, she forgot another thing,’ and I told him, 'By you coming back, you’re not teaching your child to be responsible,’” Waterstradt said.

“Why do parents have to read a book to get that?”

Lucy Sackett did. She has three daughters at Canterbury, and on weekday mornings, they wrangle over carpool seats. They also tug over the patchwork quilt made by Nana , their maternal grandmother.

Sackett used to get annoyed. Now, after reading “NurtureShock,” she’s begun to understand.

So has Burns Jones, Canterbury’s headmaster. It’s all about the yellow apple.

His 4-year-old son Wyatt brought home a yellow apple from preschool. The yellow apple is a sign to parents that something went a little wrong that day. So, Jones would ask.

But after reading “NurtureShock,” he asked in a different way. “You know, it would really make us happy if you would tell the truth,” Jones told his son. Wyatt told his dad about being loud and running in class.

Wyatt got it, the value of honesty, something Bronson believes children today don’t get enough.

“Ultimately, science does have some wisdom to help us make better future citizens,” he says. “One child at a time.”

Contact Jeri Rowe at 373-7374 or jeri.rowe@news-record.com