Description: From the bestselling author of Hunt, Gather, Parent comes a revolutionary five-step guide--packed with practical, science-backed strategies--that shows you how to raise confident, happy kids while breaking the cycle of overdependence on screens and ultraprocessed foods.
"Dopamine Kids promises to wean families from two modern scourges: screens and ultraprocessed foods...in essence, promising a solution to the problems laid out by Jonathan Haidt in The Anxious Generation....On the other side, readers can discover lives full of authentic pleasure." --The New York Times When Dr. Michaeleen Doucleff decided to address her family's screen time and dependence on processed foods, she found that parenting advice around these products is woefully outdated, hinging on studies of dopamine that date back twenty to fifty years. But new research reveals that contrary to what we've been told, dopamine isn't the molecule of happiness and pleasure. Instead, dopamine gives us motivation, and can drive us to engage in activities that we don't actually enjoy--activities that can make us feel sad, lonely, anxious, and depressed. What works, Doucleff found, isn't depriving children of pleasure, but bringing more joy and pleasure back into their lives. Merging modern neuroscience and psychology with practical experience, Dopamine Kids is a five-step operating manual for habit remodeling that is tailored for parents and their children, shifting the power dynamic back to families. Instead of devices and foods controlling us, we can control them, retraining children's brains so they want and reach for activities and foods that leave them feeling good afterward. You'll learn how to: - Create boundaries around screens and ultraprocessed foods that not only work but that kids enjoy;- Replace screen time with equally enticing activities;
- Set up your routine, so that so that the healthy options become the default without negotiation or struggle;
- Celebrate your family's choices before, during, and after trying new hobbies, and, finally,
- Transform your home into a screen-free sanctuary that protects conversations, focus, sleep, and adventure. After reading Dopamine Kids, you will be empowered to create habits that genuinely fulfill your family's biological and emotional needs, to bring true satisfaction and purpose to their lives, and to improve their behavior, happiness, and confidence. The Anxious Generation alerted you to the danger of screens, but the demands of the twenty-first century require that you use them anyway. Dopamine Kids is your handbook for solving that fundamental problem of our times--and for teaching your kids to have a healthy relationship with technology and food.
Brief description: Michaeleen Doucleff, PhD, has reported on children's health for NPR's science desk for more than a decade. In 2015, she was part of the team that earned a George Foster Peabody Award for its coverage of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. She has a doctorate in chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley, and a bachelor of science from the California Institute of Technology. Before joining NPR, Doucleff completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the National Institutes of Health. She lives with her husband and daughter in Alpine, Texas, and is the author of the New York Times bestseller Hunt, Gather, Parent and Dopamine Kids.
Review Quotes: "Ms. Doucleff might be the biggest parenting expert you've never heard about. Hunt, Gather, Parent, published in 2021, has been translated into thirty-one languages. It has sold more than one million copies worldwide. . . . Dopamine Kids promises to wean families from two modern scourges: screens and ultraprocessed foods . . . in essence, promising a solution to the problems laid out by Jonathan Haidt in The Anxious Generation. . . . Ms. Doucleff promises that, on the other side, readers can discover lives full of authentic pleasure."
--Emi Nietfeld, The New York Times
--Pamela Druckerman, The New York Times Book Review "THIS IS THE PARENTING BOOK I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR!!! Smart, humbling, and revealing, Hunt, Gather, Parent should force a re-set of modern American parenting and return a healthier and happier childhood to both parents and children."
--Julie Lythcott-Haims, New York Times bestselling author of How to Raise an Adult and Real American "Parents: You don't have to go to kid birthday parties anymore! Or awkwardly straddle playground equipment! Or create chore charts! In her funny, honest, and practical book, Michaeleen Doucleff collects ancient wisdom that can restore sanity to parenting."
--Amanda Ripley, New York Times bestselling author of The Smartest Kids in the World and High Conflict "Deeply researched . . . [Doucleff] takes care to portray her subjects not as curiosities 'frozen in time, ' but instead as modern-day families who have held on to invaluable child-rearing techniques that likely date back tens of thousands of years."
--The Atlantic "Michaeleen Doucleff's Hunt, Gather, Parent breathes a gust of fresh air onto the parenting bookshelf. She gives us a whole new way of looking at raising kids, and it is so beautifully intuitive even as it runs counter to everything we have been taught as Western parents. I loved all the families she introduces us to, the landscapes she brings to life, and her honesty about her relationships with her own daughter. It really does take a village to raise a child, and it is pure joy to follow Michaeleen and Rosy from village to village seeing how it can be done. I can't wait to talk to other parents about this book."
--Angela C. Santomero, creator, head writer, and executive producer of Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood and Blue's Clues, and author of Radical Kindness and Preschool Clues