A review by hudd
The Orchid and the Dandelion: Why Some Children Struggle and How All Can Thrive by W. Thomas Boyce

3.0

These are more of my notes along the way so I can remember: I’m 1/3 of the way through... sometimes it gets pretty textbookish. Boyce goes into a lot of detail about how his studies are set up. I’m learning a lot of super interesting things though... 1 in 5 kids are orchids. Whether by birth or brought on by circumstances. And that 20% of children make up 50% of medical treatments for their age groups both physically and social emotional. Orchids in a negative environment typically have serious problems in the future but orchids that come from supportive low stress homes make up the most successful people. So their ceiling is way higher because of their sensitivity to their surroundings. Another really interesting thing was that orchids from a stable supportive home begin puberty later than the average but orchids that live with stressors will begin before avg. (Early puberty is linked to a lot of negative outcomes. Teenage pregnancies and early sexual activity in general) dandelions are just down the middle on everything, which is nice but have less likelihood of doing something groundbreaking or super successful. Just like an orchid, hard to grow, but when done successfully they are the most rare extreme beauties... last takeaways are: the orchid dandelion label is a spectrum. One could be a dandelion with some orchid tendencies or vice versa. Or one could be an extreme dandelion or orchid. The best thing a parent or teacher can do is create a stable, supportive, loving environment for the child to thrive.