Not In Your Genes

The book’s title and subtitle live up to the content of the book. In which Dr Oliver James provides numerous examples, and studies proving why it is not our genes that make us like our parents. But the way our parents treat or maltreat us as children.

Using Peaches Geldof as one of his examples (comparing her and her mother in detail) supported with numerous studies which truly opens your eyes to how much we as parents continue the intergenerational transmission of our traits and disorders which essential makes our children like use nurture not nature and which sadly lead to Peach’s Geldof committing suicide just like her mother Pauline Yates.

He goes on to illustrate in detail how it was due to Tiger Woods fathers own desires that Tiger became the world’s youngest winner of the masters at 21 years old in 1997, not because Tiger was natural gifted in the area of golf, but the sheer magnitude of his fathers desire, which was supported by Tigers mother. Allowing Tiger to clock up way over 10,000 hours principle 0rule that holds that 10,000 hours of “deliberate practice” are needed to become world-class in any field.

He highlights the downside of Tiger Woods becoming a child prodigy, which has become evident in resent years in his personal life.

An interesting and enlightening read especially for us as parents as it demonstrates that our children are a direct result of our parenting not genes. So we therefore have the ability to make our children well rounded, stable, healthy, world citizens. But we must first take a deep look at ourselves (which is sometimes hard to do).

“it is in our hands, not our genes, to pass something different and better on  to your offspring”.