Amy Chua, in her new book, unabashedly exalts the Tiger Mother’s approach to parenting: relentlessly insisting, demanding, and controlling the lives of her children. Rules, expectations, and not sugarcoating criticism: that’s what really works. She explicitly rebukes the focus on “self-esteem” which, to her, is the lamentable groupthink of modern life here in the West.
Frankly, I love the boldness, even despite its deliberate provocations, and I’d love for your book to spark a useful conversation about good parenting.
Her big point is that parenting in a chaotic world is a job that requires mom to focus fiercely and unapologetically on actively leading her children, and that Chinese mothers have an advantage: they display backbone and influence. emotional conferred by a 5000 year old. -old culture – rising again. Tiger Mom’s clear duty is to demand that her children navigate excellently in a cutthroat world they are moving through and shaping.
In my work, I particularly notice two parenting styles here in the US, neither of which would meet with Ms. Chua’s approval. One style is being so busy and overwhelmed that parents are barely functioning in your place well enough to maintain middle-class respectability: career, chores, cash flow, and the endless, fast-paced options. They are simply too busy, too exhausted, and too stressed to even try to butt heads with their kids over “things” like cell phones, TV, video games, and the Internet, let alone attitude, disrespect, and questionable peers. They’d be offended if called negligent, but they just wring their hands or cross their fingers in the hope that the kids don’t turn out to be what we all worry they’re turning into: shallow, selfish, thoughtless, and jobless.
The other type of parenting style is to be the fully engaged “helicopter” parent who flits around: picking up and dropping off the kids at school five days a week, fully choreographing extracurricular activities, worrying about friends, and also supervising the task. just like the completion of any other homework and school projects. They are pseudo-tiger mom. They have the energy, but they are not as confident in insisting on sustained effort and achievement, and they do not want to be totally controlling, for fear of damaging the child’s self-esteem.
I should also add that either style can produce parents who think that “being there” for their child automatically means being aggressively adversary of the school if you dare to discipline or give your child a low grade, an unintended consequence is the continuing and diminishing “authority” of the school.
My biggest problem, and the focus of my parenting training and consulting, is the absence of sober and clear parenting learning. Yes, some children need and thrive under close parental supervision, guidance, nudges, and ongoing involvement. If that’s what they need and what helps them, that’s much more important than staying late at work.
Other children need more flexible kidneys and less pressure, not micromanagement level control. But the parents of those kids still have to stay “on duty”: engaged, expecting, and therefore noticing whether those sluggish kidneys are getting results rather than being the cover for avoidance, underachievement, excuses, and the illusions. The obvious point is that children need what they need, not what parents want them to need, which only parents who are active learners discover. Children need the active participation of parents who send a strong message: we have expectations and we will be here with you for the long haul.
Finally, one of the most important expectations that parents should have of their children is that they behave well. Bad behavior at seven years old is No the sign of an artistic temperament or a free spirit. It is avoidance: rude, disruptive, not nice, not right, and most importantly, harmful to the child who is allowed to misbehave. There is plenty of time to develop individuality, later.
Acting up and sabotaging the school due to a fictional lack of self-control as the kid “being different” is not just wrong, it’s ridiculous.
Aside from the clearly unrealistic and provocative stuff that Amy Chua advocates, having expectations and keeping them up is crucial. You don’t have to be a Tiger Mom, but your son should know that he can’t outlive you, only wear you down. Manners, cooperation and effort should not be negotiable; It’s not that you’re going to yell and scream; it’s that he won’t let go until reasonable expectations of him are met.
One of my favorite quotes is: “Good parenting is hard, inept parenting makes everything even harder.”
