Tiger Parenting

Grizzly · Jan 28, 2011

There was a piece about it on the drive-home show of our local CBC radio station. It turned my stomach, so I wrote a letter...
 
/Peter Cook and Dudley Moore Break
"Ghastly business the war, ghastly. I was against it myself.
"I think we all were..."
"But I wrote a letter!"
/end Peter Cook and Dudley Moore Break
 
 
I anticipate that you will be receiving numerous letters on the topic of Tiger parenting. This method may work for some families, but frankly it leaves me cold. We have twin boys who have just finished their first semester at university and both are pulling A averages as scholarship students. This, without the aid of putting them out of doors until they finished their homework or holding ourselves up to them as models of what their behaviour or achievements should be, as seemed to be the case with the parents you interviewed. To paraphrase: “Because we excelled at math you should be able to.” There seemed to be a lot of “shoulds” in their language. I can recall one “should” in ours: 
 
<ul><li>“Whatever you choose to do in life you should be passionate about it.”</li>
</ul> 
We may have told our boys to always do their best, we may have encouraged them to work hard through a problem, but we never suggested that their worth was tied to achievement, theirs or ours. I think our culture often forgets that as parents our primary task is relatively straightforward:
 
<ul><li>Teach our children how to learn. That’s the real education</li>
<li>Teach our children how to be self-sufficient. </li>
<li>Keep them safe and healthy until they can assume responsibility for themselves.</li>
</ul> 
Whatever parenting style they choose, I think all parents need to remind themselves that it isn’t about them, it is about the children. As parents we preferred the model of gently leading, guiding or questioning rather than pushing, ordering, or demanding. Here I bear my hippy soul, but I think that we could all do with a dose of Kahlil Gibran. This is from his oft-quoted poem on children:
 
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts. 
You may house their bodies but not their souls, 
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. 
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you. 
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
 
There’s no manual to parenting, however much we may wish there was. A manual would certainly make parenting far easier, but no two children are alike, are they? The Tiger parenting method may work for some parents, may help some kids, but to hold it up as a model for all is, I think, the easy way out of our responsibilities as parents and is likely to be far more detrimental than helpful.

Grizzly · Jan 28, 2011

Then again, there's Tigger parenting. Two very different things. Very.

jebba · Jan 28, 2011

It was interesting, because I read that Tiger Mom excerpt from the Wall Street Journal the same week I read an article in the New Yorker about the psychology of happiness. The second piece talked about how we teach our children to be successful by objective measures (e.g. grades, schools, careers), but we don't necessarily teach them to make good decisions about how to be happy, whom to love, etc. 
 
I spent my entire academic career being concerned about my grades, my rank, etc. I don't want to do that to my kids. When we go to the parent teacher conference, I practice my two questions in my head so I don't ask questoins about her academic standing. The two questions are, "Is she learning what she's supposed to be learning?" "How is she doing socially"
 
I don't care if my kids go to fancy schools and get high test scores. It would be nice if they did, but I want them to be able to support themselves, be happy, and contribute to their communities.
 
We have a song at church that we sing to the children as they leave the sanctuary to go to their religious education classes:
 
May your mind be open to new learning.
May your lips bring truth into the world.
May your heart know love,
And your hands do the work of justice
As you go your way in peace.
 
Nothing in there about SAT scores in there.

Lincoln · Jan 28, 2011

You're both hippies!
 
We push our kids to do well in school, but we also push them to do well in sports and in being friends and in being daughters. The over-riding philosophy, since we're using quotes, is "Anything worth doing is worth doing well" and "We love you and are going to love you no matter how you do."
 
And yes, that first part may come from A League Of Their Own, but it's still good.

jebba · Jan 28, 2011

Lincoln, we say something similar. Most things worth doing take effort.

Mrtambalynman · Jan 28, 2011

That's a great letter Grizz. From what little I've heard about tiger parenting, it sounds akin to child abuse.

Grizzly · Jan 28, 2011

:Link, I think we may be in violent agreement. 
Tamb, the folks they interviewed sounded a tad harsh.

Grizzly · Jan 29, 2011

They read it. Cut the first sentence and everything after the "it's about the children".
 
My inbox overfloweth.

Lincoln · Jan 29, 2011

That's really cool, Grizz.

merigayle · Jan 30, 2011

I had actually read that the article about the Tiger parenting about the book about Tiger parenting (are you following this?) totally skewed the originally intent of the book and the original author was UNHAPPY with her upraising, but it got twisted to be this super great way to raise awesomely successful children. I do agree some of the tactics are akin to child abuse, emotional abuse for sure.
 
Like Jebba, i struggled my whole academic career with an A not being good enough and never feeling proud of my accomplishments, although I always excelled and beyond excelled in my studies. I blame my parents fully for this burden and the stress it caused me most of my childhood and early adulthood. They never were satisfied which made me never satisfied. The.e constant push was degrading. When I read the Tiger parenting article, i saw very little positive in that extreme.

Lincoln · Jan 31, 2011

Well, it's rare that there are positives in extremes. That's why they're extremes.

Tiger Parenting

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