Saturday, February 12, 2011

Our Children Need Human Moms

Amy Chua's "Tiger Mom" article in the WSJ prompted this blog post.

I'm (an Asian/Indian) mom and there are some guiding principles of her parenting style that I totally agree with:
  • Nothing is fun until you're good at it (and I believe when you're good at something, the sense of achievement does wonders for your self-esteem)
  • As a parent, one of the worst things you can do for your child's self-esteem is to let them give up
  • The best way to protect ... children is by preparing them for the future, letting them see what they're capable of, and arming them with skills, work habits and inner confidence that no one can ever take away
That said -- I totally disagree with her ways of actioning these principles.

Every child does NOT have to be good at the violin, piano and math. Children have varied talents. Instead of forcing a child to be good at something that YOU the parent care about, figure out where your child's aptitude lies. It's not that hard -- expose your child to a variety of activities (including academic ones), watch the keenness with which he participates in them and *listen* to what he tells you about them. From personal experience, I can vouch for the fact that a child will enjoy the practice and challenge in subject matter that  aligns with aptitude.

If your child is involved in an activity that isn't working -- *help* him ease out of it, without letting him feel that he isn't "good enough" for it.

If you are able to discover the aptitude of your children and help them get good at it -- then you are truly preparing them for the future, letting them see what they're capable of, and arming them with skills, work habits and inner confidence that no one can ever take away.

Let tiger moms bring up tiger cubs. Human children need human moms :-)

P.S.: Quora has an interesting discussion of Amy Chua's article.

1 comment:

  1. The problem arises when we have tiger moms with human kids or human moms with tiger kids.
    I see tiger moms (and grand moms) pushing dis-interested kids (and at time these are very young kids) to activities they don't like, and quite often away from what they are interested in (I know of parents discouraging kids from reading.... why? it's not textbook... kid wont get marks for reading this!!!). How will this child be when she/he grows up is anyone's guess.
    And there are very capable kids..... with disinterested parents. Here is where the bigger shame is - of lost potential, especially when the mothers have the time and resources to raise a tiger cub.

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