Wise Parenting

The New York Times ran an excerpt from a book by author Amy Chua an American Chinese who is a professor in Yale Law School. The book is titled "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother" and the article in the NY Times drew thousands of comments. The Singapore ST also ran the article and today Lee Wei Ling gave her views based on her own upbringing and that of her siblings.

If you have not read the article, in a nutshell, the author views the Chinese parents' rigid way of upbringing as more effective compared to the liberal Western style of parenting. She is refering to the very focused style of parenting to drive the children to be successful and to develop their potentials. She opines that only with success can the child gain confidence which will then result in the child becoming interested in that field. She quoted as an example her own way of using all kinds of threats, screams and draconian regime to get her younger daughter to master a piano piece (including threatening to donate her favourite doll house to the Salvation Army). With great perserverance on her part (which such draconian measures call for)the child overcame her initial resistance and miraculously managed the very difficult piece one day after hours and hours of enforced practice. Since then the child believes in her own talent and has much more interest in music.

Apparently Amy Chua received loads of comments about how wrong she can be (although there were also many Westerners who supported her style and admitted to the ineffectiveness of being too liberal with their kids). One American Chinese young lady described how her elder sister (who was the dream child of every Chinese American mother ie. entered Harvard, went into consulting, married a doctor) killed herself. Again this may be just a rare case amongst a host of successful cases although statistics do show that Asian American females have one of the highest suicide rate in US.

Lee Wei Ling in her article alluded to the need for each parent to decide whether the child needs pushing and how much of it. She used the example of her own mother who was wise to observe that Lee Wei Ling was so strongly self-motivated that she did not need that extra regimentation. Instead her parents encouraged her to develop more areas of interest apart from academics. Her mother allowed her and her siblings a free rein to pursue their own interests, but then one must realise this family is very self motivated to say the least. However she concluded that her achievement orientated personality often causes her to be filled with angst.

I can not agree more with her that to be a wise parent one has to understand what the child needs. As a school counsellor I have encountered several students who lose interest in class because they simply can not follow; and this is due to the lack of coaching and supervision from parents. Sad to say this is common with many Malay families who place less pressure on their children to complete their homework and also fail to supervise their children in their studies. When the children perform poorly in school they lose self esteem and needless to say encounter host of problems as a result.

I must however admit I am also far from being wise in parenting. I remembered when my daughter was in primary school she asked me why I never gave her assessment books to work on. I was really dumb and failed to see that she was a very achievement oriented child. Having read widely on child upbringing books written by Westerners I subscribed to things like never put your child down, a bit like how Amy Chua describes that a Western parent will be happy with an A minus. In an honest and frank exchange with my daughter some time back, she compared herself with the way her American born Asian classmates were brought up. She felt that she could have benefitted more from the "Tiger Mother's" consistent rant of "You Can Do It". I honestly think so too.

I was discussing the article with my husband yesterday. We talked about how unwise we have been. My husband thinks I can make amends now. I have to be very very very strict and rigid from now on with our daughter; and the mandate and fierce instruction is "To get married and have children". You see just like Amy Chua's daughter who discovers her interest in piano after mastering it, so will our young people discover the joys of family and children after being forced to get married. dui ma?