Reading Tiger Mom

Amy Chua’s Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother is an unbelievably easy read!  I was amazed by her candidness and relentness pursuit to perfection for her daughters. 

To be honest, my purpose of reading the book was to find out what trick and bargains she utilized to get her daughters to do whatever she wants, but as it turns out, she had her failures too while upholding one method.

My take away is that it does take two palms to make a clap; one way parental pushing will not work if  the child does not cooperate (in the case of Sophia).  For those parents that are so proud of their children’s success, consider that they are blessed with the luck element or the obedience character of their children.

As for the second child Lulu, I think although giving up violin seemed to be an ultimate failure on Amy, she had been successfully planted the seed of “no pain no gain” in her daughter’s mind.  I believe had Lulu not gone through the painful and lengthy practice regiment with violin before, she wouldn’t understand and be willing to devote so much effort into tennis practice on her own calling.  Overall, I think Amy’s failure is not able to get her daughter’s buy-in on a common goal; instead, she just shoved her own violin dream down Lulu’s throat.  To put it to my own practice, I agree that “nothing is fun until you are good at it”, but involving the child to select a common goal is an important first step before enforcing strict practice rules.

My favorite chapter is “The Birthday Card.”  Amy unconventionally rejected her daughters’ doodled birthday cards and demanded better efforts.  What a great inspiration to me!  The fact that she constantly upholds certain standards in things balances the traditional parental mentality of one way giving (My child deserves the best in birthday parties and I’m touched by whatever he/she does on my birthday is not a fair trade.)

My friend said that she was interested in a sequel to see if there is any damage of the daugther mother relationship when the daughters have grown up.  I think to make it a happy ending, good parenting is a combination of “Chinese parenting” and “Western parenting.”  To me, this means to do a job that rentlessly prepare the child to a better future and at the same time do not uphold the expectation of them taking care of our elderlihood when time comes.  This combination is not the same as unconditional giving because as we try to balance out the need to care for our own, we let the children take part in the responsibility of making decisions for their own lives as they grow.