Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Tiger Mother


Now, I don't consider myself any thing close to a Chinese mother. I don't have enough dedication and persistence for that. I also, even more importantly, don't have kids who are in that cultural mindset. I think If I forced my kids to practice for two to three hours a day I'd have a pretty serious mutiny on my hands. But all the same, I very much enjoyed reading Amy Chua's book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. It talks about some differences between Western and Chinese cultures and parenting in particular. Because it is mostly framed through piano and violin lessons and I'm in the thick of three kids taking piano and violin (soon to be four) it was especially relevant for me. This is one of my favorite quotes from the book "All these Western parents with the same party line about what's good for children and what's not--I'm not sure they're making choices at all. They just do what everyone else does. They're not questioning anything either, which is what Westerners are supposed to be so good at doing. They just keep repeating things like 'You have to give your children the freedom to pursue their passion' when it's obvious that the 'passion' is just going to turn out to be Facebook for ten hours". Scarily spot-on, I'd say.

1 comments:

Mom and Dad said...

Sounds spot on me also. I am glad I don't have raise kids in this day and age, it would be much harder now. You are doing a great job. I have great grandkids and that comes from you and James