<p>Sleepovers represent a change in routine- staying up late, eating foods… Once in a while it is nice. We were good kids and 4-5 of us young teen girls in the neighborhood (back in the large family prepill days) would plan to spend a summer night sleeping out in one of the backyards, spending the evening at each other’s houses. Years later my sister and I found out our mother knew we broke the suburban curfew of 10 pm and went walking a couple of miles to a cemetary entrance et al, we thought the parents would figure we were just at another house during the evening. Kids need rules, but they also need opportunities to break or have exceptions to them in safe ways (the scary part of the walks in the '60’s was hiding from cars who may have been the police looking for curfew breakers). This includes a no McD’s rule, bedtimes and such. I cringe at the R rated movie for an 8 year old- I was scared by The Birds in (b&w) seen at the neighbors one of those summer nights, but being with peers is better than always being with family. Spending the night at someone else’s house is a glimpse into a different family’s way of doing things- a learning experience.</p>
<p>I worked for almost 10 years very very closely with Chinese-American colleagues. They would laugh at my WASP-y intellectual humanism, when compared to their own mothers’ practices. My favorite expression they quoted was, “I spilled my blood for you!” When my children act ungratefully now, I tell them that. </p>
<p>They still roll their eyes.</p>
<p>Where I grew up it was more like “I brought you in this world, and I can take you out!”</p>
<p>^^ I’m not Chinese nor Jewish, but definitely more “I brought you into this world and I can take you out.” But I’m sure that lost it’s verve the day my boys could look me in the eyes. I need a new book, I’m disliking Eat, Pray, Love or whatever it’s called. Maybe this one…</p>
<p>Hanna and Hunt, go ahead, laugh. Enjoy yourselves. I don’t mind. I’ll just sit here. By myself. In the dark. </p>
<p>I’ll admit that I did once actually get a “for this, I escaped Hitler?” sort of comment when I seriously upset my mother about something. But she didn’t usually overdo it like that.</p>
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<p>Waiting for the phone to ring.</p>
<p>^^^Really, would it kill you to let me know if you are dead or alive?</p>
<p>Personally, I am waiting for the sequel – Tears of the Tiger Cub – written by the kid for whom this plan didn’t work out so well.</p>
<p>Shrinkrap: On a scale of 1-10, I would call mostly 7s “mostly happy,” not “fairly happy.” “Fairly” implies, to me, in the 5-6 range with a strong minority (say, 25% of the time) at 3 or below. So, a reasonable life, but not really a “happy” one without qualifiers.</p>
<p>I’m the product of Chinese parenting–for better and for worse–but not THIS kind of Chinese parenting.</p>
<p>Just want to clarify the comment on “Carrot and stick”: Carrot is enticement like candy, video game, computer game time or other forms of reward. Stick is not physical punishment. It is illegal and, most of the time, not effective long term. You want your kids to be the best they can be. Avoid getting into drugs and alcohol. That is overall goal. Obviously, different Asian parents practice their parenting differently. However, expectation is the same: Be the best you can be in school and happiness comes with it when you are successful in future careers.</p>
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Are Chinese adults with successful careers notably happy people? I can’t say that I have observed them to be much happier than others who are the products of different parenting schemes.</p>
<p>I’m agreeing with kxc, “leading with a carrot and stick” means holding out a reward. As if you are sitting on a donkey, with a long stick dangling a carrot in front of its nose, to keep it moving forward.</p>
<p>The carrot is for the front end of the donkey, the stick is for the other end. The “stick” doesn’t have to be physical punishment–it can be any kind of punishment.</p>
<p>Quote: "Are Chinese adults with successful careers notably happy people? I can’t say that I have observed them to be much happier than others who are the products of different parenting schemes. "</p>
<p>Comment:</p>
<p>There are studies done on correlation between earning and happiness. Debarkation line is 20-30K/yr? We also know that college graduate earns more than people with high school diploma. It is also known that Asian kids do not belong to the URM category in college admission process. I am not certain that Asian adults in work place are more happy than other group. </p>
<p>On the method of educating our offspring’s, I am not sure if there is an optimum method that can be applied universally. Every parent is entitled to raise his/her kid in a way that suits him/her. At the end, most kid will do just fine.</p>
<p>I disliked some method my parents used when I was young. I turned out OK. Every parent love their kids. The question is how to express the love and how the kid receives it at the time. There are examples of strict and not strict method of education. There are positive and negative aspect for both.</p>
<p>Well, if everybody who is raised in a more-or-less reasonable fashion turns out OK, then I will opt for a method that allows for happiness during childhood and youth as well as in adulthood.</p>
<p>I think part of the problem is defining what it means to “turn out OK.”</p>
<p>What if you are raised to think you have not turned out okay unless you graduate from an Ivy League institution, for example?</p>
<p>OK, I haven’t read this book and I’m cherry-picking comments from reviews on the web, who are cherry-picking stuff from the book, and I don’t know if the book is just relating her experience or arguing for her approach to parenting. I sure hope it’s not the latter.</p>
<p>Here’s something she said to her daughter Sophia, according to her daughter:</p>
<p>If the next time’s not perfect, I’m going to take all your stuffed animals and burn them.</p>
<p>Here’s another snippet from a review:</p>
<p>The crux of the tale unfolds in a restaurant in Russia on vacation, when Chua tells Lulu, who doesnt want to try caviar, that youre like a barbarian you think youre a big rebel, (but) you are completely ordinary. There is nothing more typical, more predictable, common and low than an American teenager who wont try things. Youre boring, Luluboring. When Lulu responds by smashing a glass on the floor, and threatening to throw more if her mother doesnt leave her alone, the reader is squarely in Lulus corner, perhaps even with a fist raised in solidarity.</p>
<p>So good parenting is to make your 13 year old so angry that she smashes glasses in a restaurant? </p>
<p>There’s such a myth that if only parents do things the right way, then their children will come out to be disciplined, polite, hardworking overachievers. If your children are not that way, it’s because you didn’t parent the right way. It’s such a circular argument.</p>
<p>I am stunned that someone would write a book and described oneself acting in such a fashion - why?</p>
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<p>To get her 15 minutes of fame. To avoid being what the quote above yours says she said – “completely ordinary.” In this day and age, it never surprises me what people reveal.</p>
<p>I guess I’d rather be revealed as ordinary than as extraordinarily malicious!</p>
<p>“From the advance reviews, it appears that the extremely harsh method practiced by the author “worked” 50% of the time–that is, it “worked” for one child, but not the other. And for the one for whom it “worked,” it made her a very good musician and student, as well as “polite” and “well-spoken.””</p>
<p>It seems that my American parenting worked similarly :)</p>