<p>zoosermom, metronome and stadium? You can’t be serious!</p>
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<p>I wouldn’t know if she did or not. I am in the opinion that some family dynamics is hard to decipher from outside. Her kids growth may be stifled from her parenting but they are clearly not problem kids. They may not achieve their full potential but they would likely be contributing members of the society, tax paying law abiding. So why then are we so set against her? I don’t understand the excessively strong opinions expressed in this thread.</p>
You know, the Metrodome! I hadn’t heard of a metronome before. Never had music lessons or music in school. Totally serious, by the way. My husband, who did play sax as a kid teases me to this day by asking “does the Metrodome need batteries?”</p>
<p>We don’t know this yet. Adults who were emotionally abused as children often have mental health issues that need professional care and often repeat the behavior with their own children.</p>
<p>igloo - do you think treating people inconsiderately (to put it mildly) is justifiable if a material gain is achieved?</p>
<p>If your boss called you garbage and refused to let you take bathroom breaks would you keep your job so you could pay your taxes? I suspect you would look for a new job - the Chua children didn’t have that option.</p>
<p>bchan - No, that’s not what I am saying. I am not talking about material gain. I am talking about contributing citizens in a general sense. I am assuming the kids have not shown troubling signs. They may not be what you would like in your kid but I would think they are quite acceptible in a conventional sense. If so, who are we really to come down so hard on Chua? Are we all becoming child welfare agency?</p>
<p>"If so, who are we really to come down so hard on Chua? "</p>
<p>Possibly because she wrote a book, and a widely circulated excerpt from it was published in the WSJ, and it SEEMS like she is holding her way up as a model. In which case she is fair game.</p>
<p>I agree with that. The big question is Are the kids abused? I said this earlier. They don’t live in isolation. They have relatives and in-laws. I would certainly hope if the kids were being abused people in their circle would step in. These are highly educated bunch. They didn’t see it but we in cyber space hearing this in a second or third hand know better and going to go in and rescue the kids from the evil mom. How heroic!</p>
<p>Igloo-
A lot of that has to do with culture, there is no doubt about it. In traditional societies, including in the west, children were routinely seen as being the property of their parents and the parents had absolute rights over the way the child was raised and they assumed the right to determine the childs future. Wasn’t all that long ago that a child would be apprenticed to someone, a girl married to whom the family decided and the like. But society changed and visions of children have changed, plus frankly with the growth of people seeking help for things like depression and all that has been written, people have come to realize that what parents do, the way they do things, matter. </p>
<p>Without condemning anyone, there are people who think that disciplining their kids means yelling at them constantly, or even beating them, and what ends up happening often is that the kids not only repeat the parent’s behavior (i.e become bullies), they also can end up being in much worse shape. Parents, concerned about a child’s weight, think the answer is in ridiculing them, calling them fat, etc…and what can come out of that is a kid with an eating disorder (I had a next door neighbor woman once like that, was literally skeletal thin, and she said her father was like that, and to this day she had trouble eating, was underweight). </p>
<p>And I think it leads to a question, about the cost of success? Without demonizing anyone specifically, what happens to all these successful people that supposedly come out of this kind of harsh parenting? Do they end up raising kids who are happy and successful? Do they have stable, loving marriages, or are they in abusive relationships? Does the kid end up doing something they really feel passionately about, or do they end up in a high monetary job that bores them to death and causes them to find ways to ease that pain (you want to know a dirty little secret? Lots of parents today want their kids to become investment bankers, that this is where the money is, one of the ‘golden pots’ at the end of the rainbow of the high grades, good school, etc…as someone who has worked in the financial industry, you want to know what also goes along with that? Drug use, and I am not talking isolated, high rates of drinking, failed marriages, depression and so forth. Some of that is job pressure, some of it is feeling trapped in something they don’t want to do, but are too deeply tied to the lifestyle to get out). </p>
<p>My personal problem is this whole thing about being #1, that everything is a competition, that everything is ‘being better then everyone else’ and so forth. Besides the incredible pressure that it is not good to be simply ‘excellent’, what kind of message does that drill in? Does that drill into someone that other people are colleagues, fellow human beings, or people to be ‘beaten’? Does that drill into them the sense of consequences, that the way you become #1 matters, or does it say ‘#1 at any cost’? One of the things in the workplace most working people have to deal with is people like that, people who see only themselves, and it makes for a miserable workplace. We have all probably had managers or known them, for example, that work their employees like dogs but take all the credit; we all have had colleagues who only do things if they feel it benefits themselves, who do everything they can to promote themselves, even if it means disparaging or denigrating others to do it.</p>
<p>Want a classic example of what that breeds? A Bernie Madoff. He isn’t some genetic anamoly, for whatever reasons he was one of those people who were driven that even success wasn’t enough, he was successful in the trading side of things long before he created the ponzi scheme that exploded. The financial industry is full of people like this, whose big goal is to make more money year after year, who measure themselves against others and take a major ego bruise if they don’t make more then the guy next door, and so forth…and that is how we end up with financial messes. </p>
<p>I am talking from experience, I have seen all the above behaviors (and note, this applies to people from all backgrounds, ethnic groups, and so forth) and it is generally driven IME by people who see everything as a competition, as a zero sum game, that being #1 means beating all others in whatever you want to measure…and it is dangerous, because when that is tempered with a sense of values, of ‘good enough’, of empathy, what you can end up with is someone who is one step short of a sociopath IME. </p>
<p>Do all kids raised this way come out like this? Thankfully, no, a lot of kids reject this crap and what their parents tried to program into them, but it also has its costs. I have made the friend or acquaintance of people who have grown up like this, and quite frankly, many of them have a very troubled relationship with their parents, on the surface they are dutiful and such, but when you get to talking they aren’t so happy…</p>
<p>Life isn’t a zero sum game, and sports analogies that people love to use are comparing apples to oranges. In most of life, we live with other people, interact with them, share things, and so forth, work with them and the I must be “#1” works counter to that. </p>
<p>Using the sports analogy, think of this one. A player like Alex Rodriguez of the Yankees, who is a talented athlete, has the kind of mentality we are talking about, the knock on him is that though he is on a team, all he cares about is himself. He pulled all kinds of maneuvers to end up with the highest contract in baseball history, in that he is “#1”, he has the kind of career stats that would make the hall of fame someday, yet he is not very well respected either by fans or his teammates. Why? Because his drive to ‘excellence’ was all about himself, it was fueled by the need to be “#1” but not for his team or teamates, but for himself. Take a look at Barry Bonds, who had a hall of fame career, who was an incredible athlete, but who was openly despised by both fans and fellow players, and who, to try and ‘be #1’ in homeruns, destroyed his credibility and himself if what appears to be evident is true, that he did so taking steroids. </p>
<p>I always kind of liked what my father said about competition. He said it is okay to benchmark yourself against others, to get an idea of where you stand, where you are strong, where you are weak, but that the only person you should try to be better then is yourself, that that is a continuous process and is a lot more difficult then trying to be better then other people.</p>
<p>Really? I don’t think you have a very imaginative outlook. All those instruments and you can’t think of one more expressive? I suppose the violin is for you, in that case, but it’s not for everyone. I personally love listening to the accordion and found expression on the flute.</p>
<p>And perhaps you haven’t heard the sitar… Oh, wait, do people at Yale play the sitar?</p>
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<p>Yeah, tell that to Amy Chua. Her kids certainly didn’t get to choose THEIR own. Not that that’s a huge deal–the choice. Lots of poor kids get the instrument they get and that’s it. I personally am more offended by the means she used to enforce her own will on the children, even when it was not a matter of life-and-death. By all means, scream at your children and grab them by the hair if they are about to run into the street. But if it’s a question of whether to practice an instrument or learn a language? Chill the heck out, lady.</p>
<p>@ stradmom-- I am literally LOLing. Awesome answer.</p>
<p>It’s not about aiding and abetting. I just think that from what I’ve read, which are parts, I have no desire to give this woman more money. She doesn’t deserve it. I don’t buy crappy books, and good grammar and scandalous stories do not make for a good book, or even mediocre one.</p>
<p>To me, it doesn’t matter whether she took her bizarre approach to music or math. The point is, there’s no need to belittle someone to get them to do as well as you want in <em>anything</em>. Not the violin, not calculus, not Latin, nothing. Different people will find inspiration in different parts of the world, from music to language to math. Her obsession with the supposedly “elite” instrument just highlights how narrow her view is.</p>
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<p>What Starbright said. Plenty of westerners–even–omigodcanyoubelieveitnotevenpossible–unschooled hippie kids–go to Harvard.</p>
<p>Oh yeah.</p>
<p>That’s right.</p>
<p>Success without anal-retentive belittlement.</p>
<p>Encouragement without micromanagement.</p>
<p>Assertiveness without freak-outs.</p>
<p>High standards without elitism.</p>
<p>Possible?</p>
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<p>There’s a stick, and there’s a carrot. (Figurative, of course.) You will be amazed to learn that small children can be motivated to do amazing things using the “carrot”. The child may yell out of frustration, but an adult needs to learn to stay calm. That’s part of being a parent.</p>
<p>Are parents perfect? No. But just because you turned out okay doesn’t mean it was necessary for your mom to yell at you.</p>
<p>I’ve yelled at my kids. I regret every instance. There are ways to communicate incentives and negative consequences without raising your voice. If you don’t know them, consider reading a few books on communication with family before having kids. They’re really worth it. If you have to yell to get your point across, then you don’t have much of a point, it’s just raw emotion. And that’s not really what you want to be teaching your kids.</p>
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<p>This is exactly it. It’s not about China, it’s not about high standards, it’s about the way she enforces her will on her children.</p>
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<p>I realize the poster is Asian-American him/herself, but what is the proof for this? Is this for people born in the culture where the test is administered? Anyone raised in a different culture will be rated to have a lower social IQ, if for no other reason that they are in-between cultures. That person might actually be exercising more social skill to get that score, though. I don’t think I know a single Asian person from any Asian country that could be described as having a low social IQ, with the exception of one autistic Japanese boy, but obviously that is not the point.</p>
<p>Re: The Fiddler on the Roof: Hah. But you can play the flute on the roof, too, and the guitar.</p>
<p>And the accordion. Don’t tell me it doesn’t take skill to learn the accordion.</p>
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<p>Luckily for us, she wrote a whole book about her screwed up family dynamics and the emotional and verbal abuse, or near abuse, within. So we can decipher it. I’m pretty sure making crazy threats at a second-grader is a power issue, but hey. Could be wrong.</p>
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<p>Her behavior is sociopathic in some way! She is modeling sociopathic behavior! Don’t you get that? It is NOT OKAY TO MAKE PERSONAL THREATS AGAINST YOUR KIDS.</p>
<p>There are soooo many other ways to motivate other people besides threats of physical violence, and removing personal property, or stripping the person of their dignity.</p>
<p>Really. If you can’t think of any, you need to, I don’t know, sit down and think harder. It is just lazy to resort to screaming. A two-year-old can scream.</p>
<p>The alternatives are so numerous as to be mind-boggling. Choosing the meanest, most hateful alternative shows a real lack of character and creativity.</p>
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<p>Yes.</p>
<p>People are responsible for reporting child abuse, and this crosses the line. If a poor parent were doing what she did, they’d be in parenting classes right now and the kids would be seeing a counselor.</p>
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<p>This is not true. Many societies evolved from a much more communal child-rearing (I don’t mean egalitarian, I just mean, more people involved directly in a child’s life) environment, in which a doctor, a spiritual leader, an elder, etc. would all have a say in a child’s destiny. The nuclear family model in which the idea of child-as-property belonged solely to the parent is rather recent.</p>
<p>I agree with everything else you wrote, though, musicparent. Sorry, can’t recall the letters you left out.</p>
<p>I think I confused things when I mentioned “traditional culture”…as you point out, not all culture shared the concept of children being owned, when I used that I was referring to cultures like that in China, India, Korea and Japan which often are called ‘traditional culture’…obviously, cultures are many and varied, and even within those countries it may not be universal. </p>
<p>In Western tradition, the concept of child as property has been around a long time, it was there for probably close to a thousand years and was reinforced IMO by religious teachings in many ways. The fact that arranged marriages were prevalent, that children would be apprenticed against their will, that within the last 100 years that a woman would be allowed to go to college (even when my dad was growing up, in the 30’s, a lot of families forbid daughters to go to college, they felt it was both a waste of time and also would in their eyes detract from their suitability to marriage, and this was in NYC, folks). Before victorian times, Children were often seen as little adults, and as a result had expectations placed on them we would gasp at today, and in effect, the kind of strict parenting we are talking about, that focuses everything on ‘success’, is kind of a throwback to that, since children IMO don’t think of adult success much, they aren’t wired that way. </p>
<p>100 years ago I suspect a lot of parents would look at Ms. Chua and approve of what she did and see nothing wrong with it, the criticisms and such come from roughly 100 years of changes in attitudes about children. Heck, even today there are plenty of people who beat the drum and proclaim her methods and similar ones are ‘the way to go’, that somehow the past had it ‘right’…the usual suspects, the ‘spare the rod and spoil the child’, the neo puritans who see anything not related to ‘serious’ matters as ‘frivolous’ and those who simply agree that ‘success’ at any cost is a good thing <em>sigh</em></p>
Probably. My son knows *two *guys there who play the musical saw. I would wager that a large percentage of musical-saw-playing applicants were accepted.</p>
<p>I don’t condone Ms. Chua’s practices and attitudes. If I found out about them in casual conversation with her, I would have been horrified. But- when it comes across so much as public bragging - I find her insulting. She wrote the book. The Wall Street Journal (highly reputable as you know) published the article. There are a lot of ethnic-related statements.</p>
<p>Another thing is the notion of personal (self-earned) achievement in the U.S. and the value of the individual - each individual has a unique life. Mommy’s description of her efforts to control those of her d’s seems extreme and even if it leads to short-term gain “wins” as described, I doubt it’s healthy or positive in the long run.</p>
<p>Just thinking about this sort of parenting makes me ill. There’s one here in our school who was raised this way.This kid has no life. Yes, he’s in at an Ivy and so what? He’s a passive boy hounded by an overbearing mother who didn’t get to go there herself. I have to admit though that from what I’m reading Chua’s girls are well adjusted.</p>
<p>Ever heard of the Stockholme Syndrome? It’s a famous case (and term used) whereby a prisoner falls in love with their captors and will doing anything to please them. Even rob banks… Patty Hearst, anyone? After reading the tale of the Chinese mother who bullied her daughter into learning a piano piece, the case came to mind. Being deprived of sleep, food and even using the bathroom until you please your tormentor? Sounds like torture to me. Love your captor, yup.
Want an impressive statistic? Asian students are #1 in suicides on college campus.</p>
<p>I wonder why she would publish this about her children when one of them’s still in high school and the other presumably has not been accepted into a top-tier school yet (because otherwise I’m sure Ms. Chua would have announced it in her book). Poor kids, dealt with a difficult home situation, a sell-out mother, and probably no chances at the admissions they deserve because of this book now. There’s no possible way an admissions officer familiar with the book can read either of the files without bias, especially because if the older girl is applying RD, her file is likely to be read as the media storm continues.</p>