<p>Our violin teacher recommends totally opposite.
I guess it depends how long are the vacations and if there is something coming up right after them. when I go to Europe for several weeks (5-6) we never check the instrument - they always travel as a carry on. We have expensive and cheap violins - travel usually with cheap ;)</p>
<p>agree, my daughter just tried out for Junior District and her teacher had advised traveling across country with it during our Christmas break to practice every day as well as to carry it on the plane and use the overhead bin.</p>
<p>Although we often heed her advice, on this particular occasion, our vacation was so brief (6 nights in LA), that I wanted her to have some R & R and some fun, and we decided together that she would practice doubly hard upon her return, 40 min in the AM and in the PM. It worked!</p>
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<p>I don’t know about that. My D was once in a small advanced group of tennis players. One dad was always there shouting?/yelling?/encouraging? his boy, “XXX, you gotta use back hand, xxx, go out and get it, xxx, don’t be an idiot…” He wasn’t chinese.</p>
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<p>LOL, ok, but is it fun?? It must be, if you are so good at it!</p>
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<p>Was this at practice? I have never heard of a coach allowing parents to coach their own kids at practice.</p>
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<p>No, you’re not the only one. Apparently parents can’t ever get over disappointments. The solution to wanting your kid to be a high-performing musician is to make your kid do so, as opposed to getting over your disappointment that your kid isn’t a high-performing musician but boy is he great at art (or whatever).</p>
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<p>I could have misread. The way I took it was that pointing out 9 or 10 will fail to be the top implied that one should not shoot for it if the success is not guranteed. </p>
<p>All this talk reminds me of what Obama’s former Budget director Orzag recalled about his dad. If he brings home math test of 98 points, his dad always wanted to know where the two points went.</p>
<p>But why isn’t a 98 success in the first place?</p>
<p>@Bay - Yes it was at a practice. Apparently it didn’t matter to this dad whether he was allowed or not. The kid was rumored to be shooting for stars. There were four kids about 10 years or younger. All seemed very talented. I understand they were all aiming high except my D who has an excellent coordination but lacked aggression for winning.</p>
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<p>That poor kid. I don’t think most coaches would stand for this. In fact, I believe it is against our high school’s written regulations for parents to interfere with a coach during practice. Was it an outside paid coach? They are more likely to put up with this if they are being paid top dollar to coach a kid.</p>
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<p>98 is a success for someone getting usually less than 98, but for someone getting 100 it is not success (usually- although that depends on circumstances) - I am not saying it is bad, disappointment etc. but sure Pizza you understand why it is not “success”.</p>
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<p>I agree on assimilation. But that is not the point. It’s ludicrous to say not having sleepovers are a sign of non assimilation. Chua is VERY assimilated, marrying a Jew, professor at YLS, author, and by virtue of her daughters being Jewish, she is essentially also a Jewish mother.
I expect as a Jew, you would have a better understanding about cultural assimilation; e.g. orthodox Jews.</p>
<p>What QuantMech said, re: perspective.</p>
<p>A few years ago, I was elected to serve as editor in chief of my college newspaper - a publication which has been among the best in the country for the last 25 years running. When I took the reins, we had won the Associated Collegiate Press National Pacemaker Award (given to around five papers each year) 10 of the last 11 years.</p>
<p>I had a young, inexperienced staff with almost nobody returning from the previous year. We did great things and provided our students with quality journalism. At the end of the year, the ACP nominated us as one of 15 Pacemaker Finalists and named me a finalist for Reporter of the Year and Diversity Story of the Year. I was going to uphold our tradition as one of the finest college papers in America.</p>
<p>I sat with my staff at the convention that year, waiting to hear our names called… and was crushed. Third place, Diversity Story of the Year. Second place, Reporter of the Year. Then the final blow: no Pacemaker.</p>
<p>I’ll be honest and say I teared up. I felt like I’d failed. To not win the Pacemaker as editor in chief of The Advocate… was almost unthinkable. It just didn’t happen there.</p>
<p>Then my adviser talked some sense - and perspective - into me. Out of the thousands of college papers in the country, I’d put ours in the top 1%. It was only a “failure” judged by our own exceedingly high standards - just being a Finalist was beyond the reach of countless other programs.</p>
<p>It still annoys me, makes me wonder what I could have done differently. But those second and third place trophies proudly hang in my office - a silver medal, after all, is no consolation prize. </p>
<p>Perhaps what I’m most proud of today is the success of my successors. The two editors in chief who followed me, started their careers under my leadership, working for me as writers and editors. Both of them did high-quality journalism and led The Advocate to back-to-back Pacemaker wins. That, for me, makes my year as editor a resounding success, because I did my job of preparing the next generation. After all, it’s not about me - it’s about carrying on a tradition of leadership and excellence long after I’m just a faded photo on the wall.</p>
<p>I know a 100% american family who never allowed sleepovers.</p>
<p>I allow sleepovers only during vacations/holidays/extended weekends.
Never on a regular weekend during the school year. Kids are just too miserable after sleepovers, they tens to get sick easier etc.
Nothing to do with assimilation, let’s not be silly :)</p>
<p>I also hated sleepovers because of the emotional after-mess caused by sleep deprivation. But I always let me kids go and picked them up at around 10:00 or 11:00.</p>
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<p>That may be more the case nowadays, but it certainly wasn’t in the not-so-distant past. </p>
<p>For instance, the modern college application we’re all familiar with was originally devised by Ivy universities, in large part, as a means to severely limit the numbers of non-WASP students…especially those who were of Eastern European and Jewish origins because of fears they will supplant their preferred student demographic…the scions of well-off well-connected WASP families. It is one reason why Columbia College’s application has a space for an applicant’s photo(Photos were once mandatory for applicants as physiogamy was used to determine who was a “good fit” and who wasn’t) and why Ivies/NE LACs emphasized participation in WASP preferred team sports/athletics to the point they severely limited entry to students who weren’t athletic. </p>
<p>Such discriminatory polices were critical reasons why schools like Howard University, Boston College, and Brandeis were founded as the respective racial/ethnic/religious groups each of these institutions were mainly meant to serve were largely shut out of most mainstream universities in their respective time periods because of such widespread discriminatory attitudes/practices. </p>
<p>Even into the 1960’s, most of the Ivy colleges still had such attitudes even as the discriminatory barriers were breaking down as my uncle found when he entered as a member of Yale’s class of '70 in 1966. As a middle-class non-WASP child of immigrants whose entering class was one of the first admitted more on the basis of academic merit rather than whether he came from the “right background”, he recounted that there was a big social gulf and some mutual contempt between students like himself and those who entered earlier such as George W. Bush.</p>
<p>I read one columnist who said the author started backpedaling after negative reactions, and is now trying to claim that she was trying to be funny when she wrote some of her most outrageous parts of her book. That columnist said it showed the author developed limited social skills because she couldn’t get across supposed humor.</p>
<p>In any case, with a book, bad attention can be as profitable as good attention.</p>
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<p>I don’t believe that non-assimilation is a Bad Thing. I mean, I haven’t “assimilated” to the prevailing American mentality that it’s better to be the star quarterback than the science fair winner. However, part of being smart is understanding the cultural milieu in which you are operating, and adjusting accordingly. If I went to China and said, “I’ll have my kids engage in volunteer activities, that will really help them gain entry into the best colleges” – that wouldn’t be a smart thing to do. Whether or not I liked it, the reality of China is that test scores = college entrance = success. Similarly, if people come here, the reality of the US is that the top colleges are not the be-all-end-all and forcing children to engage only in “approved” EC’s at high levels isn’t going to get you entry into America’s elite – it’s going to make people laugh at you, frankly.</p>
<p>Re: parents yelling at pre-schoolers and elementary-aged children on the field: This is so common. The coaches tell them to stop but they apparently have no self-control (like Amy Chua, apparently, but I guess it’s okay if it’s the piano and not a soccer ball).</p>
<p>My friend coached pee-wee soccer for pre-schoolers, and she had parents on the field screaming, “GET ON THE BALL GET ON THE BALL EYES ON THE BALL WHAT ARE YOU DOING WHERE IS YOUR BRAIN GET ON THE BALL!”</p>
<p>And again–these are three- and four-year-olds.</p>
<p>She said it happened daily with several parents and she had to call in the league managers to talk to them about listening to the coach, child development, etc.</p>
<p>Of course the parents were angry. :rolls eyes:</p>
<p>I have read all of this thread and almost NOBODY is saying, “Yes this is a Chinese phenomenon” or “Yes this is an Asian phenomenon” aside from one or two parents and people who claim to be Chinese themselves. We all know that it happens in America, too. It’s Amy Chua that was apparently clueless that we are aware of her parenting style, and we’ve seen it, and we are actively, consciously, choosing not to use it.</p>
<p>“That columnist said it showed the author developed limited social skills because she couldn’t get across supposed humor.”</p>
<p>well I thought it was shtick from the beginning, so either I have greater comedic insight than the columnist, or Chua and I share some developmental disorder. I wouldnt rule out either.</p>