<p>Good tiger parenting pushes children to work hard, to give every important endeavor their best effort, and to try new things even if at first they won’t be successful. Good tiger parenting focuses on children’s effort, regardless of the result. A huge problem with inappropriate tiger parenting is holding children fully responsible for results, when so very often outcomes are outside their control. A student may have studied intelligently every waking moment for an upcoming test, and yet still missed a few questions, or maybe only missed one question. However, if another child in the class earned 100%, then some tiger parents would be angry about that. IMO, that is what damages kids.</p>
<p>Sometimes, people can look in from the outside and label something the harmful kind of tiger parenting when it’s not. For example, if my D wins a race, but wins it having done exactly what the coach just told her not to do during the race, then I the parent will not be completely happy with that effort. If another parents hears me tell D she messed up, they could think I’m really over the top because they see the result–that she won–and yet here I am disappointed. Similarly, I could be far more delighted with a race that she lost, if she did her best and ran a record time for her. A bad tiger parent would be unhappy no matter what, because she lost. But what if D were to have a true super-star/future Olympian competitor in her conference, such that D would never be able to beat her despite her best effort. It would be cruel for me as a parent to be unhappy with every race just because she didn’t win it. I think there exist some parents who would be angry and disappointed at every race, regardless of the circumstances (eg. if that girl can win, so can you, blah blah) and thereby would hurt their child deeply.</p>