<p>Interesting article about raising successful children. Still think raising children is an art not a science…too many variables impact the outcome. <a href=“Opinion | Raising Successful Children - The New York Times”>Opinion | Raising Successful Children - The New York Times;
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<p>From Houstonmom’s link.</p>
<p>The situation that you have mentioned in #119 is reasonable, oldfort. Everyone has to do “work arounds.” There are many places I would like to visit and have not; and in the places that I have visited, there are many things to see and do that I have not seen or done.</p>
<p>However, what in Athens would outrank the Parthenon, as something to see? Since I have not read the book (on principle), I don’t know whether the family has ever returned to Greece. Actually, I doubt it.</p>
<p>There is something to be said for first seeing things in adulthood, to be sure. I was 20 the first time that I saw mountains that were higher than the Appalachians, and I found the sight totally breath-taking. But there is also something to be said for being there when your children first see something monumental.</p>
<p>As mentioned before, there is no evidence from your posts that you are a tiger mom, oldfort–indeed, to the contrary.</p>
<p>I’m trying to understand what could be considered tiger parenting.</p>
<p>is it pushing your kids to try different things and encouraging activities they are interested in or
choosing ECs for them that would look good on their resume?</p>
<p>reminding to practice their instrument or
making them practice for hours?</p>
<p>encouraging sports for healthy development or
cheering records and victories as the only worthy goals?</p>
<p>teaching the value of good education or
setting a goal of getting admitted to an Ivy?</p>
<p>making sure your kids are around good kids or
forbidding your kids to play with “not so good kids” </p>
<p>(yes, I know an Asian mother who still doesn’t let her high school aged daughter to spend time with girls who didn’t score high enough on the SAT).</p>
<p>etc. etc.</p>
<p>Yolochka–</p>
<p>This is why I say that tiger parenting is a part of the American culture. I think when people talk about Chua, they are talking about a really extreme example, bordering on abusive. </p>
<p>OTOH, a lot of the things are just the things parents do as a matter of course.</p>
<p>I do agree with xiggi on the issue of destroying kids over college acceptances. I think the “rank” of an institution can be highly overvalued by those who are recently here from countries where your entire future is determined or can be determined by your academic placement after grueling tests.</p>
<p>But there’s nothing wrong with valuing education and doing a few things in the way of supplementing what they are getting in school, imho.</p>
<p>As for the ECs. My kids ECs were intense. We did have to schedule our entire family life around them, but the kids were the driving force in terms of the level of intensity and participation. Of course, they were required to have some ECs. They were passionate about the ones they had. But if I’d had a 3rd kid who had no passion for an EC, he/she would have still been required to have a couple.</p>
<p>I don’t think I’m a tigermom. I don’t have the energy or authority for that kind of dedication to what someone else is doing with their time.</p>
<p>houstonmom2,
thank you for the link! I absolutely agree that “HANGING back and allowing children to make mistakes is one of the greatest challenges of parenting.” I understand the author is right on all counts, but I still find it very difficult to accept that my kids could make mistakes that might affect them for the rest of their lives. This is my biggest struggle as a parent.</p>
<p>poetgrl,
I suspect that when you said you would require a kid to have ECs, you actually meant that you would create an environment where ECs would be an integral part of your child’s life. That’s what we did with our kids. We made sure they had something to do after school and also scheduled our lives around their ECs. But we never thought they we doing it for college apps. We wanted them to be involved in good, healthy activities for the sake of their development and also to make them busy. We didn’t have cable TV and limited video games. We had this idea that a busy kid busy wouldn’t have time to do something stupid. But of course, playing time with friends was also considered important.</p>
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<p>Absolutely. Also, around here, playing time with friends IS ECs. </p>
<p>But, after youngest had a career ending injury in her sport in the spring of her junior year, we did say she either had to get a job or find a new EC. She got a job.</p>
<p>It wasn’t “about” college, just about being busy being a productive member of society.</p>
<p>But I am also “making” her go to college instead of more job oriented training. (To be honest, she is “making” me “make” her. Since she really wants to go, but likes to say that to people.) Does that make me a tigerparent?</p>
<p>I doubt it would matter to me if it did. I’ve certainly heard all sorts of reasons NOT to send her to college, and I haven’t given a fig about even one of them.</p>
<p>Fortunately, my kids were sold on college education before they even started school 
However, I’m still thankful to my mother who made me to go to college because she was unable to do it herself.</p>
<p>And then there is Dawn Loggins. Harvard class of 2016.</p>
<p>[From</a> Homeless and scrubbing floors to Ivy League student - YouTube](<a href=“From Homeless and scrubbing floors to Ivy League student - YouTube”>From Homeless and scrubbing floors to Ivy League student - YouTube)</p>
<p>I remember reading somewhere that Feynman. a famous physics, said his mental math skill (including low level calculation) helped him a lot in his work.</p>
<p>My personal experience as an engineering student when I was in college was that, unless you have a good enough calculation skill, you would fail many engineering class. Overly relying on calculator even for simple calculation is never a good idea,IMHO.</p>
<p>When DS was in early elementary school, I originally only paid attention to his conceptual understanding of math concept. Later, I found the school teacher really set a very low standard - it is often the case there was not enough practice. So I started to supplement his math learning material. He did have a short stint with Kumo for less than a year. I found it helped his math test, especially the timed test.</p>
<p>I think many methods from Asia are to ask the student to learn things in tiny baby steps - be it Suzuki method in music or Kumo in lower/intermediate lev math (I think Kumo stopped at differential equation but I think it’s value at that level isimited.) Talking about Suzuki method for learning violin, since these kids started learning so young and sssllloowwlly until each piece is polished before move on, in one year, I heard the top 10 chairs in the all-state orchestra were once trained with that method. The power of intentionally slow-paced learning over more than 10 years. (And the purpose of this learning is really not for achieving excellency in music performance! )</p>
<p>BTW, DS’s private music teacher was suspicious of this method. DS was her first “experiment” with this method. His mother ( not that young) learned it together with him to book 2 or 3. She over practiced in order to catch up with DS (did not sound as great as an old learner) and she ended up needing some physical therapy when she finally stopped playing :(</p>
<p>My younger son’s music teacher does not use Suzuki (only a few pieces, but not the method), and she has all staters every year. Her method is more rapid than Suzuki, and she pays more attention to musicality (while teaching the technique of course) than Suzuki. I know the difference because my older son was taught with classical Suzuki method. I know it’s more about differences between kids, but the younger one went farther than the Suzuki trained older son. And the younger one made to all state.</p>
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<p>Just because some people think that all Asian parents are tiger parents does not mean that it is true. I know plenty of Asian parents who are not tiger parents (piano, violin, what’s that?), and plenty of Asian kids who did not seem to be disowned because they did not get into HYPSM (or, for that matter, went to community college).</p>
<p>Tiger parenting or similar is not limited to Asian parents:</p>
<p>[What</a> Price Genius? - CBS News](<a href=“http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2000/02/15/60ii/main160947.shtml]What”>http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2000/02/15/60ii/main160947.shtml)
[Sentinel</a> Online - Opinion - June 3, 2003](<a href=“http://web.archive.org/web/20070928163631/http://santa-cruz.com/archive/2003/June/03/edit/edit.htm]Sentinel”>http://web.archive.org/web/20070928163631/http://santa-cruz.com/archive/2003/June/03/edit/edit.htm)</p>
<p>What is especially fascinating is that in China, Amy Chua’s book “was being advertised as a ‘how to’ book designed to teach parents how to be more loving and understanding to their children.” (Chua’s own words).</p>
<p>More words from a tiger kid:
While it is overtly harsh to the “Western style of parenting,” I think it shows that tiger families are just as shocked by the Western reaction to tiger parenting as Westerners are shocked by tiger parenting itself.</p>
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<p>Sounds like my parents* or many older relatives. Then again, part of that was due to perceiving other colleges as equivalent or sometimes even better such as my engineering/CS relatives love for Berkeley and Midwest Big 10 schools or my father’s/some extended relatives high admiration for UWisc-Madison and US LACs. </p>
<p>Moreover, I have known of some religious Catholics who threatened to disown their kids for not getting into their preferred Catholic university (Notre Dame, Georgetown, BC). </p>
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<li>Music and college.</li>
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<p>A brief word about Kumon and its pros and cons: We all know instinctively what 3+4 equals, we don’t have to use fingers to count, etc. What Kumon does is implants many, many more ‘automatic answers’ in the brain so that there is a strong foundation of basic mathematics. The only way a normally intelligent kid can do that is through repetition, and that is the premise of Kumon, one work sheet a day, maybe 15-20 minutes. </p>
<p>Where it has made a difference with both my kids is they don’t make basic, stupid math errors when working on complex problems. One son, a chem. eng. major, sometimes has test questions where the answer is two pages worth of equations. One simple math error can throw an entire question into disarray. The other kid (not a science or math major) just aced the hardest econ class at his U. largely because of his level of comfort with equations and math in general.</p>
<p>The elementary school my kids went to had maybe 30 minutes of math a day if they were lucky, and to get good and quick at math, I thought they needed more. </p>
<p>As far as cons, as someone said above, story problems, not so much with Kumon, but the basic calculating foundation helps with those too.</p>
<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>
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<p>While I agree that holding their kids fully responsible here is inappropriate, it is unfortunately a good preparation for how many supervisors/senior management will act when the results aren’t up to desired expectations. </p>
<p>One of the things many more sheltered college grads didn’t seem to get is how in practice in the adult working world, "Good intentions aren’t enough when the results are bad/abysmal…especially if it costs lives or heavy financial losses for the given institution/business. And if you’re wondering, yes…hearing variants of “But I had good intentions” type excuses is a major pet peeve of mine and those of many colleagues/supervisors when dealing with an underperforming colleague/report, complete screwup, or flake. </p>
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<p>Part of this may be the practice of publicly criticizing your own child in public. I am of the opinion such criticisms should be carried out privately away from public spaces between the parent(s) and child alone. Not in front of others…especially in a public venue.</p>
<p>This is one “tigerish” parenting practice I’ve seen too many parents practice with middle/HS classmates and one which made me cringe in embarrassment for them.</p>
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Whatever the method is used, how well a student learns and competes appears to depend on the the individual and the teacher (e.g., after a certain level, how polished a piece needs to be before the teacher allows the student to move on to the next piece.)</p>
<p>Before DS’s teacher taught DS, I think she used the traditional method (whatever it means) and she often took a job of taking in high school students for preparing for music competition. She is not the kind of teacher who would pamper the student, especially who she thinks has the potential of learning well. DS knew the consequence if he did not make enough progress in the assigned piece. She mellowed a little bit when DS was older. When he was young, many times he was in tears after lesson. I heard at one time when a student was particular lazy and did not practice without a good reason, she just asked the student leave in the middle of her lesson. She was the most strict teacher DS had ever had.</p>
<p>Strictly speaking, Suzuki method is not for bringing up a musician. It is more a education philosophy whose purpose is to bring up a “fine” person. The music instrument happens to be the tool. It does not care about the end results (i.e., the student performs well or not) or the achievement. It pays attention to the process itself only. It thinks it is a good discipline when a child does this consistently since young age and over the long time. So, whether it is a good or effective music learning method is irrelevant.</p>
<p>Interesting article published yesterday in light of this discussion:
Why Tiger Mothers are not as ferociously clever as they think
<a href=“The Times & The Sunday Times: breaking news & today's latest headlines”>The Times & The Sunday Times: breaking news & today's latest headlines;