<p>"The teenager at the center of NYCs hottest controversy speaks out in defense of her mother . . ."</p>
<p>Wow. Just wow. Amy Chua has raised an amazing daughter. Sophia takes the edge off what has been perceived as an “abusive” situation. I still disagree with Chua’s tactics, but I can see where some of her “voice” has been misinterpreted by readers. This may be the fault of her editors or just a ploy to sell books. Either way, there really does appear to be a loving relationship between parent and child.</p>
<p>This was already posted in the other thread yesterday.</p>
<p>What does anyone expect her to say?</p>
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How about, “How much is my cut?”</p>
<p>I am not impressed. Abused kids whose mother’s put out cigarettes on their bodies, beat them and neglected them still love their moms. We love our family (often known as loved ones) largely for instinctive reasons. Yes, I love my kids, but I don’t think I have the choice. It’s instinct.</p>
<p>Give me a break. This kid was NOT abused. There’s more than a little suck-up in her letter, but that appears to be who she is, not just who she was raised to be. Frankly, it’s not so easy to pull apart the strands of Tiger-Cub and Jewish-American Princess.</p>
<p>To me, this piece reads like a rather cliche college admissions essay. </p>
<p>It sounds like Chua’s daughter is a current high school senior. I’m beginning to wonder whether Amy Chua’s motivation for writing the book and seeing it published now was to position her child optimally for elite college admissions.</p>
<p>I was not implying that she was abused. I was saying that even the most abused kids love their moms and often stick up for them. That this girl is doing so means nothing.</p>
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<p>And that would only show how misguided Chua is. </p>
<p>If college admissions were her objective, the writing and publishing of this book profoundly undermined every advantage she painstakingly developed over the years. While some say that there is never bad publicity, in this case admissions’ officers might consider the Chua kids too hot a potato to handle. </p>
<p>Poor kids!</p>
<p>I concur, xiggi. But based on her decision to allow the book to be published at all, and as David Brooks pointed out in his piece in yesterday’s NYT, Amy Chua is pretty much tone-deaf when it comes to anticipating what kind of publicity her writing (and, by extension, her daughter’s writing) is going to receive.</p>
<p>Whether you believe in her parenting style or not, I don’t think any of it constitutues abuse. I think the timing of her book is odd, as I too, would not have wanted that focus on my children as they were entering the late teen and college years…certainly admissions. That’s such a difficult time for teens. However, it takes a certain amount of “me, me, me” to have such a fierce desire to have children that are measured strictly by grades and competitive performance because those are the quantifiable, public qualities that parents often feel reflect themselves and their quality of parenting. A mother that is ‘me, me, me’ is not going to think about the timing of a book release because well, it’s all about her.</p>
<p>Everybody’s parenting style constitutes abuse.
It’s just a question of what, exactly, our kids will decide to blame us for, years later.
These little critters don’t come with a manual, I looked all over for it, three times!!</p>
<p>"I think the timing of her book is odd, "</p>
<p>Really? I have tuition payments to RPI starting soon. </p>
<p>Anyone interested in a book on OUR abusive sounding, but ultimately loving and successful approach to parenting? I will take the advances right away.</p>
<p>Exactly. What is she going to say? I hate my mother and I hated how I was raised? At this juncture in the game, especially being a young person of a lot of privilege? Give me a break.</p>
<p>I still would love to see Chua check in to our “B” student thread…</p>
<p>wonder how she would react if she ever found out that her kids were just “average”? Scares me to think…</p>
<p>Oh, I forgot, her whole philosophy is that every kid can be an “A” student with the right parenting style…LMAO</p>
<p>As someone who actually read the book, cover to cover, I absolutely think she was abused. No question in my mind, unless Chua is lying and exaggerating. What, she was not possibly abused because the girl in the photo looks so normal and well adjusted and writes what she does?</p>
<p>Apparently this well crafted propaganda piece worked, didn’t it?</p>
<p>To criticize this woman or her family is not completely fair. Much of what she has done is being done everyday by so many Chinese families (all of the families that I know). The children are smart, respectful, enjoy learning, mature, and independant. Are they perfectly happy…maybe not by American standards but the job they are doing is in fact working as far as adding to our society. I have yet to meet one Chinese kid that I would not want living next door to me or being part of my community. Could we say that about every American kid we come across? There may be some pitfalls but overall the children understand the parents and more importantly in the childrens mind is the recognition that what their parents do is done out of love. Chinese parents in my community basically support any endever for their child that will make them a smarter and more talented person. The parents will pay for any top college their child gets admitted to, purchase homes for their children when they are ready to buy, and emotionally bond as a family to provide a loving environment for their grandchildren. If there are things that are wrong should we not examine what is wrong in our own American parenting? We are a nation with a long history of new immigrants and part of being a new immigrant is to bring what has worked from your home country…over time people assimilate and cast aside what does not work or work well for a different way. I tend to think there is much that Americans could learn about the Chinese way of parenting but of course we think our way is the best way.</p>
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<p>Opening herself to critics is something that this EXTREMELY smart person must have weighed against the obvious benefits she hoped to obtain. All in all this was entirely up to her. </p>
<p>The unfortunate part is that, along the way, she did rob her children from something extremely precious, namely their privacy.</p>
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<p>Wow. Racist much? Seriously! We have good and bad in every culture. Sure there are the stereotypical ones we’ve been talking about but there are just as many bad apples as in any other culture. Just in my city alone: The many teenagers busted for drag racing (some of which have killed people in the process)? The ones who kidnapped and held for ransom a well off college kid? The girl who committed suicide in the bushes just off campus? The boy who created a lock down situation two years ago on campus and has since been expelled. The ones whose voice I’ve never heard in class? My grad student who was expelled six years ago for plagarism? The kid who told his friends in Cantonese, referring to my daughter, ‘god, I hate white people!’ Our neighbor’s son who we did not know lived there for 6 years because he was never allowed outside- but as a teen was obviously buying dope and arrested with others outside of our house. </p>
<p>This is not an indictment against Chinese immigrants at all! We have just as many stories about people of every nationality in this city. I’m just trying to get away from racist stereotypes that you seem prone to hold onto. I thoroughly enjoy most of my Chinese neighbors (all of them are), but they aren’t all fitting the fantasy stereotype.</p>