Tigers

I'm baaaaack! (I hope you're hearing this in your head like in Poltergeist...b/c if not, you might be too young to read this blog!).

I'm not much of a blogger...but I've been reading a ton of blogs, and convinced my friend "hawaiigirlalways" that she should blog her deals & steals. Since she's doing it at DODO, I guess it's my turn to go for it here.

I started out this blog just for knitting stuff, but since it's already set up, I'm just going to go for it & use it for whatever comes up. I dunno if I have much to say that people will care about, but I figure I'll at least excercise my "writing muscles" for a bit when I post. We'll see how it goes with this, my first opinion piece...

Tiger Moms/tiger kids

A few months ago, my Dad sent me and my siblings an article about "tiger moms". I have to admit, I mostly skimmed the article because it was really annoying me that while a new book on the topic was inciting much controversy, at the same time it was also gaining a ton of free publicity. I am not going to name said book here because I don't want to add to the publicity. In a nutshell, while there are supporters of militantly strict, overbearing and, imho, cruel parenting resulting in overachieving offspring, the question bears asking:
How many of the same kids end up
1) in therapy?
2) rebelling against and/or alienating their pushy parents?
3) socially maladjusted?
4) all of the above?

But I'm sure we won't hear about those kids. At least not until they "go postal" and massacre a bunch of their co-workers or fellow students (to be fair, I won't mention specific cases for these--they don't deserve added publicity either).

Here's the thing: I'm not going to spout off a bunch of research statistics, but I am going to cite, using my 4 siblings and I for real life data, why I think so-called tiger parenting is a bunch of malarkey. At the same time, I'm thanking our parents for raising us the way they did, and for the most part, breaking the mold of "typical" Chinese immigrant parents (notice I used a T-word other than the name of an orange, striped jungle creature). We turned out just fine, and I think they should be quite proud.

So here are some of the characteristics of that T-parenting, according to that article:

No play dates or sleepovers:
Why not? It's good to have friends, and in my experience, a sleepover here or there really helped me to appreciate my home life as compared to those of some of my friends'.

No school plays/extracurricular sports or activities:
I can't even count the number of plays and musicals we participated in both at school and our local children's theater. Two of my siblings even started the music group at our church (I think they learned to play guitar from Dad...or maybe Joan Baez), and all five us sang in it at various times for years. School choir was a given for most of us, and three of us participated in high school drill team/marching band, going on to join the UCLA band. Two siblings even performed in the Olympics Opening Ceremonies with the band.

No sports you can't medal in:
Sports taught us the value of teamwork, commitment, practice, and sportsmanship. Two of my siblings did compete at the junior nationals level, but our choices in athletics were just that--our choices--no ulterior medal accumulating motives were put forth explicitly nor implicitly by Mom & Dad. We played mostly after-school sports, and some AYSO soccer. In addition, both spectator and participatory sports such as skiing and backyard football games were major family pastimes that we all enjoyed together.

There was one stipulation that did influence what activities we could participate in: regularly scheduled practices, performances, lessons or games could not interfere with dinner time. Dinner time was sacred family time. There was no TV (unless it was Monday night football when the entire meal was relocated to the TV room), and telephone interruptions were cut as short as possible. When we finally got an answering machine, sometimes we just let it answer for us. I have learned to appreciate those family dinners, and the close-knit family that they helped build. When I was growing up, I figured that all families had the same nightly "Leave It To Beaver" style dinners. Apparently not, but that's another topic for another day.

An A- is a bad grade:
It's not a bad grade if it's the best that you can do and you gave your best effort. However, I heard my share of "If it's an 'A' then why isn't it an 'A+'?" Ok, that's pretty pushy parenting, but that being said, we definitely did not get "straight A's" all the time, but how's this for academics for five kids:
5 bachelor degrees plus one double-major, one minor, and one master's degree and teaching credential from UC Davis, Stanford University & UCLA.

When all is said and done, I'd say that my siblings and I turned out just fine. We are all well-functioning, well-rounded, and contributing members of our communities. We have good relationships with our non-T parents, and I for one would never blame them for not pushing me hard enough. I choose instead, to thank them for letting me choose a path that was right for me.

What do you think of so-called Tiger parenting?