Tiger Mom Controversy

If you haven’t had a chance yet, you’ll want to get up to speed on the Tiger Mom debate. Here is the link to the Time Magazine Article “The Truth About Tiger Moms” that serves as a good summary.

And now a few words from your counselor . . . Probably everything that can be said, has been about this international debate. So what are you to do, especially those of you parenting? I’d like to suggest that being “reactionary” is never good in parenting. In other words, this is no time to parent out of panic that Chinese children are going to out perform American kids at every turn. Parenting from fear isn’t going to produce good fruit. Rather, consider what values you would like to instill in your children. Once you have that “list” consider what your plan is to achieve those results. Parenting intentionally is likely to be more effective than parenting in a reactionary or knee jerk way. For myself and Hollis we recently (before the article) came to the conclusion that we were slacking in the evenings, and that we needed to spend more time working with the boys on things such as math. The reality is that it is easy to become distracted by available activities that can become time wasters if mis-used. If we want to instill the value of doing your best, we have to put effort into that.

Without a doubt Parenting American Style has become obsessed with self esteem, to the detriment of teaching kids to work hard. Consider what you might personally do to change the tide. Comments are welcome.