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Tiger Bite
16/1/11 13:01I am not averse to sternness in parenting (my children will tell you this. Really, they will). On the other hand, I don't know that withholding affection, tossing kids' work back in their faces or threatening to burn their stuffed animals if they don't play a piano piece perfectly, is a tactic I can endorse either. Somewhere between "your self-esteem is all that matters to me, Little Gumdrop" and "an A-? You're dead to me!" lies the middle way. And I am, as you know Bob, all about the middle way.
Not so much Amy Chua, whose book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother is an apparently rueful look at her own fierce parenting techniques, which she went with unquestioningly until her younger daughter rebelled. Chua seems to think the book is funny, and looks back on her parenting with the attitude that it might have been extreme, but it was very effective (the daughter whose stuffie was endangered did go on to play at Carnegie Hall).
Go read the piece and tell me what you think. I may have erred on the mushy, self-esteemy side. But when I consider the vicissitudes of parenting and some of the excursions and alarums of the last few years at my house, I can't help but feel that calling my kids "garbage" would not have been a viable tactic. For one thing: if you have a kid who's prone to depression it's damned dangerous. For another, my kids, at least, would tell me chapter and verse that I was wrong, and exactly how damaging and stupid it was.
Not so much Amy Chua, whose book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother is an apparently rueful look at her own fierce parenting techniques, which she went with unquestioningly until her younger daughter rebelled. Chua seems to think the book is funny, and looks back on her parenting with the attitude that it might have been extreme, but it was very effective (the daughter whose stuffie was endangered did go on to play at Carnegie Hall).
Go read the piece and tell me what you think. I may have erred on the mushy, self-esteemy side. But when I consider the vicissitudes of parenting and some of the excursions and alarums of the last few years at my house, I can't help but feel that calling my kids "garbage" would not have been a viable tactic. For one thing: if you have a kid who's prone to depression it's damned dangerous. For another, my kids, at least, would tell me chapter and verse that I was wrong, and exactly how damaging and stupid it was.