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Friday 1 April 2011

I’m glad my kids didn’t have A Tiger Mom !



WHEN PISA test results showed that Shanghai students’ scores were far ahead of American students, President Obama referred to it as a “Sputnik Moment” — “the humbling realization that another country is pulling ahead in a contest we have become used to winning”. In this scenario comes Yale Professor Army Chua’s book “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mom”, a ‘politically incorrect’ account of how she raised her daughters with a disciplinarian upbringing, Chinese style. And while it’s got Americans introspecting their parenting styles, Indian parents are using it to strengthen their own mission-mode upbringing of their kids. And that’s got me worried, because I was raised by a “Tiger Dad”.
We all turn into our parents as we grow older and I did too. So there I was, a ‘Tiger Mom’ pushing her kids to work towards A’s, play the guitar, tennis, golf and work at calligraphy and math. But I had not reckoned with the boys’ genes and their ‘Laidback Leo’ father. They had soon replaced my teeth with dentures!. ‘Laidback Leo’, loves, supports and does not judge- B’s and C’s are happily accepted and in fact the boys chide him  for not having higher expectation of them. He is proud of their well-rounded personalities and their high emotional quotients (EQs). And the boys love him and would die for him.
When they were growing up, we dreaded PTAs where we got routinely pulled up for the boys’ “attitude” and pranks. But the same ‘attitude’ has helped them excel and adapt to situations, without, parental supervision even while kids raised by ‘Tiger’ parents have floundered. I constantly seek approval, while my boys have a self esteem, you cannot dent. The answer to Chua’s Battle Hymn should be the “Lullaby of the Laidback lion” –my spouse’s ‘politically correct’, account of parenting his progeny, American style. Childhood is a time of ‘nurture’ – why turn it into a ‘battle’?
Indian and Chinese kids grow up with such odds (we are 1 billion plus) that competition is built into their DNA. But it is perhaps incorrect, like Chua, to assume strength when children are fragile in every way. Let the fire in a child’s belly decide where he puts the bar. Would it be fair for a parent to place the bar and push until the child has fractured both legs trying to cross it?
‘Tiger Mom’ or ‘Laidback Lion’ – the jury’s still out. But history is witness that innovation and creativity can be stifled by too much discipline. Bill Gates, Michael Dell and Zuckerberg rejected degrees for creativity- a Chinese Mom would have coerced them into submission and insisted that they finish college, get their degree and put in some piano practice as well!