Daily Lessons from Life 18 January 2011 - 'Tiger' Parenting NOt for Singaporeans

"Mon, Jan 17, 2011 - my paper.'Tiger' parenting not for Singaporeans

The tough, no-nonsense "Chinese" parenting style promoted by Yale Law School professor Amy Chua in her controversial memoir has sparked debate about the virtues of Asian parenting in the United States in the past week.

However, all Singapore parents my paper spoke to say Prof Chua's authoritarian way of discipline does not represent their parental methods. A street poll conducted by my paper in Orchard Road found that all of the 25 parents surveyed, who are aged between 24 and 54, disagreed with her methods.

For lawyer Terence Yeo, 35, a father of a four-year-old son called Jonavon, Prof Chua's model is "too harsh and rigid and didn't leave room for flexibility".

"Parenting requires a little bit of discretion, depending on the situation," he said. Still, he thinks that the liberal Western parenting model does mollycoddle the children and could lead to "ill-bred adults"."

Despite the fact that the author is a Professor from the prestigius Yale Law School and obviously have brought up 2 over-achieving kids, most of the Singaporean parents surveyed do not agreed with her! This is GREAT!! There are independent thinking Singaproeans who do not just follow the 'branded' people's approach!!

Lessons for me are:

1. Prof. Chua's approach worked for her kids and kudos to her. As I read the extract from her book, I was a bit concerned about she pushing her kids over the edge. That did not happened. Instead her persistent hard pushing style spurred her kids to achieve higer standard that they thought possible. This is great. Or was it a stroke of luck?;

2. it is obvious that pushing hard only and justifying it on: 'I know you can do better' is not enough. It is true that some kids will need to be pushed while some cannot afford to be pushed. It will be situational depending on the personality of the kids, the goals and tasks involved, and how are their competence and commitmenton accomplishing those goals and tasks without supervision from their parents or teachers or peers;

3. if it is the competence in question, the parents and teachers need to provide the training and guidance to get them up to speed. If it is the commitment, the parents and teachers will need to find out WHY they are lacking in Commitment i.e. not interested, not enthusiastic about the goals and tasks, or simply not confident due to lack of competence?

I agreed that we MUST not expect less. I also agreed that sometimes the kids, especially those below 12 or 14 years old, may not know what is good for them and what they are capable of doing. At the same time, pushing hard just because you do not believed that the kids tried hard enough is a route full of risks.

May the parents find the balance between Being Hard and Being Helpful!