Tigerless Parent

[SanJoaquinSooner]

All the talk about the memoirs of the Tiger Mother who raised her daughters the Chinese way...

never allowed sleepovers
no playdates
never allowed child to choose extracurricular activities
no TV
no video games
must make A's in all subjects
must be #1 student in all subjects except PE and Drama
not allowed to be in an afterschool play
not allowed to complain about not being in an afterschool play
must play piano and violin
no musical instruments except piano and violin


I fell a bit short of being a tiger parent.

The rules I had were:

try your best in school.
never miss school - funerals and illnesses should be reserved for weekends
you're not allowed to not do anything re: extracurricular activities.
I don't care how late you stayed up, you're not sleeping all day.

[MR2-Sooner86]

Oh...I thought this thread was about tigerless panties. My bad.

[swardboy]

I definitely think the video stuff is killing socialization skills. Ala the dipwad that shot the Arizona congresswoman. Deforming the brain or something.

[Jacie]

When I was in Dallas I hired a Chinese woman to work for my employer. She was a single parent with a teenage daughter and raised her much the same way. Her daughter had only been allowed to emigrate some two years before so the girl was behind in her English skills but in every other school subject, especially math, her daughter excelled. One of the woman's rules for her daughter was that during the summer break, she had to continue to learn. The girl taught herself calculus the summer between 8th and 9th grade, which was confirmed when she tested out of it at the beginning of school that fall. If you have never taken math beyond algebra, you don't know what you are missing. Anyway, as a reward, the daughter was allowed to go to a rock concert.

Other aspects of this woman's life were also somewhat extraordinary, to me at least. She grew up an only child, as per the one-child-per-family rule and experienced the Cultural Revolution as a teenager. She was still married but her husband was in Australia and there was no impetus from either of them to get together or even see each other again. While I knew her she had no desire to return to China, not even to visit, though she did miss seeing her parents.

It seems strict to us, the way she raised her child, but was normal for her, what she was used to and the norm in China I gather. That is something I wish we could import, a little more discipline for our children.

[Tulsa_Fireman]

A little more discipline does NOT equal this gestapo programming bull****e, though.

Expectation of hard work and 100 percent effort in all things is a good thing. Attacking problems arm in arm that hard work alone won't solve is a good thing. But too many parents are happy with their children fitting the social clique and having the world handed to them as opposed to giving their children the tools, or better put WEAPONS, to face the world head on and be successful emotionally, financially, and spiritually.

I don't have all the answers, but one thing I think I got right is when I tell my Pootie Bear that I don't want the best, I want your best. And you and I both will know when you get there. Until then, we'll both work harder, we'll both study harder, and eventually your best will become not the goal, but the standard.

[MamaMia]

I think this mother is over the top. Not to paint moms with a broad brush, but as a whole I believe that there are more kids than not these days who need more structure, tough love and discipline in their lives than they're getting.