Chinese Tiger Mums

I have been enjoying the discussion of the parenting style of Amy Chua, Yale Professor and author of "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother" published today - see the Wall Street Journal http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704111504576059713528698754.html

There's been a lot of focus on the fact that Ms Chua called her daughter "garbage" (in the Hokkien dialect), but in the context of a massive row because the daughter had been very rude perhaps that wasn't quite as undermining of self-esteem as it would appear to be. The biggest turn-off for me is the way that Ms Chua seems to feel that it was OK for her to decide for her daughters in advance that they would concentrate only on certain narrow aspects of education to the total exclusion of the whole package of things children need to learn as part of growing up. Her daughters were allowed to spend time only on academic work and music (but only the piano and violin were allowed) to the exclusion of sport, drama and any socialising with friends. So they were never given the option of excelling as actors or hockey players, and it is not clear what the long term effect on their ability to relate to other humans has been.

My parenting style is uber-slack compared to Ms Chua. I am so relieved if homework is done without endless nagging that I make no attempt to doublecheck it for A-plusness before it goes in the rucksack. Indeed, when I tried to help with maths at the beginning of Year 5, I completely misunderstood the whole point of the exercise and every answer was wrong. Luckily there was no grading just the slightly chilling comment "Your work in class has been very good so far (ie. when you are away from the interference of your dismal sloth-like mother) and you have obviously tried hard with this really quite complicated homework" (thanks for the careful attempt not to undermine self-esteem Mrs F!).

However, as the mother of an only child I have always been far more anxious about whether she is able to form friendships and get on with other people than almost anything else. My experience of the world of work and life has been that only people who get on with other people and are able to form good relationships with them are ultimately successful at anything. If you can't cope with people you can only excel in the sort of jobs that you can do in isolation, usually in front of a computer, and sooner or later management will axe you anyway because they don't know you or don't like you. At the age of 10 friendships are always shifting and some children are already exhibiting adolescent tendencies to attack and exclude others. If children don't learn to cope now through spending unsupervised time with their peers how will they deal with it when they are grown-up?

But if I'm honest I do have some Tiger tendencies so here is a list of three Tiger-Mum things I have done since 1st January:

1. I have asked whether there are any plans to start trumpet lessons at my daughter's school as she has expressed slight interest in learning it and I haven't yet got round to forcing her to learn the piano or violin;

2. I have made her carry on doing ballet for another term because she hasn't shown any interest in any other form of physical activity;

3. I sneakily read the education bit of my mum's Sunday Telegraph Weekend supplement to see what private school parents are up to, and cut out a list of books recommended for a bright 12-year-old, even though my daughter is only 10.

So when she writes and choreographs her own jazz ballet adaptation of Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials Trilogy" and has lots of pals I shall say "ya boo sucks to you Ms Chua"!