Tiger Mother -How do you raise your children

Dear insansapinas,

photocredit: MSNBC

Are you a tiger mother?  Then you may be in the category of Amy Chua, a Chinese -American and a professor at Yale University who authored the book,  Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother.


Mothers bragged about their children. Bloggers even offer parenting advice.  Their children wrote nothing but praises to  their parents for the way they were brought up. If you read the articles they wrote, you will have the wrong impression that theirs is an ideal parent-children relationship.


Chua's book offered how to produce children who are math whizzes and music prodigies.  


The excerpt from her book which elicited online arguments say:

“A lot of people wonder how Chinese parents produce so many math whizzes and music prodigies, what it’s like inside the family, and whether they could do it too,” she writes. “Well, I can tell them, because I’ve done it.”


To which rebuttals from readers regarded the book as merely bragging,''

According to Samatha Leese, a Hong Kong jouranlist: : 

Her daughters, she preaches, were never allowed to attend a sleepover, be in a school play, choose their own extracurricular activities or get any grade less than an A.

They had to be the “number one student in every subject except gym and drama."

Chua advises that if your children must engage in sports, “the only activities [they] should be permitted to do are those in which they can eventually win a medal, and that medal must be gold.”

And that, dear white people, is how you raise a genius.

The biggest problem I have with Chua’s position is not her draconian parenting per se. It isn’t even her racist approach to this book.

Rather, it is the author’s assumption that a) all parents want the same, narrow model of success for their children, b) all children thrive on the same, narrow path to that success, and c) only Chinese mothers take that path, so any woman who doesn’t is not a Chinese mother.

Personally, I think the publisher and author were successful to make the book controversial.

 Although I wanted my children to excel, I did not go to the extent of pressuring them to produce all A's. Never , I told them that " noon ako ang taas ng grades ko" to make them realize that they had to work harder.

Neither did I call them names like what the author did when her children got low ratings or fell below her expectations.

Call your children moron or stupid and it will stick. They may become successful in their career but the hurt self steem would never heal.

In their dark moments, it is the demons that they are going to battle.


I wanted my tsikiting gubat to study piano. So I bought one. Mga dagang naghahabulan ala cartoon ang makikita mo sa ibabaw ng piano habang naglalaro sila ng games. (slap self). Toinkk

One summer,
I enrolled them in swimming. Mabuti pa yong pinsan nila na nakatira sa tabing ilog sa probinsiya, natutong lumangoy. Langoy aso pa rin sila.

Ang nag-enjoy lang talaga sila ay nang eenroll ko sila sa computer noong bata pa sila. Ngayon ako dapat ang eenroll nila. Ploinkk

May kaopisina ako noon na Chinese sa San Fran.  May dalawa siyang anak. Nakaenroll din ang anak niya sa Chinese school. Pagsinusundo niya ang anak, may dala-dalang music instrument, kagaya ng clarinet at violin. Hinihintay kung dalhin piyano.

At hindi lang yah, ha proud siya sa mga anak niya. Natural lang yon. Pero ang ayaw ko iyong ikukumpara yong anak niya sa mga anak ng
ibang kaopisina namin na karamihan Puti. Yong Vietnamese, ang anak din niya ay isang abugada at isa raw businessman. Hmmm Oo na.

Pilit nila akong pinakukuwento tungkol sa mga anak ko. Wala akong kinuwento. Iba-iba ang pagpapalaki. Hindi porke magaling ang mga anak mo academically ay magaling din sila pakikibaka sa buhay. At yan ang gusto kong matutuhan ng mga anak ko. Ang maging independent.

I guess I am a Tiger mother that mews.

Pinaysaamerika