There are three things in my life that I thought I would be absolutely brilliant at, but I turned out to be terrible. The first is surfing. The second is Theatersports. The third is Mother Tiger. This is the last thing that really impressed me.
For tiger parents, there is only one satisfactory score: grade A. Credit:
I have read by Amy Chua The battle song of the tiger mother back when it came out in 2011. My first baby is 18 months old and I’m pregnant with my second. Like Chua, I’m an Ivy League professor and perfectionist. Like her, I believe there is only one point: an A. Like her, I know that I will never back down. My sister and I are living proof that tiger parenting works. We wrote thank-you letters, washed the car in the dark, played music on our birthdays. We have had many Ass and won many awards.
But it turns out I’m not good at being a Tiger Mother. The first years went well. Sleep training, bedtime, cycling, ballet, swimming, tennis lessons with non-bouncing balls, contaminant-free food, no media. Then things started going south. There was a mid-year recital when the kid started playing the cello at the same time as my 6 year old son playing Lully. gavotte and my son played two grenades. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you’re not a tiger parent.)
One day, my daughter nonchalantly said that A, R, and L had all taken “extension math” and she had not. Then there was a time when she stopped running at a running festival to help her friend with an ankle injury.
These are bitter pills that Mother Tiger must swallow. The Tiger Mother is a parent who is not afraid of her child’s resistance, helplessness, complaints or hostility. She believes in her children’s ability to succeed and knows that only parents can push them to achieve true excellence in the face of failure and self-doubt. She knows that discomfort, often acute discomfort, is the key to success.
Taylor Swift has attributed much of her success to a super caring mom.Credit: AP
Although Chua has struggled continuously since her book was published, tiger rearing itself has been largely publicized in the media. King Richard shows that Venus and Serena Williams wouldn’t be the global hopefuls of racial justice if their father hadn’t been a super-aggressive Tiger Dad. They probably won’t even be good at tennis. Taylor Swift attributes much of her success to a super caring mom. Amy Chua’s Children was recorded as positive for tigers.
My track record is the best. I went crazy, I raved about excellence, but in the end, my children’s total non-compliance made me a better person. When my son was eight, we realized that his handwriting and spelling were both below average. We bought Learning Without Tears and worked continuously until he did the exercise: “Describe a person or a place in three sentences.” He wearily walked away before tearfully handing me the assignment sheet: “Mom is big and mean. She is very nice sometimes. But not very often.”
A Tiger Mother will make him fix it. I posted it on Instagram with the caption, “I feel seen”.
