"chinese" mothers
Daniel Reeves
http://dreev.es/cmoms
One good point it made, as I tweeted from twitter.com/parentips :
The worst thing you can do for your child's self-esteem is let them
give up. Conversely, the best confidence builder is learning you can
do something you thought you couldn't.
And here's a blog post trying to tear the original article to shreds:
http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2011/01/does_asian_pare.html
--
http://dreev.es -- search://"Daniel Reeves"
David Grant
>
> The worst thing you can do for your child's self-esteem is let them
> give up. Conversely, the best confidence builder is learning you can
> do something you thought you couldn't.
(note: I haven't read the blog that tries to tear this chinese mother
article apart yet)
I totally agree with this. It just seems that the way the mother went
about this was totally wrong. There has to be a better way to foster a
dont-give-up, you-can-do-it, effort-over-inate-ability attitude
without the screaming, yelling, and shaming.
--
David Grant
http://www.davidgrant.ca
Rada
chose to ignore the obvious social contract that goes with receiving
compliments, i.e. taking them with a grain of salt. So a few people
said nice things about her kids, to her face. The same people could
very well be talking about the very Chinese phenomenon of selective
infanticide (http://www.demog.berkeley.edu/~ebenstei/sexselection/
references/Coale_Banister_94.pdf) behind her back. Does a Yale Law
Professor really not know that?
As far as the one good point she made, don't let your kids give up,
well, Hitler made trains run on time. Denying a small child food,
water and the ability to go to the bathroom is a form of torture, no
matter what the result. I can only imagine what would have transpired
had she had a dyslexic child (or just a kid with a weak bladder).
Niels Olson
when the kids rebel, but I feel awful if I let myself get to the point
of yelling. But they've got to put the work. I think a kid who says "I
want to quit" or even "I quit" isn't telling you their well formed
intent: they're telling you how they feel and it's up to you to guide
them on how to respond to those emotions. It's not a threat, it's a
problem statement.
One example for my daughter: she got to the point of telling us before
every gymnastics practice "I want to quit". Eventually, we let her
quit. Then we went on a soccer/dance/swimming/horse-riding/etc safari
for 2-3 years. Finally, we came full circle back to gymnastics. After
a few practices, she said "I want to quit".
Ok, rate the things you've done on a scale of one to ten. Gymnastics
was a 9, nothing else was above 8. So we kept going to gymnastics. But
she kept saying she wanted to quit. So we'd remind her of her own
ratings.
I asked her to rate her practices at the end of every practice, scale
of 1-10. Now it's an opportunity to assess each practice, and serves
as a stepping off for the discussion before next practice.
We have been through similar trials with math. I'll bring down the
hammer to get the job done, but I've taken to trying to insert an
opportunity to meditate on her emotions as a "problem statement" and
help her explore how she wants to proceed from there, and making it
clear that yes, my goal in this exploration is to guide her toward
finishing the job.
But we don't quit. Been down that road. Not worth it.
Niels Olson
Mussolini made the trains run on time.
> Denying a small child food, water and the ability to go to the bathroom is a form of torture,
Denying a kid until the work is done is not torture. As a military
physician, I've probably meditated on torture a bit more than most and
my goal has been to develop as expansive a definition as possible,
because I don't want to be the doc who gets caught up as a conspirator
or accomplice.
Look, physiologically, going to bed without dinner is exactly what
anyone voluntarily does if they're sick. Kids learn how to play cards
like "I'm hungry", "I'm thirsty" and "I have to potty" early. I have
personally witnessed my kids draw out bedtime by an hour and a half or
more with little more than that and a few cries of "MOMMM????????" and
"DaaaAAAAD? . . . um, I have a question . . ."
You've got to decide how you're going to balance these. I've never
actually withheld dinner, but I've been prepared to several times, and
it's been served late more than once. Because the kids recognized
quitting was not an option.
Self-control, self-regulation, persistence, mental toughness,
gumption: there might be some natural variation, but, on the whole,
these are learned. This is *the* central thesis of parenting. On the
other side, you want to provide them with as many opportunities to
explore as possible.
But they're naturally curious, and they will explore any opportunity
you offer them. You want them to not only find what they're great at,
but let them decide "I don't like that". It's tough. We live in a
world of staggering possibilities. Overall, people on this mailing
list will have little problem providing sufficient opportunities. The
bigger problems are learning how to adequately explore representative
examples of each class of opportunity, and then focus most of their
attention on the most promising endeavors.
So, that is the tension: exploration vs discipline. I think we can all
agree, advanced exploration requires discipline. At the limits, where
experts are made, it requires learning to temporarily forgo food,
water, sleep. Don't forget, at it's pinnacle, we call it being in the
zone.
I would be quite interested in a discussion of just how many things
kids are successfully doing, and, even more, how many was too many?
Can you do gymnastics, piano, Arabic, accelerated math, poetry, and
star in every school play?
araneae
that she had her practicing both hands separately. I find that this
generally doesn't work for me at all, especially for a piece where the
hands do very different things like the piece her daughter was working
on. Which leads me to the classic criticism vs. constructive
criticism bit. The mother could have handled this battle very
different; instead of insisting that the daughter keep trying
something that wasn't working, she could have helped her explore
different ways to accomplish it. And this is where the expertise of
the piano teacher could have helped as well; I'm sure if she went to
the teacher with this problem she could have overcome it too. Either
solution would have been less painful and just as fruitful.
Colin Putney
> This article was fascinating, if a bit disturbing:
> http://dreev.es/cmoms
>
> One good point it made, as I tweeted from twitter.com/parentips :
>
> The worst thing you can do for your child's self-esteem is let them
> give up. Conversely, the best confidence builder is learning you can
> do something you thought you couldn't.
My reaction to the article was mixed as well. One thing I like about
the attitude
of "Chinese mothers" is the emphasis on effort. Being good at anything takes a
lot of work, and "western" parenting doesn't usually place a lot of emphasis on
sheer determination as a necessary ingredient of success. Here's
another article
that talks about the effects of praising a child for effort rather
than natural ability:
http://nymag.com/news/features/27840/
On the other hand, Chinese parenting seems to be about asserting absolute
control over their children's lives. Success means raising a child that conforms
perfectly to the parent's expectations. To me, that seems like a
sterile, joyless
way to live, for both parents and children.
Colin
Daniel Reeves
tell your kids they're smart.
> another article that talks about the effects of praising a child for effort rather
> than natural ability:
>
> http://nymag.com/news/features/27840/
--
Jeffio
> effort rather than natural ability:
>
> http://nymag.com/news/features/27840/
about praising effort over natural ability.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGTk6yeh9qE
Rada
dictator deserves praise for which piece of infrastructure, you are
taking the argument into absurd territory. Denying a 7 year old water
and bathroom breaks for a period of several hours, all the while
yelling so hard that you lose your voice, while keeping them up hours
past their normal bed time, is not anywhere near your typical "no, you
can't go potty for the third time in the last ten minutes" type
situation.
Please understand that I am by no means on the soft end of the
discipline spectrum. Growing up in Russia, I had both semi-pro music
school with 3 hours of classes plus 1-2 hours of piano practice daily
including weekends (for about 10 years starting at 6 years old) and
grueling professional classical ballet practice for 4-5 hours
straight with no breaks 5-6 days a week plus performances (for about 3
years starting at 7 years old) all the while keeping top grades in my
regular school. I remember those days fondly because my parents and my
teachers managed to make me/us practice through reasoning rather than
fear or denial of basic physical needs. There were times when voices
were raised, there were other times when I was grounded. However it
never crossed the threshold of physical pain or extreme physical
discomfort or fear.
(Speaking of pain, for a 7 year old practicing piano, 1 hour is
absolute max. Actual piano practice guidelines for 7-10 year olds are
half an hour but I am giving it a whole hour since that's what I used
to do. Make no mistake, extending the practice to several hours for a
child whose hands are not yet developed is torture. Piano music is
written with adult hands in mind so little hands have to work extra
hard to cover the same range... the constant cycle of stretching to
get those outer keys and clenching to get the inner keys starts to get
really bad after about 30 minutes).
Sam Livingston-Gray
>> Hitler made trains run on time
>
> Mussolini made the trains run on time.
Actually, he didn't.*
* http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/rear-window-making-italy-work-did-mussolini-really-get-the-trains-running-on-time-1367688.html
**
** via Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_misconceptions ***
*** via XKCD: http://xkcd.com/843/
Niels Olson
Sam Livingston-Gray
a newly-learned tidbit.
-Sam