Post No.: 0844
Fluffystealthkitten says:
‘Tiger parenting’ is about pushing one’s children to be the best, as if there’s no point existing unless you’re number one(!) It’s therefore a strict and demanding approach to parenting. Tiger parents are heavily invested in ensuring their children’s success in academia, as well as in ‘high-status’ extracurricular activities like (classical) music or sports.
The term ‘tiger mom’ is often attributed to strict and harsh East, South and Southeast Asian mothers, which does counter the ‘geisha’ stereotype of meek Oriental women. (The highest grades are typically expected from Asian kids – be they living in Asia or are immigrants with Asian descent – they’re indeed A-sian, not B-sian!) Like most human group stereotypes however, neither harsh nor meek are reliable presumptions because Oriental women are quite diverse, as are the men – just like for any other ethnicity.
Tiger parenting – from a mother, father or both – can instil greater discipline, harder work and higher standards in children compared to permissive or paws-off parenting approaches. And these are crucial life traits to nurture.
But the potential costs of an extreme focus on schoolwork include the stunting of a child’s social and creative development since they spend less time with friends and with free play and unstructured activities. They don’t learn to use their own initiative or make their own decisions as much. A child may not be allowed to discover her/his own individual interests and talents, and thus sense of purpose.
Pushing kids too hard – beyond what’s age-appropriate or what’s at the optimal level between too challenging and too boring – has a negative effect on motivation and progress. Learning just to pass exams encourages rote memorisation instead of independent thinking too. Getting into and graduating from a prestigious university is an incredibly narrow notion of success anyway – it may increase the odds of getting a well-paid white-collar job and being an attractive marriage prospect, but it doesn’t guarantee happiness or fulfilment.
Tiger parents are less likely to compliment their children because of having high expectations. They may instead use emotional threats and physical punishments to push their children to excel. Overly high expectations, which are obviously difficult to meet, can make one feel like a ‘failure’. Without providing sufficient protective factors like emotional support and appropriate coping strategies – children of strict, controlling, punitive tiger parents can end up with psychological trauma, mental health problems, and in need of psychiatric services. At the extreme, some children even under the age of 12 contemplate suicide. Some therefore consider tiger parenting a form of child abuse.
There’s a difference between a parent who’s just plainly strict and restrictive i.e. one who doesn’t spend any time with her/his children and doesn’t allow them to do anything but stay at home after school – and a parent who’s strict and pushy but supportive i.e. is ambitious for her/his children and regularly takes them to extracurricular music lessons or sports training sessions, and is strict because they think it’s what’s best for their children’s safety, health and future prospects. But still, if the latter goes too far then it can still be regarded as abusive.
Most parents feel that their children’s academic achievements reflect on them as parents. Without a good reason why not, in part it does – yet this doesn’t mean living your life though your children and being overly harsh on them if they’ve tried their utmost. Some parents attempt to live a life through their children they couldn’t achieve in their own life, like trying to mould their child into a football star or singer, because that’s what the parent wanted for her/himself (but failed) when younger. Some parents use their children competitively against other parents and their children too. But whereas our children are our responsibility, they are not our property. Meow.
It’s egocentric when people try to force or constantly urge you to do something in your life because they think it’s what you want, when you don’t want it at all, and it’s really what they want but they won’t admit that to themselves; and this includes parents who are ashamed of their children for not getting married or wanting children of their own.
Parents may believe they’re thinking about what’s best for their child, but they’re sometimes thinking egocentrically about what they would demand if they were in their child’s shoes, rather than what’s actually best for their child in their child’s shoes; and this includes issues like deciding not to vaccinate one’s children. The parents may be raising their child but this does not grant them the right to dictate their child’s life.
It’s even worse for parents to ever blame their children for being a drain on family resources or for ‘owing them’. People should be responsible for their own choices, and it was the parents’ choice to have children, thus it’s the parents’ responsibility to provide all that their children need to not just survive but also flourish.
But then does this therefore mean fluffy tiger parenting approaches are the highest expression of taking this responsibility? Tiger parenting may come from a place of love, devotion and caring about one’s child’s future. Yet a child still needs a balanced lifestyle. A restricted social life can mean a child fails to make or keep friends, who are crucial for their long-term happiness, as well as (ironically) their potential professional network.
Children should understand what sacrifices their parents may have made, yet parents also need to understand that the costs of any sacrifices they personally chose to make – like giving up their own career to have children, or even emigrating in search for a better life – shouldn’t be down to their children to bear because the children didn’t make those choices or cause the situation of not being able to have both a career and children, or the poor economic condition or persecution in one’s home country. We should bear the costs of our own choices, not pass them onto others – especially innocent parties – even if we claim that ‘we did it for them’.
The overall point I suppose is that one should be happy or at least accepting of one’s child however they turn out. Love them for who they are, not for who you wished they were. If you did the best you could then be forgiving and accepting of yourself as well as your child. If you know you didn’t do your best then don’t blame your child if they want a more modest career, don’t want to run the family business, are homosexual, transsexual, don’t want children of their own, or whatever.
Narrow conceptions of what a successful career or life for one’s child looks like – when they perhaps want to be an artist or novelist rather than a doctor or accountant for instance – and comparing one’s children to other people’s children in a competitive way so that one can brag about one’s kids to other parents, is egocentric or self-centric parenting. Your children aren’t pawns to compensate for your own insecurities.
And even many of those who’ve been number one through pushing themselves to breaking points with single-minded ambition look back on their own lives and wished they’d achieved a better life balance and enjoyed the journey as well as the destination.
Yet it’s understandable why most parents would rather their children aspire to be engineers than, say, professional videogamers. There are some professional gamers who earn millions but they don’t represent what most of them earn. You’ll need to work out what the median gamer earns, as well as the odds of winning a top prize. The top players get most of the media coverage but they don’t represent the situation of most players. (This is true of any sport.) There’s also turning a hobby into a job that you must do/train for 8 hours per day – it’ll definitely soon feel like work rather than play! Yet for some ambitions you’ve got to commit whole-heartedly rather than half-heartedly into otherwise you won’t have a chance of succeeding, hence it’s down to risk versus reward – the more you invest, the greater the chance of success, but also the greater the loss if you don’t succeed. (What can limit this risk though are parents who’ll be able to bail out their children if their ambitions don’t turn out as hoped i.e. once more, those born into relatively wealthy families have more opportunities and face fewer risks than those from relatively less wealthy families.)
‘Tough love’, which is related to tiger parenting, is a tricky parenting topic because it’s all about achieving the right balance between being too strict and being too soft, and different parents believe that the right balance is in different places i.e. what’s stern to some may be considered lenient for others, and vice-versa.
Empathy is overall critical to possess, but empathy can, in a few cases, get in the way of teaching your child important lessons. For instance, if your child doesn’t wish to cooperate within a group task, and so gets shunned from the task by the group, then this moment of social rejection is important for them to experience and learn from. She/he shouldn’t learn that loafing is acceptable because, when amongst less friendly or familiar faces, she/he might really end up alone. The pain of social rejection will make them try to be more cooperative in the future, and when they are, they should be re-accepted into the activity with love and praise.
Parents who empathise with the pain of hunger when a child fussily won’t eat certain foods (when they don’t have any food phobias or ARFID) and so the parent continually succumbs to giving her/him only whatever she/he wants to eat so that the pain of hunger is no longer felt, even for half an hour, can end up reinforcing the fussy eating habit and restricting the child’s comfort zone with food in the long run. They’ll eat what they’re given when truly hungry, and when they do, they should be hugged and praised for it.
Umpteen crucial things in life involve short-term pains for a long-term gain – like education, training in sports and learning how to play a musical instrument – thus to constantly wish to relieve a child of any kind of pain because ‘one’s heart bleeds for the way they’re feeling’ can deny them vital life lessons that are beneficial for them for the future. Parents often assume their children will just spontaneously grow out of an undesirable behaviour when they’re in fact reinforcing that behaviour by pandering to it. The child may indeed grow out of it by learning the lesson from outside the home, perhaps due to peer influences, but it’s prudent for a parent to teach it too.
It’s difficult to give generic advice on paper though because a lack of parental empathy can lead to being emotionally detached and not caring about a child’s interests or well-being at all. But it is ultimately about caring about doing what’s best for their long-term and overall interests and well-being. Kids who are under-confident need their boldness raised, while kids who are over-confident need their hubris lowered.
‘Tough love’ of this considered kind – where love is present but it’s not about satisfying immediate gratifications and being a ‘soft parent’ – is therefore often necessary. I don’t personally believe in employing threats, especially those that involve made-up lies, like, “If you don’t eat this dinner then monsters will visit you at night!” And it’s not about spanking them or even yelling at them. Where safe, it’s about allowing them to learn from the natural consequences of their own choices and actions, in what should be the relatively supportive environment of home, rather than adding artificial consequences like roaring at or smacking them. ‘Tough love’ clearly ventures into abuse when a child faces degrading treatment.
Meow. Most of all – remember to primarily apply positive reinforcement techniques if you want to instil desirable habits.
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