I really hope this accomplishes something besides getting me a wall of text emblem (hint hint. :P) =/
I live in Greece, and my parents fit to the article's description of American parents. I love my parents, but I hate the fact that they made that choice. Pushing your kid to its limits and further is the best way to raise it, since it guarantees higher chances of success in its life later on. Since my parents haven't been doing that for me, I've had to do it myself. I've had to force myself to work as much as I could, and I've pushed myself to my limits countless times. Still, I haven't managed to make the most out of myself. I started playing the piano this year, and I'm already working on Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata. Believe it or not, my mother actually dislikes that, since it counters her ways of slacking off and not focusing on my goals. Had I listened to her, my friends who have had experience playing the piano, or even my music teacher, I couldn't have brought my skills out, and I would probably have gotten bored of it and given up. As the article mentioned, achieving success and receiving praise is incredibly rewarding, and much fun. Another example is my studying of calculus last summer, at 13, which of course the Mathematician at my school frowned upon. But now I know more than my teachers, and find myself correcting them at the class all the time. I like that. For one, I am definitely not going to repeat my parents' mistake. I will raise my children by Chinese standards, and make them even better than myself. After all, what's more rewarding than seeing your children surpassing your achievements?
First of all I'm going to suggest you stop calling children, your potential kids included, "its".
Your story is one of self motivation and yet you seem to have overlooked just how powerful a tool it is. In a more "asian" definition of the word you are becoming quite the successful human being, yet to raise your kids to be even more successful than you are, you intend to implement the parenting style directly opposite to the one that initiated your very own success? Interesting logic there. Let me explain how my last two sentences relate. I'll use an example from recent pop-culture since it will help me when I defend the arts later on. In the summer blockbuster Inception, Leonardo Di Caprio's team goes through all the work of staging Robert Fischer's (the young CEO) dreams all so they can implant a simple idea into his head. But why? There's no denying it would have been simpler to just start a lengthy conversation with Fischer and tell him their idea.
You yourself are a great answer to this question. Why did you take up Piano? And push yourself to learn Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata? Or teach yourself calculus? In the simplest of terms, you did it cause you wanted to. These are all things that play a very large part in your values and make you feel good about yourself. But don't you also feel good because you accomplished these things for you? This is an oppertunity your kids are going to need to have as well.
I, myself, live in urban Western Canada where the asian demographic is quite high. My ex-girlfriend was also of Chinese decent, so needless to say, I've been thoroughly introduced to the Chinese culture and parenting style. I can also tell you that its not the perfect parenting technique that you make it out to be. Yes their children do perform extremely well academically but outside of school they stuggle. By over limiting their child's voice and making decisions for them, Chinese parents are destroying their children's independence and hurting their learning abilities. School is not meant to teach us everything we are going to need to know in life. Its purpose is to teach us nessecary information that gives us the oppertunity to live a life full of learning and mental stimulation. Each one of our classes is taught to us with the hopes that later on in life we can build on what we've learned and eventually use it to our advantage, but no single excellence in a lone subject will lead to fortune. One of the most important skills for kids to develop is Critical Thinking.
Critical Thinking is the ability to evaluate evidence and opinions and then develop your own personal arguments from (often conflicting) sources. It's also a form of self humility. You said yourself, ShinyMeowth, that you use "rational reasons for [your] choices, not emotional." In other words, you use a process of critical thinking to develop your opinions. Unfortunately you lack this self humility and have a very narrow view point on things. You have acknowledged the positives of Chinese parenting (when successful): Discipline, academic success, lare quantities of oppertunities in the business world. Except you've quite conveniently overlooked many of its fallbacks: Psychological stress, stinting of mental growth, inabilitiy to adapt, inferior problem solving skills, low Critical thinking skills, frustrations that arise with low social skills, and a lack of aptitude in dealing with emotional stress and loss or quite frankly their emotions in general. All those things, ShinyMeowth, are going to play a role in their future "success". Frankly a resume will get you an interview but it won't get you a job.
I'll also point out how infrequently the Chinese parenting style works when mixed with other cultures. Kids want what they see, its the very reasont that so many advertisments are aimed at children. If your child has sugarless Kool Aid at his house but gets a much sweeter version at a friends house then they're automatically going to want the sweeter version from here on then. So what's that you say? Thats why playdates and sleep overs must be banned? Not so simple, for true success you're going to need to home school your kids. And that doesn't just include academics, you can't afford to have a music teacher "corrupt" their opinions, nope that'll have to be covered by you too. Forget having a television or radio, even with strict filters, the news that each channel covers might not always apply to your values, especially during times of political races and internation conflict (that's always by the way). You can forget letting them outside the house too, don't want to risk them seeing surfers on the water, children playing in the sand or any sort of propoganda the world could release onto them. What if they wander into a grocery store and are surrounded by so many of these forbidden marvels? Nope they better stay indoors with the windows drawn all day playing filterized versions of scrabble and learning 8 digit arithmatic on an abacus. Congratulations your child is now an easily manipulated mindless drone. Is that what you want?
Now, Meduza, I have to disagree with your remarks on that mother's choices.
As much as you might find this ridiculous, one sleepover can sabotage a hard-working parent's years' time worth of effort. I'm 14, and my childhood experiences have been very fresh, and one thing I can definitely say is that when multiple kids are left unattended, they can sabotage each other's behavior, eventually growing more and more immature. I would never let my child receive influence by somebody else, especially from an average child at its age.
That depends. Do you want a mindless drone? If yes then it definately could. But for a normal child, one sleep over will not be as devastating as its made out to be. Now I don't completely disagree. As a parent you should have control over who your child sleeps over with and how often to ensure they don't become tangled up in a group of heroine addicts. But thats when independence and trust comes into the mix. If you've raised your kid to have strong morals and to be very self motivated a sleep over will be nothing but a harmless night of relaxing and letting loose.
Aah but thats right, that's not how the real world works right? Slacking off is an addictive habit that must be avoided at all costs or it shall hamper every childs future succes... Actually relaxation and letting off stress is key to all sorts of success in life. A happier, more comfortable person is a more eficient and productive worker. A life with no breaks will only lead to exhaustion and heart failure; thats not an opinion, its a cold hard fact.
I've grown up with time limits on the computer. It did not work. My kids are going to only be allowed to play Pokemon games, and watch the Pokemon anime, and use of the computer will be restricted to forums, news websites and blogs, that will first have to be approved by me or my wife.
So the only game they can play is that of one where animals are pitted against eachother in near death matches so a human being may have achieved an accomplishment in a SPORT!? I thought you were against sports? Don't get me wrong I love Pokemon too but it goes against everything you're trying to instill in your children. The anime itself is full of morals that relate to having fun, supporting others, and putting your family first. And I mean really putting your family first. That means working a reasonable amount of hours and putting in the time necessary to be an active player in your childs life. (player not dictator). Thats a pretty rash and emotional decision you've made there.
School plays are not only pointless, but also time-consuming, distracting, humiliating, and a huge source of bad influence for kids.
I have my reasons for my decisions, my 8-year old kid is not one to question them.
I am going to refer you to my first and second points about bad influence. My kids are not going to be involved with sports, art or anything related to that. I actually completely agree to the article writer's choice of Piano and Violin, but I am going to expand it with Chess.
Oh man, time consuming? School plays probably support more of your ideologies then you give them credit for. First off, the time and effort that is needed to put on a good school play is a huge character builder. And the efforts they put in will help them deal with people, learn about themself and improve their memorisation. I'm going to assume you've never taken a real drama class in your life. There's a difference between Junior High and High school drama courses. To become an actor (a real actor, so don't use Miley Cyrus as a counter argument) is an incredible amount of work. Memorisation is the only the beginning.
First you must verb your script. Verbing is essentially taking every statement your character says and giving each one a different verb that you will then epitomize on stage. Then you must properly create your character, that means back story, crucial moments in their life, things that motivate them, dreams, feeling etc. You need to become them to the point where you feel pain when they feel pain. A good actor knows who there characters family members are, every grade they recieved in High School, every girl or boy they've ever had a crush on and any unacomplished dreams they have. A lot of work? Absolutely? Worth while work? Definately.
The problem you'll have in life is that you view yourself as a single identity and thus fail to comprehend others. I'm willing to bet you're reading many of these responses and thinking to yourself that you are both smarter and more reasonalbe then we all are. I hope you aren't but I'm doubtful. Things like a school play help these things a lot. When you're thrust together to take on the massive project that a school play is you start to become a family. You learn so much about those people and it makes you want to push yourself. You push yourself for them but it's the motivation you develop yourself from them that gives you that work ethic. There's that whole self motivation thing again, it's a shame you intend to destroy it in your child's life.
I spent about an hour last night trying to find a valid source that could tell me if in Greek High Schools it is required to study Shakespeare. If it is and your don't know why, I will gladly explain it to you. Theres quite a bit Shakespeare could teach you ShinyMeowth.
Leniency causes kids to slack off. The Chinese are perfectly correct in their point about imperfect grades implying lack of hard work.
That is totally wrong. You have to open your eyes and look at the real world. Perfection is perfection, anything less than that is imperfect, and imperfection is simply not enough. It would be a waste to let your kids do anything less than the best they can, and I am not going to follow that path
.
Imperfection isn't enough? Says who? Your prospect employer? Well there you don't have to be perfect, you just need to be the best candidate for the job. But having a 100% doesn't mean that you are if you don't have the critical thinking skills to applied what you've learned into big time executive decisions. And if you can't deal with other people, whether they be colleagues or other business representatives, then you're not right for the job either.
We need to define some things here. If you haven't noticed most of my job examples deal with executive and business positions. I do this because your definition of "successful" seems to be that of someone who is rich and has accomplishment coming out of their toe nails. But why isn't providing for your family a measure of success? If I am one day able to become an English Teacher then I will have accomplished a dream of mine, I call that success. Now in being a english teacher I won't make a huge amount of money, but I'll get to do something I care about which makes me happy. And it'll also give me enough money to buy a home and give my children the nessecities they need, like food and water. But best of all, I'm only working when my kids are at school, which means during vacations and on weekends, I have time to connect with my children, and develop a real relationship with them. That right there will help give them the emotional stability they
need. I reccommend you start to think of children as their own people. As a parent your definition of success should be that your children are happy, but its up to them to decide what makes them happy. And I know that getting a B on their report card and being terrified of the beating they're going to reciece when they get home is not happiness for everyone.
The answer here is obvious, but since people fail to realize it I will have to bring it up. By choosing a guitar, a keyboard, a synthesizer, you name it, the kid is going to end up listening to Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber. An educated person must also have musical education, and real music is the way to go. And by that I mean classical music. The writer is wrong here, however, I will give you that, but that is not for the reason you used, it is simply for the fact that symphonic orchestras require more instruments than the piano and the violin. Your examples were flawed, but I would accept any classical instrument.
Bahahaha. This just makes me laugh. I would think you were above judging people on their taste in music. It's time to step outside of your bubble for a bit kid. I'd be surprised if Beethoven wrote for the electric guitar seeing as it didn't exist back then. At that time classical music was today's Lady Gaga in the sense that it was popular. Beethoven wasn't writing for the Zither either probably because it wasn't popular in his Europe.
Anyways, the piano is used in many of todays modern pop music as well, how can you risk that? The guitar is used in some truly beautiful music as well. Your actions are simply opressive. Music is prescious because of how it touches people, and if "Somebody To Love" resonates with someone then it's a fine piece of music. And have faith in your children, how many 11 year old girls are going to be listening to Hannah Montana when they're 40? Yeah, not many.
My kids will play both of those instruments. They will thank me for that later. I am not going to expand on my reasons, they are pretty obvious.
Yes. She is right. That would happen. And the Chinese mother would have done the perfect thing.
Don't be so arrogant, your kid is not You 2.0 If you think your parenting will be without any turmoil then you're in for quite a surprise. I hope you can adapt to different situations or your kid is gone. He or she won't respect you pretty quickly if
they don't believe you care about them. And to a kid, 2 hours of musical theory doesn't say, "I love you." If you can't come to terms with them, what are you going to do? Kick them out of the house? I hope not, that never ends well for anyone.
I'm going to say it again, your children are human beings and they must grow. The only reason you can sit here and debate this is because your parents raised you the way they did. They let you make mistakes so you could learn, I suggest you do the same. Give up this alternate reality of perfection you have, perfection is a matter of perspective and just because your definition is different then others doesn't make yours right. And thats true cause its not something you can argue, or at least is very hard to. If I think a content hobo on the street is perfect for that is how he percieves himself then you can't argue that unless you abide by the same definition.
Oh and lastly, your mom didn't want you to not succeed at the piano, she wanted you to enjoy your child hood. Learn the lessons about being a child so you can relate to one of your own some day. Its sad cause you've taught yourself so much but you can't seem to realise the perfection in imperfection.
The whole point is to bring up the kid in a way that it would actually like doing the right thing, instead of feeling forced to. That is the exact reason why I do not want bad influences ruining my child's behavior.
At the moment you're the worst influence on your childs behavior. The way you plan to raise your kid would make them feel forced to. Your child must be able to decide for themselves what is right and wrong; you can play a role in guiding them to that decision but all you are doing is forcing them to see exactly what you see. By pushing your point of view on them so harshly you're going to push them against you. They're going to want to do the opposite, it's simple human psychology. At some point a child must feel independent and if you don't give them that oppertunity they will go against your word to give themselves that indepency. Thats how kids get into alcohol and other drugs; their real family makes them feel like an outsider and control there independence so they rebel out and find a crowd who will at least accept them.
If you don't listen to anything else in this response listen to this, cause I'm talking from experience: If you expect to much from the ones you love you might just lose them forever.
