Battle Hymn Of The Tiger Mother

Battle Hymn Of The Tiger Mother opens your eyes to the potential benefits of tough love by sharing the traditionally Chinese parenting style and experiences of Amy Chua.

It might be easy when you see your kid struggling with a task to label it a weakness and let it go. But for Chinese parents this is unacceptable. They know that their children’s mindset is changeable and will turn their kid’s weaknesses into strengths.

In their minds, one of the best experiences for children is to see that they can improve at things they are bad at.

Westerners typically have a difficult time with anything that might harm a child’s self-esteem. They might, for example, not let the kid play a game that they might lose.

Chinese parents, on the other hand, instill the valuable lesson that it’s important to persist even when things aren’t easy.

The author’s experience with helping her daughter Louisa learn to play a difficult piano piece is the perfect example of this. The song required Louisa to play different rhythms with each hand. Even after hours of practice she couldn’t get it and told her mother she was giving up.

Chua was having none of it though. She wanted Louisa to understand that she could improve and made her continue. Eventually, Louisa learned to play the piece and was so overjoyed that she couldn’t stop playing the song for days!

What do you think when you see a tough parent scolding their child? It might be easy to assume that the kid isn’t happy. But the author, even with strict parents, remembers being very happy as a child. In the minds of Chinese parents, enjoyment only comes after you get proficient at something. To get to that point you have to put in a lot of hours practicing. Although most kids would rather quit, Tiger Moms will force them to persevere until it gets fun. Chua’s experience helping her daughter Sophia get good at playing the piano explains this well. It was hard for Sophia to learn and took a lot of effort for her to practice. Chua forced her to persist, even by practicing for three hours daily. Eventually, though, Sophia got so skilled that other people began to comment on how good she was. This confidence boost made playing the piano more enjoyable, which made practicing easier. It’s a curious thing when you consider the incredible pressure that Chinese parents put on their kids how the children can still be happy. And yet most of the time their children do say they experience a great deal of joy. In the mind of the author, many Western families struggle even though they’re less strict and…