Heil Chinese Moms, but I'm a desi girl!

Read the article on Chinese mums in the WSJ, and all of a sudden that whole foot-binding thing started making sense. Daughter cries - oh, my foot is really hurting, it feels like it's going to break. Chinese mum - you wuss, stop snivelling and start tightening, it should break at least twice! Just kidding...

There are a couple of points that made sense to me, but on the whole, the article smacked of a dictatorial, parent-oriented style of bringing up the kids that doesn't bother seeing the kids as individuals and wants to push them through a cookie-cutter of some kind.

Okay, on the whole, I'm not very liberal with praise. I don't think everything my kids do is wonderful or fabulous ( well, that's not true, I do but I keep that to myself!). No, kidding again, I tend to be quite critical and objective when I look at what my kids are doing, and sometimes, I'm honestly surprised when someone else praises their efforts because I didn't think what they had done was praise-worthy. I don't want them to become praise junkies, and I want them to be able to take honest criticism and build a desire to improve. I have high expectations from them at school, across subjects including gym, and I make it clear to them. I don't think it's ok for my kids to give up on some activity after checking it out a few times, because at this stage, I think they don't know enough to take that call, and may just be wanting to take the easy way out. I make sure that they give an activity enough time and also, to be honest, I picked the activities that I thought they showed interest and aptitude in, and I do push them to practice and excel in those.

But I'm also a firm believer in extra-curricular activities, in playing with friends, in having unstructured free time to just chill - and heck, yes, I'm a lazy mom, I like to have my free time too, so I believe in a reasonable amount of benign neglect, after ensuring blunt instruments and sharp knives have been put away. I cannot believe the amount of micro-managing that the author of the article believed was necessary - not allowing kids to play any other instrument than piano/ violin? why on earth? Why not have them participate in a school play - they'll learn about emoting, public speaking, working with others...and besides, school is the one time in life that they'll actually have the free time to be able to do it.

I do see a lot of parents around me who seem pretty stressed out by the efforts of competitive parenting, and it freaks me out. I attended a school event and spoke to Chubbocks' classmate's mom. She said that her daughter had been going to dance classes for a couple of years and loved it but now the kids were in second grade, she felt there was too much academic pressure and had pulled her daughter out from all activities! There are kids who do kumon and music, sports classes and tuition, in Class II. Sometimes I wonder if I'm being a slacker but I don't want to structure their life so much that they're busy rushing around from class to class while life passes them by.

My dad was pretty Chinese-mum-like when I was growing up. He always expected me to be studying and I remember if he ever entered a room unexpectedly and I was reading or doing something else, I'd jump. We moved overseas when I was 12 and I attended American schools, but he was so concerned about me learning 'american' ways that I was very restricted. Extra-curricular activities were not allowed - I of course rebelled and participated in the school play anyway, much to his displeasure. (His argument always used to be that I had to focus on studies and that there would be plenty of time in life for those activities. Well, guess what, there really isn't any time, after you start working, even in a liberal/ creative field like advertising, to run around acting in plays, singing in bands and so on, unless you choose to make those activities your work.) No sleepovers, ever ( strangely, my sister was allowed to go for them!). Very rare visits were allowed to friends' homes.

And when it came time to attend college, he forbade me to study anything other than Economics. I did Eco Honours, was miserable, barely understood the subject and scraped through with a IInd Div which gave me an inferiority and stupidity complex for years. So what exactly did I learn from the hyper-controlling?

I learnt that I don't want to be so in charge of my kids life that they don't fart before asking me (pardon my french). I want them to grow up and be mature adults who can weigh the pros and cons and consequences and make choices for themselves. I want my kids to have their own opinions, even if that means we're at loggerheads sometimes, because it means they are thinking. I don't want them to be mediocre, but I want them to define success on their own terms, not society's. I want my kids to have free time and friendships that last, and the ineffable pleasure of being able to curl up on a fine day and do...nothing at all. I want my kids to have a life, not lead one. Most of all, I want my kids to be individuals in their own right, who aren't dictated to by society as to what work they should do, whom they should love and what they should think.