Things I’m thinking about…

Amy Chua, the Tiger Mother. You can google her if you want. Oh heck, here’s an NPR interview transcript. The short story goes something like this: Chinese mom who pressures her children to be successful using methods that many late-20th/21st century USA parents think border on abuse. Despite the fact that this story has been all over the internet all week, I have been head down buried deeply in the translation of ultra-complicated requirements into screen design. I am random about what gets packaged as “news” even on a boring day. This week has not been boring and I have only skimmed this story.

I’m not sure what I was gonna write (I’m still not sure what I’m gonna write). I do not agree with some of this woman’s techniques for raising children. But yikes! I think I may have used some of them from time to time. They didn’t usually work for me probably because I was a very inconsistent parent when it came to discipline. But, riffing off the NPR interview, she makes some good points. If you scroll down in the interview, she talks about how the children of previous American generations had to do, um, chores, and things. Yes. My dad would talk about when he and his brother were sent out to help on their uncle Alec’s farm in Dafter. That would be back in the 1930s or so, I’m guessing. Being sent out to Alec’s farm involved a ten mile *walk*! There’s a freeway now but there is no exit at Dafter. And then there’s the GG, who had a newspaper delivery route at about the age of ten (1960s), worked in gas stations during high school (and was robbed at gunpoint twice), and put himself through college by working at the Hamtramck Assembly Plant.

Me? I was more or less allowed to be a princess as a child although I careered along between princess and tomboy (but that would be a whole ‘nother blahg entry). Supposedly I had chores but, if I didn’t do them, there were no real consequences. School? I skated through K-12 with mostly A grades without really studying horribly hard. That would be a whole ‘nother story. I did get to practice my flute (and the puano) for as many hours as I wanted to and, I would spend hours in my bedroom working on analytic geometry (from an ancient textbook of my dad’s that is probably still in my basement) or whatever I wanted to study or read.

My children? Well. I think I tried to institute chores from time to time but I didn’t always follow through with any kind of consequences. What the heck? We were all so busy that it often made more sense for me to just do it myself. School? I dunno. I tried to help with homework sometimes. I wasn’t always allowed to. I never wanted my parents to help me with my schoolwork. Why did I sometimes think I needed to help my kids? Maybe because there were so many other parents who DID their child’s homework and my kids were essentially competing with those kids? How the heck do the kids of a person like meeeeee keep up with the kids of the phd-type people here on the Planet Ann Arbor? Not to mention that, even in this city of highly educated folks, there are still many, many, many people who are struggling to maintain some sort of basic existence. Our schools are servicing their kids too…

I knew I was gonna lose my train of thought and I did. Whaddy’all think? If you have kids or not…

2 Responses to “Things I’m thinking about…”

  1. Margaret Says:

    Well, I was monstrously good about consequences for misbehavior, but believed that our children needed time to do things like ballet, gymnastics, art, piano, etc… so my chore requirements were minimal, and at times non-existent. Kids have all the time in the world to have a zillion responsibilities; we expected school to be their job, it came first–but perhaps equally important was developing their passions and interests. I worked in the berry fields starting at 10 and never had a summer off until I had taught for long enough to have credits galore, but I also had a lot of free time. I wasn’t allowed to work during the school year, except babysitting. (ugh) I was kind of the princess too, as the only girl child with three brothers. 😉

  2. kayak woman Says:

    Like Margaret, I always believed that school was my kids’ job and I also tried to indulge their interests.

    The problem with trying to write about something like this is that I probably have a whole book’s worth of thoughts (don’t worry, I won’t write one 🙂 ) and what came out at the end of a crazy busy day was a higgledy-piggledy amorphous blob of partial thoughts…

    Off to work. Cheers!