Amy Chua ~ Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior

[thekfc]

* Chinese parents demand perfect grades because they believe their child can get them.
* Chinese parents believe their kids owe them everything.
* Chinese parents believe that they know what is best for their children and therefore override their children’s own desires and preferences.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704111504576059713528698754.html

[jm21-2]

There as a good article in TIME a while back on this. One of the things they really highlighted, and one of the things that rang most true to me, was that Chinese view their children as very hardy and resilient. In America we view our children as weak and needing lots of protection. Thus we're afraid of pushing children too hard or challenging them.


Another important difference is that Chinese (and it seems Japanese as well from my experience) tend to praise people for their effort more than the result. Doesn't mean the result isn't important, but the focus is more on the effort. For example, it's better to praise a child for practicing really hard than for winning at an activity, so long as they actually did practice hard.

[Capstone]

As in many cases, printing just a small exert out of context from a book can take on a whole new meaning than what was intended. The article is actually a small exert from Amy Chua's book "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother" which I have read and which I found to be pretty interesting.


She doesn't actually believe that the traditional Chinese way of raising children that was outlined in the article is any better than the typical Western way of doing so. In fact a good portion of the book deals with how she came to the realization that raising a child in such a manner is not really a good thing to do after one of her own teenage daughters severely rebelled against the harsh methods. Her view is that parents should use whichever method works best for them but that she prefers a middle ground approach - to her the traditional Chinese method is too strict while the typical western method is not nearly strict enough. After reading her book, I found myself agreeing with most of what she had to say.

[thekfc]

Yep, we know how the media works........

This is her site where she talks about the book.
http://amychua.com/

I was at Strand bookstore over the weekend and bought "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", "The Outlaws Of The Marsh" and  "Monkey: Folk Novel of China ".  There was a used copy of "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother", if it is still there next weekend then I will buy it.
 
A while back I read "Journey to the West" and started reading "Monkey" but I borrowed my copy to someone and never got it back.