‘Tiger Mother’ visits West County to talk parenting

Amy Chua, author of the controversial bestseller “The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother,” recently paid a visit to Parkway West High School, where she spoke about her book, raising her two daughters and her own childhood. She was the featured guest at the Fontbonne University/Charlie Brennan book club held on Feb. 9.

Chua, who is a professor at Yale Law School, spoke about giving kids choices (Americans give their kids too many; Asians give their kids too few), praise (“We do our kids a disservice when we praise them when they know they haven’t really put in their best effort”), and “the list that made me notorious.” That list, which is on the first page of her book, says that she never let her daughters attend a sleepover, have a play date or get any grade lower than an A.

According to Chua, the Chinese and Americans can learn from each other.

“The one thing that Asian parents do really well is they’re really good at instilling a sense of focus and self discipline and work ethic in kids when they’re very young,” Chua said. “What we do great in the West is creativity and leadership.”

Still, Chua was unapologetic regarding her view that American parents expect too little from their children. The big difference, she said, is that Chinese parents “assume strength rather than weakness in their children.”

“The result is that they can have what may seem like crazy high expectations,” Chua said.

Chua shared a story from her childhood about the time she won second place in a history competition and her father said, “Never, never disgrace me like that again.”

She said that people might see her father’s comment as brutal, but she took it another way.

“The message I got was, ‘I believe in you, Amy, and I know that you can do better,’” Chua said.

Chua said American parents have “a real focus and obsession with this concept of talent.” She believes the search for “your child’s inner gift” often leads to the child trying and eventually giving up a number of pursuits.

For the Chinese, in contrast, “everything is hard work,” she said. That philosophy supports parents choosing their kids’ extracurricular activities and forcing them to stick with those activities until they excel. Chua, who has been criticized for forcing her daughters to practice hours and hours on the piano and violin, thinks people would be more understanding if she were pushing her kids in sports.

“Americans get sports better,” she said.

She said that a father who spent hours at batting practice with his son would be viewed as “a cool dad” in America, whereas a mother who “drilled math for two hours – that’s abusive.”

Although Chua’s book has been touted as a “how to” parenting book, she said it is really a personal memoir that she wrote “in a total moment of crisis when my younger daughter, Lulu, rebelled.”

Lulu, now 16, was well on her way to becoming a violin prodigy when she had a teenage meltdown during which she told her mother, “You make me feel bad about myself. You’re a selfish mom. Everything you say you do for me is actually for yourself,” Chua said.

Chua said that fight was the turning point when she realized that “I don’t care about anything except having my daughter.”

In the end, Lulu gave up the violin and took up tennis, and Chua mellowed to adjust to her daughter’s hardheaded personality.

“She’s had four sleepovers in the last two months,” Chua said.

Chua’s said her firstborn, Sophia, 19, “was an easy kid” who obediently conformed to her tiger mom’s demanding expectations. She is now a freshman at Harvard University.

Chua said she is very proud of the way she raised her girls, but because she has been so heavily criticized, she is slow to judge other parenting styles.

“There are a lot of different ways to be a good mom,” she said.