More Ramblings on Chinese Mothering

Since my last post on Why Chinese Mothers are Superior, the debate has been raging in the United States on Amy Chua's new book.  One blogger at Seattle Pi speaks positively about how western parents could learn from Chua's approach:

I'm not advocating cutting out all play dates and forcing your kids to play piano and violin in lieu of sports, but I do believe that there is a large core of truth in her approach. Assuming greatness in your child and teaching them to reach for the stars, rather than being praised for the barest of efforts makes sense.

This is similar to how I see it.  Can't we draw the good from this style of parenting rather than jumping on the judgment bandwagon?  Take the best and leave the rest, as they say?

Others have come out negatively.  Dr. AnnMaria de Mars, who posted last week on Why American Mothers are Superior, quipped:

Dr. Chua is raising her children to fit into the Ivy League mold.

Me, I’m raising my children to be themselves and to mold the world to fit them.

Dr. Chua insists that parents have misunderstood her point, and explains herself more fully this week in a Wall Street Journal blog:

Jokes about A+s and gold medals aside (much of my book is tongue-in-cheek, making fun of myself), I don’t believe that grades or achievement is ultimately what Chinese parenting (at least as I practice it) is really about. I think it’s about helping your children be the best they can be—which is usually better than they think! It’s about believing in your child more than anyone else—even more than they believe in themselves. 

It's the last part that's hard.  How do you get your child to understand that she can do something when she is convinced that she can't or that, if she can, it's not worth the effort.  I would love to teach the Bambina, age 6, to tie her shoelaces.  That's going to be a hard task here in Madagascar because she doesn't even where shoes with laces most of the time - just sandals or even flip-flops.  Getting her to care enough about learning to tie shoelaces by herself is going to be difficult.  Yet I think she is capable of it and I know that if she did learn, she would be proud of her achievement.

David Brooks of the New York Times raises another important point that I haven't seen articulated as well in any other critique of Dr. Chua's parenting approach.  In an Op-Ed, he accuses Dr. Chua of being "a wimp" because she refused to let her daughters navigate the complicated terrain of girls' sleepovers:

Practicing a piece of music for four hours requires focused attention, but it is nowhere near as cognitively demanding as a sleepover with 14-year-old girls. Managing status rivalries, negotiating group dynamics, understanding social norms, navigating the distinction between self and group — these and other social tests impose cognitive demands that blow away any intense tutoring session or a class at Yale.

Brooks goes on to write:

Participating in a well-functioning group is really hard. It requires the ability to trust people outside your kinship circle, read intonations and moods, understand how the psychological pieces each person brings to the room can and cannot fit together.

This skill set is not taught formally, but it is imparted through arduous experiences. These are exactly the kinds of difficult experiences Chua shelters her children from by making them rush home to hit the homework table.

I agree with this, which is why even though I draw a lot from what I have read about Dr. Chua's way of parenting, I can't see myself limiting my kids exposure to the social scene as much as Chua did.  

That being said, I don't think that sleepovers are the be-all-and-and-all of the pubescent social experience.  And sometimes, the sleepover scene can also be damaging to a girl's self esteem - if she is made to do things that she normally wouldn't do, made fun of, or just left out.   

At the end of the day, there probably isn't one way just like there isn't one child.  I like the idea of parenting a child to be a free spirit, western style.  I also like the idea of setting high standards for my child letting my child know that yes, she can do it.   Both western and Eastern approaches can make a contribution to a good parenting style.

Why Chinese Mothers are Superior

I just caught this article by Amy Chua in the Wall Street Journal.  The article is actually an excerpt from Amy Chua's new book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother.

Here are some things that the writer says her children were not allowed to do:

• have a playdate
• be in a school play
• complain about not being in a school play
• not be the #1 student in every subject except gym and drama
• play any instrument other than the piano or violin 
• not play the piano or violin 

This list looks pretty different from standard western parenting practices.  Chua goes on to say:

"It's not that Chinese parents don't care about their children. Just the opposite. They would give up anything for their children. It's just an entirely different parenting model."

Ever since the Bambina started elementary school last September, I have pretty much let her take it at her own pace when it comes to learning to read.  She hasn't started getting written homework yet but she is supposed to do about 15 minutes of reading per evening.  Well, I've pretty much ignored this dictum, because I couldn't be bothered harassing her about it after school, because I've never been a big fan of homework anyway and because I wanted reading ultimately to be something the Bambina just feels like doing for leisure and not a chore.

But Chua's essay has had me in a frenzy.  Maybe I'm being too lax about her academic progress.  After all, my daughter already has a lazy disposition: she'll always do the least amount of work required to get away with something, meaning that even if she can do something, she'll never reach the goal because she won't be motivated enough, so she may never reach her full potential.

Another thing that hit me was Chua's assertion that western parents want their children to enjoy what they do but....from the Chinese point of view, a child is never going to really enjoy doing something until he or she gets good at it.  The Bambina's teacher at school has told me that the Bambina can read but that the Bambina has to want to read and so far, she is not so motivated to do it.  In the instances when I have watched the Bambina read, she does it syllable by syllable and it's a very slow process.  How will the Bambina ever enjoy reading a book for leisure if reading continues to be tedious and slow for her?

Inspired by the Chinese model, today I insisted that the Bambina do half an hour of reading with me.  I gave her the choice of reading in French or English - she chose French.  I insisted that she read three easy books with just one or two lines on each page and then three pages of a harder book with a paragraph on each page.

She ended up in tears twice - book too hard, she doesn't want to read with me around, and she kept insisting that she couldn't read and it wasn't worth insisting that she could read because it just wasn't true.  Yes, she could read individual words, but not books, she argued.  It's too difficult.

But we got through it and she was smiling in the end.  This morning in the car on the way to school she said to her friend, proudly, "you know, I can read now, I mean really read!"

This must be what Chua was talking about.  Sometimes, we really do know better than our kids and sometimes we have to insist that they can do it even if they insist that they can't.

I told the Bambina that she and I are going to be doing reading after school every day from now on.

I may start drawing more inspiration from Chinese mothers.

Skiing at Les Gets

We are back home in Madagascar, having spent the Christmas holidays in France, first in Paris and then some skiing in the French Alps, at Les Gets.  The British website Ski Famille describes Les Gets very aptly:

When, twenty years ago, we started looking for a resort which would be ideally suited to the needs of families, Les Gets shone out.

The picturesque village of Les Gets is about as far from a purpose built resort as you can get. Real people live in Les Gets all year round, the land is still farmed and you can wander round the weekly market every Thursday to purchase everything from the latest fashions for mountain folk (think 1950's Eastern Block chic) to alarmingly smelly cheeses. More sophisticated retail opportunities also abound!

They're absolutely right.  We loved it there.  It's not just a ski resort.  It's a real mountain village, complete with town hall, market stalls, skating rink, and good restaurants (can you say cheese fondue, raclette, and tartiflette?).  And did you know that Father Christmas lives at Les Gets?

Ski vacations are expensive enough as it is, so we tried not to pay a fortune for lodging.  We stayed in a two-star hotel (the Hotel Christiania), which has a nanny service for kids too small to ski.  The hotel has a very cozy and convivial atmosphere.  Just a warning: the rooms at this place are small.  BUT you don't have too spend to much time there.  Guests tend to spend a lot of time hanging out in the hotel's cozy lounge, around the roaring fire.  The price per night is per person and includes breakfast and dinner.  The food was scrumptious - at least as good as the food served in any four-star hotel.  If you do end up going to Hotel Christiana, you can tell the owners, John and Nicola King (a Scottish couple) that you read about their hotel here!  

The Bambina started out in the beginners ski class at the Ecole de Ski Française.  The classes consisted of ten children each and were offered in French and English.  Normally, I would have been inclined to put the Bambina in the English classes but since none of the English teachers were native English teachers and the Bambina speaks French just as well, we decided to put her in the French classes.  She graduated to the level of "flocon" (snowflake).  There was a "ski garden" for children as young as three years old but the Bambino is only 20 months old so he'll have to wait a couple of years.


We definitely want to go back to Les Gets soon!

You know you live in a developing country when

1.  You pay top dollar for bottom of the barrel no-name imported brand canned and packaged food at the grocery store - when you can get them.

2.  Your tap water is so full of chlorine that the kids' bath has a light green tint to it.

3. Your kid speaks at least two languages, and sometimes three, depending on what country you're living in at the time.

4. You have grown an affection for scenery filled with dirt roads, gutters and rice paddies.

5. You never walk anywhere anymore and you're no longer used to driving in vehicles that are not 4x4.

6.  You expect to get a stomach bug about once every three to four months.

7. You buy meat the same day that the animal was killed and you age it in your refrigerator.

8. Your definition of a "really good restaurant" has evolved to being a restaurant whose food doesn't make you sick.

9. A chauffeur drives your kids to school every day.

10.  You count down the days to Christmas vacation months ahead of time and can't wait to experience cold and snow.

Things our kids have seen and done this year

Our kids have seen a lot this year.  

This summer, they looked down on this gorgeous view of the Dordogne river in the Périgord region of southwestern France.  Even on a cloudy day, the scenery was beautiful.

They saw the countryside of Madagascar, too, which is beautiful in its own way.

They saw the Eiffel Tower a few times, and took a boat ride along the Seine river in Paris.

 And scenes from a city in the developing world have been part of their daily life this year.

They saw their share of cameleons, tortoises and lemurs.                                                                                                                    

 They've gone for a ride on a taxi "pousse-pousse".

We haven't been able to continue the Bambina's swimming lessons here in Tananarive so instead, the she's been learning to ride a pony.  The Bambino likes to just sit on the pony once in a while.

And they did a fair bit of swimming in the Indian Ocean (the Bambina did snorkeling and diving as well).

Our end of year treat: skiing in the Alps!

Cozying Up to the Lemurs

Sometimes family travels take us to places that we never dreamed of.  These photos were taken during a weekend at the Vakôna Forest Lodge in Andasibe, Madagascar.  The lemurs were so used to having people around them that they regularly surprised us by leaping onto our shoulders, head and back and staying there for a bit.  The Bambina was so afraid when a lemur went to leap onto her shoulder that she stepped backward and put her foot directly in the swamp.

The International Family's Never-Ending Dilemma : Is my child in the right school?

The number one question of the international family: Where should we send our children to school?

The number two question of the international family: Have we put our children in the right school?

Basically, the question is always on our minds.

Here in Tananarive, Madagascar, the choices of schools is VERY limited.  You can send your child to the French school or you can send your child to the American school.

Pros of the American School, from our perspective:

- Great way to consolidate my children's English.

- It's close to home.

- It has small classes.

- It is more open to creativity and different learning styles than the French system.
- Thinking with an open and critical mind is just as important as coming up with the right answer.

- It has a great community feel to it.

- If offers lots of extra-curricular activities.

The American School has its disadvantages, too, though.  It's very expensive.  Their pre-K and kindergarten facilities are not great (in fact, they're downright shabby and small), some of the teachers are not native English speakers, and for an natural-mama type like me, their vaccine requirements are a little over the top. 

Pros of the French school:

- Teaching the Bambina to read and write in French is something that I can't do and that the Frenchman won't do.  This is close to being a deal-breaker point. 

- It has an excellent kindergarten programme.

- Truly excellent teachers in kindergarten, first and second grade.

But the French school is a 30 minute drive away in the morning.  And in the long run, French education may be rigourous but it also has the reputation for being narrow, closed-minded and not great for building confidence in children.

We chose the French school because at the time, the Bambina was only five years old when we arrive in Tana and the kindergarten at the French school was visibly better than the one at the American school.  Now that she's in first grade, I'm sure that the American school is just as good, if not better.  Neither school is perfect.  Either one would leave us questioning our choice.

For our next expatriation, my prayer is that not only will we not be in a francophone country, but that we will be in a country where there is no lycée français, at that we will have no choice but to put the Bambina in a reputable international school that offers French for native speakers.  Alternatively, sending her to a local school, should we be living in a developed, anglophone country (Australia, Scotland, the United States  or Canada, for example) would also be interesting.

A Montessori school for the Bambino would be a cherry on the cake.