Parenting books…

I know my last blog post was about a year ago … it’s almost time to renew my hosting package so I thought I’d better make an effort to make a post. So many things happened … so little free time and so many lame excuses…

Dan’s always picking up books from the library and I’ve read quite a few parenting books this way, not counting the ones we own. Dan happened to bring two home recently. One is called “Free range kids”. Dan’s summary: “It’s written by this lady who abandoned her kid on the New York Subway”. “Oh? I thought. Crazy lady…alright well let’s take a look and see what kind of preachy parenting nonsense I have to swallow now…” The other book I read was called “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother” which many people have heard of, or if nothing else at least the controversy surrounding it.

First: “Free range kids.” Tuns out I liked this book. A lot. Actually I’d say if you had to read or buy just one parenting book, this would be the one. Yes, seriously. And I’m not saying this because it’s some kind of slacker “let your kids express themselves but you’re not doing it right” kind of trend – it’s not.

First, to clarify about the subway: her son was 9 at the time, and had asked his mom repeatedly to let him find his way home from somewhere in New York (where they live). She knew her son, knew the city and at one point decided he was ready. She didn’t just walk off and leave him – she gave him $20, some quarters, a subway pass and a map. And sure enough, he made it home, brimming with pride.

So why is this controversial? Well apparently public transit is “dangerous”. After writing about her son’s experience, experts labelled her as “America’s worst mom”. I remember someone (I have no idea who, if it happens to be you gentle reader please do not be offended) mentioning that BAD parents don’t drive their kids to school, they let them take the bus. I and many people I know grew up taking the school bus (and later public transit) to school and I can’t imagine it being any different. I certainly didn’t feel it was unsafe. I’ve taken the New York subway, Paris Metro, Montreal Metro, London Underground, and whatever it’s called in Rome and Copenhagen. I took Evelyn on the Paris Metro and the New York subway. Didn’t feel unsafe at all. Anyway I digress.

So why do I like this book? Well first, it pokes fun at some of the neurotic nonsense in “experts” books like “What to expect when you are expecting” and “The Happiest Toddler/baby/whatever on the block.” and so forth. Don’t get me wrong, having baby/parenting books with useful information in them is great – like what to do if your baby gets a fever, how to swaddle, and looking through the pages (over and over and over) about colic and crying. Or getting different viewpoints on time outs, eating issues and education. But sometimes these so-called experts come off as a bit preachy with their unattainable goals of perfectly balanced, understanding yet firm, nutritionally healthy, meeting your kids’ daily quota of exercise, intellectual learning and creativity, give your baby a pacifier, no don’t give your baby a pacifier bla bla bla parenting. To loosely paraphrase from “Free Range Kids”, it’s enough to give you a complex that if you don’t commiserate in exactly the right with your kid’s broken cracker (“Oh, I am so sad you cracker is broken honey. You must be very frustrated”.) they will turn out to be a crack dealer. The main premise is that you as a parent are well-equipped to make decisions on behalf of your child. So ignore the experts who will always find some fault with you, use common sense and don’t panic. Evaluate the real risks, reduce them (think helmets and seatbelts) and control the real risks that you can.

Second, it reminds us that as parents we cannot continue to coddle our children. They need to face and overcome challenges, do things on their own and figure things out. Throughout the book are numerous examples of how Americans (and Canadians and other Western cultures) over-react about supposed dangers and this book puts many of them in perspective. Like how parents are too scared to let their kids walk to school out of fear they will be abducted, yet in reality the two highest risks to children’s health are care accidents and drowning (pools, rivers, tubs etc). It describes how we take it to the point where kids rarely have the chance to leave the house and just play anymore or even watch dangerous things like episodes Sesame street that aired in the 80s. This is not a good thing.

Third, research is suggesting that many aspects of personality may be genetic. You don’t have to tell me – I carried a jumping bean around inside me for 9 months who I swear almost broke my ribs with a well placed kick (aka Evelyn). Listening to Evelyn’s earth shattering cries at 2 days old compared to that of other babies gave me a hint of this. This is NOT to say parenting is not important – clearly it is. We see what happens to children who are abused or unloved. But maybe the neurotic worrying that we tend to do as parents (“Oh, she’ll never have self confidence/eat vegetables/do well in school because I did X”) is misguided.

The book is full of anecdotes which put things in perspective. The one I appreciated the most was about a poor Italian boy who was an orphan, taken by a thief claiming to be his uncle and forced to be a pickpocket, beaten and underfed. He overheard that he was to be injured to become a cripple/beggar and earn more money. So he ran off with some friends to the US while still in his teens, started a business and made a life for himself. It’s these kind of stories, that while of course nobody would want to reproduce, show us the maturity and resilience of children when the need arises.

In addition, “Free Range kids” is a good laugh and is very affirming of one’s ability to parent. I found it a bit too flippant at times, but I really appreciated her chapters on how children are raised in other places in the world which put some of our cultural values and taboos in an interesting light.

So on to “Tiger Moms” … apparently this book raised a lot of controversy because it comes off as racist and cruel. It’s basically about a Chinese mom who wanted to raise her kids in a “Chinese” way meaning setting very high expectations of her daughters in terms of schoolwork, attitudes and actions, and most prominently in the book, music. This entails doing things we would consider shocking like rejecting her daughter’s homemade birthday cards, forcing her kids to take music lessons which could go as long as 6 hours at a time (on bad days) and screaming matches with her younger daughter (more on that later) which could include threats like “If you don’t practice piano I will BURN ALL OF YOUR TOYS”.

Honestly, I’m surprised so many people found this so shocking. I guess it didn’t come as much of a surprise to me, having been around Chinese families for a good part of my adult life. I remember occasions overhearing interactions between parents and their children very similar to this. Although I don’t speak Mandarin, the tone and body language is enough to interpret a typical scene: Kid runs up to her mother “Mommy, mommy look what I…” Mother: “Shut up! Can’t you see I am speaking to Mrs. X? How disrespectful! Don’t bother me!” And no it’s not just because Mandarin is a tonal language. It’s a cultural difference regarding the roles of children and parents, requiring respect for adults and authority figures and high expectations. And it’s not just “Chinese” as she points out – it’s any parent who sets these kind of rules and goals in their house. I think of Dan’s grandmother raising 8 kids after surviving a war and immigrating to Canada without speaking English. You can believe it when I say there were a few whacks to the kids heads to straighten them out.

Mrs. Chua does poke a lot of fun at so-called Western parenting, the hand-wringing, neurotic parenting where parents seemingly have no control over what their children do (see above). Maybe a bit too much. But it’s a refreshing look at some of our current beliefs – for example, the current belief that any and all effort should be praised (“Good job on your B- honey” or “Yaay we’re all winners in this soccer game!”) and bribes used to encourage positive traits and activities (“You can have ice cream if you practice piano for 30 minutes a day”). Or school “activities” which actually require parents to do a ridiculous amount of work (examples given in the book include cooking “authentic” medieval recipes or finding “authentic” Ecuadorian relics for the kids to bring to school).

Mrs. Chua describes her wish to not spoil her kids and to let them know what hard work is like. So her daughters would take out the garbage, carry laundry and when they would go on a trip, the girls would carry their own luggage. Hardly anything compared to the 3rd world, but the premise echoes that in “Free Range kids” – kids are tough and resilient and a bit of hard work (not rewarded with a treat or allowance money either!) might actually be helpful.

Her description of her battles with her younger daughter over practicing piano (and later violin) are at times painful to read. Her second daughter reminds me a lot of Evelyn. Strong willed, spirited, wanting to do things her own way. Mrs. Chua tried to introduce her daughter to the piano at the age of 3. When her daughter repeatedly disobeyed her request and mashed the keys, she eventually put her outside the house in winter with the expectation that she’d smarten up right away. Tiger mom quickly became aware of her daughter’s stubbornness when she refused to come back inside … Mrs. Chua’s anger and resolve quickly turned to worry and strategies on how to get her daughter in the house and not freeze to death. Reminds me of when I had to leave to take my Dad to the bus station. I told Evelyn she could come if she went to the washroom, but she had to do it right away as I needed to leave. Well she didn’t listen, I left and from what I heard, she got in the elevator, when down to the ground floor and tried to follow me on foot. Dan managed to get her back upstairs and she screamed in the hallway for 15 minutes. Can’t imagine what our neighbours thought of us…

Her descriptions of the kicking and screaming fights from getting her young daughter from the bedroom to the piano certainly sounded familiar to me. All I could think was “Lady, imagine that happening every time you tried to put your daughter to bed. Or brush her teeth. Or go out…” you get the idea. I guess that’s one reason I couldn’t be a Tiger mom, even if I wanted to – I don’t have the energy to push for things like ridiculously precocious literacy or musical prodigy – I’m just tired from the daily grind! Also her descriptions of getting up at 5:00 every day, drilling her daughters, and never having time for fun certainly don’t appeal to me. Yes, unlike Mrs. Chua I do believe childhood is a time for kids to be kids and have fun.

What made this book interesting (and a lot less smug than it could have been) is her continual struggle with her youngest daughter to play a musical instrument. By the end of the book it becomes clear to the reader that if she continued on her all out war path to force her daughter to be an accomplished violinist, she would have undoubtedly lost her daughter. It takes a lot of guts and humility to admit that maybe you weren’t right. No, this is not a “wow I was so wrong, how could I have been so blind” kind of admission, but “I wonder, should I have kept pushing? Or did I make the right choice?” kind of indecision, which is the reality of parenting. In the end, her daughter quits the violin and takes up tennis. The sad thing is that she loved playing the violin, but not under her mother’s constant, watchful and critical eye.

The main conclusion, which I greatly appreciated, basically came to this: in “Western” culture we think we are giving children choices where we are actually just following along with popular culture and what others are doing. When we fail to question the norms, try different things or do things our own way this is the opposite of giving our kids choice. While I am certainly not espousing her “success at any cost” approach, I think we need to take a critical look at how we currently raise our kids, weed out the junk and keep what is good. We need to be constantly thinking about our choices, evaluating them and making changes.

Funnily enough, this is also the conclusion I drew from “Free Range kids” which on the surface seems like a radically different book. Both parents have a totally different approach to parenting which is different again from mine, but the basic premise is the same. I appreciated both books, took things from both and threw out the things that would’t work for my family. After all, Dan and I decide how to care for our kids, whether it agrees with expert opinion or not. So there.