Mothering

(Okay, this post turned out significantly longer than I intended, sorry about that. If you don't want to read the whole thing, at least read the part in bold, that's what I mainly wanted to share.)
I read an interesting article in Time magazine this morning while I was waiting at the Dr. office. It's about a book entitled Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua. You can read the full article here. She's Chinese and feels that the Chinese way of mothering is superior to the American way because the Chinese are much more successful than we are. So she's very strict with her children and demands a lot from them, such as requiring them to play the piano for 7 hours straight until they get the song right. Or rejecting her young daughters birthday card "because she didn't spend enough time on it." Or not allowing her children to have friends.

When I first started reading I was thinking, "Wow, this lady is NUTS! What an awful mother!" I was so appalled, but in some cases I think that she's got an idea worth considering. But overall, I felt that she's taken it all to the serious extreme. Her justification for how she parents is that she's preparing her children to be successful adults. And she's right, she is preparing her children to succeed in the business part of life. But there's much more to being an adult than being the best at everything.

What is our responsibility to our children? We want them to be successful adults, but we also have a knowledge that Amy Chua may not, we know that we are children of God and that our main and most important goal is to return to live with Him again. So, how does Amy Chua's type of parenting fit into that knowledge? Should we be focusing more on our children's academia, or is it okay to let them be kids and play with their friends? Am I failing my children and our country by not subscribing to this woman's ideas? I'm sure a happy medium is the correct answer.

The article quoted one study that I found very interesting.

"[Standford psychologist Carol] Dweck has conducted studies with hundreds of students, mostly early adolescents, in which experimenters gave the subjects a set of difficult problems from an IQ test. Afterward, some of the young people were praised for their ability: "You must be smart at this." Others were praised for their effort: "You must have worked really hard." The kids who were complimented on their intelligence were much more likely to turn down the opportunity to do a challenging new task that they could learn from. "They didn't want to do anything that would expose their deficiencies and call into question their talent," Dweck says. Ninety percent of the kids who were praised for their hard work, however, were eager to take on the demanding new exercise."

I find that so interesting. So I tried it with my kids this morning. They were helping me carry in the groceries and instead of thanking them for being so helpful, like I normally do, I said, "Wow, you're being hard workers! Good job for working so hard!" They beamed at that! They were so proud of themselves.

I don't agree with most of what this lady did to her children, but I'm glad I read the article because of the study about praising your children for hard work. It's such an obvious thing, but I wouldn't have thought of it.