Battle Hymns of the Tiger Mother

I just finished reading this book by Amy Chua. You know, the one surrounded by controversy.
I was excited I finally got to borrow from my local library. It was quite a long wait.

The wait was worth it. I find it humorous and also thought provoking.

Being Chinese myself, it got me thinking about how I am raising my kids here, compared to how my family and friends are raising their kids back home in Malaysia. I can't say that my mom was a Tiger Mother. I would say she was 80% Tiger Mother. LOL! Expectations were made, and I was supposed to follow them.

In Amy Chua's book, she wrote about how 3 different generations of a family could be. I, myself is a 1st generation immigrant here in in the US. But I am also a 3rd generation immigrant (well, in Malaysia anyways). So I think it has affected me in how I view or wanted my children's education and early childhood to be. I guess being first-born and having high expectations put on me made me want my children to just enjoy their childhood. In fact, we enrolled Kathryn in a play-based preschool instead of a more academic school.

Reading Amy Chua's book and now reading half-way through 'Nurtured by Love', a book by the founder of the Suzuki teaching school in Japan, I now have doubts. In his book, Shinichi Suzuki wrote:

"Talent is no accident of birth. In today's society a good many people seem to have the idea that if one is born without talent, there is nothing that he can do about it. Consequently they go through life without living it to the full or even knowing life' true joy...."

Suzuki believed in training kids very very young. For him, it was building character through playing the violin.

Have a waited too long with my 7 year old? Have I wasted all that time to get her in to shape to prepare her for school work? We never sent her extra-curricular classes before because we thought she was took young. I have friends who have sent their kids to music classes since they were 4 or 5, and they play quite well now.

Looking back, I do sometimes wished we did send her to a different school, because the discipline to do work has not been instilled in her. The general American way is to make everything fun. So when something is now fun (like homework), she gets bored doing it. And of course, I really need to be stricter about teaching her the piano. That was what we decided because I play the piano, and I don't see why I need someone to teach her how to play the piano when I can teach her myself! Or maybe I should... Hmmm.. What do you think?

Anyways, summer is here. And 2.5 months of not doing any homework, will rot any one's brain. So I just bought a whole bunch of review books for Kathryn. Her math goal for the summer is to memorize the multiplication table by the beginning of next school year, and to write in her blog again. I even have books for Chloe, and my goal for her is to teach her sight words over the summer, so that she can start reading. I swear 2nd and 3rd kids gets neglected so much! But hey, I won't be like Amy Chua and make her kids practice playing their instruments while on vacation :)

In summary, I believe it might not be too young to place expectations on our children. And help them to meet those expectations. But there need to be lots of love and affection shown through the process. My goal is to be with the kids while they do their homework to guide them, and not just make them go into the room to do it. i.e. to be involved. Wish me luck!