Family Style

The things you can find out at the doctor’s office! Not just from the doctor, but from the magazines in the waiting room! I thoroughly enjoyed my reading yesterday; I take two of the same magazines at home, but I had missed these articles on summer decorating, grilling recipes and beautiful gardening pieces. In an old Reader’s Digest, I read a very enlightening article about what pilots don’t tell you. I may never fly again! But the most thought provoking was an article in a news magazine about a strict Chinese mother known as “Tiger Mom”.

I had missed the hoopla when the book, Tiger Mom, by Amy Chua, came out earlier this year. Evidently many people, mothers in particular, were outraged at her style of mothering and the inference that American mothers were less competent. She believed in ruthlessly driving her children to reach their potential, never allowing play dates, sleepovers, participation in school plays, television, sleep-away camps, video games, or almost anything else most kids are involved in.

She did, however, make them practice musical instruments up to six hours a day, tolerate nothing less than an A, refuse or tear up a child-authored sentiment or drawing that she felt was less than first rate, call them insulting names and any number of other things that make western parents shudder. Her philosophy is to prepare them for life, and life is tough.

In her view, American parents coddle, over-protect, and indulge their children, producing offspring who make them less than proud in their ambitions and achievements, as show up in test scores and career aspirations. In this mindset, rather than assuming fragility in children, most Chinese mothers assume strength, and almost no price is too high to achieve the self-confidence and self-satisfaction that kids feel on reaching difficult goals.

No doubt much of what Chua espouses is true: we probably don’t push our kids hard enough. We are all capable of more than we achieve. Actually, guidelines for raising good kids are given throughout the Bible. “Train up a child in the way he should go…” doubtless encompasses nurturing a child’s gifts and bents. But one scripture admonishes that foolishness is bound in the heart of a child, and the rod of correction will drive it far from him (Proverbs 22:15). Children of Jesus’ day went to Hebrew school and had to memorize what we know as the first five books of the Bible.

Ephesians 6:1-4 gives instructions to children and fathers alike. Children are to obey their parents in the Lord, honoring their father and mother, and fathers are to “provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.”

Surely children’s lives can be too structured, with sports, lessons, and practices. There has to be “down” time…time to dream, to imagine, to experiment. The answer to successful child rearing must lie somewhere in the middle, keeping the Bible as our guide. (There was a Bible in the waiting room, too, but my husband was reading it!)