Recent article about my latest book- Our Entitled Children: An American Tiger Mom's Story

I was interviewed recently by journalist Chelsea Hawkins about my latest book, "Our Entitled Children: An American Tiger Mom's Story." The article was printed this week in two publications, and will be featured by the Huffington Post in the near future.

As you may know, I wrote the book in response to Amy Chua's book, "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother." If you follow my blog (and clearly you do if you are reading this right now), Twitter, or Facebook pages, then you also know how ridiculous I found Chua's book to be. Writing this responsorial book in two weeks was not a difficult task, but rather something I felt compelled to do.

Parenting, as we well know, is a task that does not come with a handbook. We do our very best, often learning by trial and error, sometimes from other's successes and mistakes, and we find a parenting style that works for us as a family. We go through all of this with the hope that our children will grow up to be independent, self-sufficient, successful, and good human beings. Sure, everyone parents differently; but I genuinely disagree with Chua's style and I had to say something! "Our Entitled Children: An American Tiger Mom's Story" directly discusses Chua's controversial and infamous views.

Through Hawkin's article in the Santa Cruz Sentinel, my wish is to open up a dialogue between parents about different parenting styles. Take a minute to read the article, and if you have any input, criticism, and thoughts I would love to hear them! As always, thank you for reading my blog!

Shopping List: Pens, Pencils, School Books and.....Time Management Skills

Summer break has officially ended and we are approaching the new school year at full speed. Whether our children are starting Kindergarten or are at an age where they are deciding which colleges to apply to, we all have something in common: we want our kids to have a productive year.

We begin with the usual rituals. We shop for school supplies, get a new outfit for the first day of school, and we send the kids off with a "goodbye, have a terrific day, and this is going to be a great year for you!" In doing these things, we give our children a sense of ownership over the upcoming year, and let them know that they are in control of their success. As we all know, the encouragement cannot and does not end here. We will be checking daily and weekly on their progress, making sure they are headed in the right direction.

Unfortunately, many families wait until the first progress report appears in October, only to find out their child has fallen behind in a certain subject, has been socializing too much, or forgot to turn in that big report by its due date. By then, it is too late and they spend the rest of the year playing catch-up. It does NOT have to be this way. You can save yourself and your child the stress and anxiety by doing a couple very simple things. First, be sure that the dialogue remains open with the kids on a daily basis. Communication is the key to success in many areas of life, and their education is no exception. Secondly, ensure your children are using their time wisely! As adults, we rely on our calendars, iPhone, reminders and lists so that we remember what we need to get done on a daily basis. Why shouldn't the kids have access to the same tools we rely on ourselves? My kids and I have used the Merit Planner religiously and is something we could not live without. Time management skills are something that your child will use throughout their life, and in fact their success will depend on it. I am a firm believer that this simple tool will help both you and your children achieve the desired educational results that you wish for.

The Planner provides a structured schedule broken down by the hour. They can see what tasks need to be accomplished and by what time, so that they can go to that movie on Friday night with their friends. When time is effectively managed, there are no eleventh hour crises, and your student has not only finished their work, but they can take pride in the fact that they have done so to the best of their ability. A sense of accomplishment is priceless.

So this year, as you buy the kids their new notebooks, pens, books, and set up a designated work area designed for learning, I strongly suggest that you include a reliable time management tool. The Merit Planner has done wonders for our family, and I am confident it will do the same for yours. It is such a simple and easy addition to your life, and it will enrich your child's life for the school year, as well as their adult lives ahead.

Wishing you all a wonderful and successful year; and I am beyond glad to answer any questions you may have about making this school year count for your child!

The Wisdom of Letting Kids Fail

I think that many Americans have known for a long time that indulgent, Helicopter-style parenting leads to entitled children. Of course, when it’s spelled out that way, the truth seems implicit and obvious, but it’s a truth that’s been lost on a generation of middle class parents who only wanted their children to avoid all of the discomforts that they experienced, and to have all of the advantages that they never had. While that sentiment is certainly one that anyone can empathize with, it seems like we’ve finally reached a point where public angst over the consequences of entitlement has boiled over into the mainstream. Whether in the form of Amy Chua’s strident promotion of the other extreme, or my own endorsement of a more balanced approach, a growing chorus of voices is arguing that children need not and should not be sheltered from adversity.

The latest proponent of this view is Lori Gottlieb of The Atlantic, who argues in “How to Land Your Kids in Therapy” that over-attentive, coddling parents are, despite their best intentions, destroying their kids’ chances at a normal life by being too concerned with their short-term emotional well-being and never letting them experience failure. By the time these children become adults, they’ve become so attuned to the implied message that they’re entitled to a perfect life that they have trouble dealing with normal, everyday levels of adversity. Because their Helicopter parents always praised them for the slightest accomplishments, and allowed them to quit their sports or musical instruments as soon as they lost interest, they never developed the drive and perseverance necessary to succeed in the real world.

These points are very similar to the ones I made in Our Entitled Children: An American Tiger Mom’s Story, and I’m glad that more and more parents are coming around to the idea that the more you shelter your children, the worse off both of you will be when they grow up. But while lots of attention plus low expectations is indeed a toxic mixture, I disagree with Ms. Gottlieb that the problem is too much parenting and emotional support in general. That’s sliding dangerously close to Tiger Mom territory. Rather than backing off and becoming less “attuned” to their children’s needs, I think that parents just need to refocus their energies on more productive avenues. You can and should support their hobbies and interests, but also make it clear that once they start something, they have to finish it. Praise their effort and give them abundant love and support, but also set and enforce high academic standards. Let them have the things that they really want if you can afford them, as long as you teach them how to save and earn money so they can buy it themselves in the future. In short, it’s ok to be attentive to your children’s needs as long as you balance it out with high expectations. And yes, let them experience failure once in a while, and they'll see that it's not the end of the world.

That’s how an American Tiger Mom does it.

What to do About "Boomerang" College Graduates?

Summer has traditionally been a time of pride and optimism for new college graduates and their parents. But these days, when college seems less like a gateway to a bright and lucrative future and more like a temporary break from living at home, graduation can be a somewhat anticlimactic experience.

Even amidst signs that the job market for recent grads is improving, unemployment for people in their early 20’s still stands at almost 15%. Faced with such discouraging prospects, as many as 80% of this year’s graduates will be moving back home. Not only will this increased burden almost certainly hurt their parents’ retirement plans, it can also lead to vexing delays in the normal maturation process that 20-somethings go through as they learn to take care of and be responsible for themselves. Parents are often frustrated to find that the supposed grown-ups who come back are not too different from the entitled teenagers that they sent off to college.

These “boomerang kids” might seem to be the ultimate vindication for those who would proudly call themselves Tiger Moms. After all, the very reason that Tiger Moms are harsh disciplinarians, don’t allow a lot of freedom or choice, and relentlessly push for academic excellence is so that their children will have secure futures, and ultimately, happy ones. But upon graduation, many of these “Paper Tigers” run into limits of a different sort. Having grown accustomed to a lifelong paradigm where good grades automatically translate to success, these kids often find themselves entering unrewarding careers and resenting their scant prospects of advancement. They and their Tiger Moms realize too late that the endless drilling of rote knowledge was no replacement for being taught how to be creative, proactive, and ambitious.

In my new book Our Entitled Children: An American Tiger Mom’s Story, I introduce the concept of the American Tiger Mom to describe a mom who emphasizes the instilling of these traits, along with independence and personal responsibility, within her children. The American Tiger Mom is more than just a sensible compromise between the ferocious Tiger Mom and the indulgent, permissive Helicopter Mom. She is a mom whose one simple, overarching goal is to endow her children with the skills and knowledge to go off into the world at age 18 and experience a future with no limits.

In my experience, the single most effective way to work toward that goal is to encourage your teenager to do an original Project outside the classroom. A Project can take many forms, as long as it reflects your teen’s passions and aspirations; my own daughters’ Projects involved building a hydrogen fuel cell and starting a nonprofit for alternative fuels. Not only did Projects help them get into their dream schools of Stanford and Claremont McKenna, as well as obtain 80% of the scholarships they applied for, it also gave them a wealth of insight into what careers they were best suited for. If every young adult gained that kind of insight, it would eliminate a lot of the doubt and indecision that normally comes with life in and after college. They would have the skills and knowledge to take control of their lives after graduation, saving themselves a lot of time, and their parents a lot of money.

"Are My Kids Entitled?"

It’s a question that almost every American parent has asked themselves, in some fashion, at some point. Indeed, it’s the question that drove me to write my book in the first place. While you’ll likely have a hard time coming up with a simple answer to that question (I certainly did), you probably have a nagging feeling in your gut that your child is, at least in some ways, entitled. After all, entitlement is a hallmark of life in a relatively affluent society like ours. Even if you’ve managed to avoid spoiling your child with material goods, it’s hard to avoid entitling them in other ways, be they slumber parties, tennis lessons, private schools, or other advantages and amenities that not everyone gets to have. Does this mean that American parents are doomed to raise generation after generation of increasingly entitled children?

Tiger Moms like Amy Chua would have you believe that the answer is yes, unless you follow their lead and abandon every aspect of parenting that could be called “American” – namely, our belief in the value of fun, self-exploration, and self-determination in childhood. I think that not only is this view wrong, it fundamentally misunderstands what entitlement is. Yes, it describes a privileged set of circumstances, but more importantly, it describes an attitude – an attitude of being blithely self-centered, being inconsiderate of other people’s time and needs, discounting the value of hard work, and always wanting something for nothing. This attitude is what we’re really thinking of when we ask ourselves if our kids are entitled, and taking away everything that makes childhood enjoyable is a clumsy and ham-handed way to combat it. The better way to do it is simply to be a role model. Educate your children on consumerism and the family’s finances. Show them how to lead an organized and balanced life. Teach them to value overcoming challenges, and involve yourself in their social lives and interests in a way that both respects their individuality and pushes them in the right direction. Rather than trying to take over their lives, just lead by example. That’s what being an American Tiger Mom is all about.

"Our Entitled Children: An American Tiger Mom's Story" is available now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kindle, and Nook!

A Tale of Two Tigers

In anticipation of the upcoming release of Our Entitled Children: An American Tiger Mom’s Story, I’d like to talk some more about the differences between the American Tiger Mom and the Chua-style Tiger Mom. Because our goals are quite similar (to raise children who can reach their full potential), and our methods require roughly the same level of involvement in our children's lives, those differences might not be readily apparent to everyone. Therefore, I think it’s important to discuss what makes the American Tiger Mom distinct from the Chua Tiger Mom, and why it's a more useful example for other parents to draw from.

In the book, I proposed the American Tiger Mom as the optimal middle ground between the indulgent Helicopter Mom and the overly harsh Tiger Mom, but I didn’t talk how this view fits with parenting theory. Developmental Psychology categorizes parenting styles according to two main dimensions - demandingness and responsiveness. Demandingness refers to, well, how demanding the parents are in terms of their children’s academics, maturity, and moral development, and how willing they are to enact supervision and discipline. Responsiveness is a measure of how attuned parents are to their children’s needs, and the level of warmth and support that they provide in order to foster the growth of self-assertion and individuality. Parents who are not demanding but highly responsive – in other words, Helicopter Moms – are known as indulgent parents. Chua Tiger Moms, who are highly demanding but low in responsiveness, are known as authoritarian parents, whereas parents who are both highly demanding and highly responsive – like the American Tiger Mom – are known as authoritative parents.

While both types of demanding parents provide well-ordered and structured developmental environments, and exert a high degree of “behavioral control,” the low responsiveness of the authoritarian parent means that they are “obedience- and status-oriented, and expect their orders to be obeyed without explanation.” (Baumrind, 1991, p. 62) This leads Chua Tiger Moms to be both autocratic and intrusive in the way that they control their children, frequently straying into areas that most parents across cultures would consider to be illegitimate exercises of parental authority, such as controlling the child’s hobbies or forbidding school plays and sleepovers. Their word is law, and it doesn’t matter to them whether their kids understand their reasoning; they simply use guilt induction, withdrawal of love, or shaming in order to gain compliance. Their children tend to perform fairly well in school but have poorer social skills, lower self-esteem, and higher levels of depression.

On the other hand, authoritative parents like the American Tiger Mom don’t expect their children to conform to their thinking, instead preferring to educate and influence them in the right direction so they can make good choices on their own. While they demand good grades and proper, moral behavior, they also recognize their children’s need for emotional support, and respect their desire to be individuals. They do their best to make sure that their kids understand the reasoning behind every disciplinary decision. Because authoritative parents value achievement and autonomy in equal measure, their children consistently rate better than their peers in both social competence and academic performance.

Of course, these distinctions aren’t as clear-cut in practice as they are in theory. Most people fall somewhere in between the various categories, and just because one’s parents could be described as authoritarian doesn’t mean that one will necessarily turn out with low self-esteem and psychosocial functioning. However, it is clear that authoritative, American Tiger Mom-style parenting leads to better outcomes on average, as it combines the best aspects of two flawed extremes.

To learn more about Our Entitled Children: An American Tiger Mom’s Story, soon to be available at major paperback and ebook retailers everywhere, visit www.americantigermom.com!

References

Baumrind, D. (1991). The influence of parenting style on adolescent competence and substance use. Journal of Early Adolescence, 11(1), 56-95.

"Our Entitled Children: An American Tiger Mom's Story" Soon to be Widely Available!

The harsh but effective methods of the Tiger Mom have dominated our national conversation on parenthood for months. However, moms who would prefer a more balanced and sensible approach to raising high-achieving kids will soon have their chance to roar back. In less than a week, Our Entitled Children: An American Tiger Mom’s Story will be available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kindle, iTunes, and other major paperback and ebook retailers.

As the name implies, this book tells my story – the story of an average mom’s journey to provide her daughters with a stellar head start in life. In doing so, I took a very hands-on approach, even going so far as to start an academically accelerated private school just for them. Like the Chua-style Tiger Mom, I got results – Nicole is a medical student at Stanford University, and Jaclyn just landed a high-paying corporate job straight out of Claremont McKenna College. But as an American Tiger Mom, rather than berating and prodding my daughters to conform to my vision of their futures, I reserved my ferocious energy for my efforts to provide them with opportunities to grow and excel on their own terms. Whether it was getting them a $35,000 grant to study hydrogen fuel cell technology, or converting our garage into a studio to support their passion for dance, I did my very best to enrich their lives and help them grow into complete individuals. I hope my book can help other moms do the same.

If you’d like to learn more about the book, please visit www.americantigermom.com.