Chinese mothers are superior . . . at climbing the wrong ladder

Too many of us spend our lives and energy climbing the ladder of success, only to find that it was leaning on the wrong wall.

I do think the Amy Chua, the author of “The Battle Hymn of a Tiger Mother”  makes some spot-on observations such as “What Chinese parents understand is that nothing is fun until you’re good at it,” and “hard work produces accomplishment, which produces confidence and yet more accomplishment”. For the Chinese mother, self-confidence comes from skill-attainment, not from praise.

As a mother of seven children who all play at least one musical instrument at very high levels, (some kids play four instruments), and who has been somewhat of a “Chinese Mother” in the past, I want to share some of my insights.

In my younger years, I, too, was probably mean at times in order to gain the compliance I thought was necessary. I think if you asked my kids to comment, they would have some rather frank and painful memories about practicing.

But in the last few years, I have seen the greater wisdom of living ones life based on principles of Real Love –which is a term that encompasses charity, or godly love. So my methods have changed. Sure, there are days that I practice for four hours with my six-year old at the piano.  But instead of employing threats, scolding, anger, and generating tears, as I have in the past at times, I use the motivational strategies on this blog.  Of the four hours spent at the piano, perhaps two are spend jumping rope, playing “Go Fish”, or Chutes and Ladders.

One of the best compliments I ever received was from my 25-year old son, home from violin performance studies at Rice University, who observed my practice regimen with my youngest daughter over a few weeks.  He said, “You practice with her like crazy, but she never cries!”  (Okay, the implications of that remark are pretty devastating!).  But that is my goal with my little Abigail.

Parents CAN inspire great achievement without employing painful strategies which tell the child they are not loved unconditionally.  (Please go to Dr. Greg Baer’s website for a complete explanation of Real Love vs. Imitation Love)

Personally, I think the Chinese Mother approach to child-rearing might result in some really high-achieving children, but I am very concerned with the ramifications which are much more important than sending your kid to Yale:

• This child rearing style is based on the exchange of imitation love:” If you perform well, I will give you my approval and love.  If you don’t perform well, I will withdraw my approval (and love).”  Even though adults can (try) to make the distinction between a person’s actions and the person themselves, that sort of sophisticated emotional gymnastics is beyond nearly all children.  What they hear is “I’m not lovable for myself. I’m only lovable if I perform well.” That message is dangerous. Sure, it might motivate a lot of children to get on the treadmill of achievement and run for dear life, they will always feel like “something is missing” when they grow up.  They will feel empty and afraid. This is an unresearched and unexamined result of this child rearing style, but I am convinced that the effects are epidemic and devastating, nonetheless. Fear and emptiness are almost a hallmark of modern civilization.

• Having said this about motivating with “conditional love”, I am not implying that we should not encourage and support our childrens’ achievement. But our challenge as parents is to motivate in ways that never call into question our unconditional love for that child. Hopefully, we can say, “I will always love you no matter what. If you are acting badly, I will love you.  If you are a lousy student or musician or athlete, I will love you. If you reject the religion of your upbringing, I will love you. Now, let’s talk about what you will have to do to open the most important opportunities in your life in the next 500 years. . .”  The ideal is to motivate with gentleness, persuasion, the pure love of Christ–not fear, shame, or withdrawing of love.

• Unfortunately, using manipulations like imitation love (praise, anger, etc) DO seem to work in the short-run. We often get outward compliance quickly. So we use tactics because it appears that they are “successful”. And we might be tired, exhausted, etc, ourselves and we just want to get a result as fast as possible.  But the underlying message of conditional love is so powerful, and so devastating, that I am convinced that we must only use such tactics in a bona-fide emergency. In those cases, our children will probably understand the situation and not take the words personally—or at least they will be able to process it later and not feel a withdrawal of love.

• Of course, we as parents need to do some soul searching to understand why we would “push” our children into certain achievements.  In my opinion, we often desire our children to fulfill our unmet needs for love, both real and imitation.  Maybe we push them so that our parents or peers will praise us and think highly of us. Yuck. Or so that they will make lots of money. Yuck (if it is just to consume it on their lusts). But if we can help our children to see that we can all contribute to the welfare of a Zion-type of society—that would be a more worthy motivation for achievement, in my opinion.  Nothing in that scenario would conflict with the teachings of Christ and His prophets.  In fact, think about it, if service were our prime motivator (not other forms of imitation love) our work would seldom become a conflict with our families and serving the Lord.  Since we don’t have an inordinate need to fill a gaping hole of love by stuffing in tons of imitation love, we could probably keep a fairly balanced work/family life.

In conclusion, I’m glad that Amy Chua’s book has opened a discussion about parenting and children’s educational achievement. I sincerely hope that we can take the good things that she advocates, and develop more loving, productive methods of motivation than have occurred in the past.

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