I have recently read Battle Hymn of Tiger Mother published by The Penguin Press in 20xx. This autobiography was written by the Chinese American woman Amy Chua, a tenured professor in Yale Law School. She causes a sensation because her strict but unique parenting which brings excellent performance of her two daughters.
This autobiography tells the course of Amy Chua how she raised the two daughters in Chinese parenting way. It is divided into three parts. At the first part, it gives some introductions of the two daughters, the family. And in the second and third parts, the writer tells more details in the process of raising her two different daughters and the difficulties she was confronted in the process, and most importantly the success the daughters achieved in music which brought Amy Chua pride as well as the whole family.
To some extent, I don’t like Amy’s parenting in some aspects. In my opinion, she deprived the nature of children and pushed too much pressure on their children, especially on Lulu who was under the shadow of her excellent elder daughter—Sophia. While I was reading the third part in the rebellion part, I couldn’t control my own emotion, I felt what Lulu felt and even hated against her selfish and autocratic mother. I couldn’t understand why Amy didn’t let Lulu get up from sit, for water, not even to go to the bathroom when Lulu just wanted a rest during the long hours’ practice of violin. She made Lulu practice violin all day during the family’s vacation abroad. She spoiled the vacation by letting the other family members waiting the practice. She was unreasonable.
But next what I do is to admire her.
There is an old Chinese saying “property can never last for three generations”。 But Amy Chua did change it! Her parents came to U.S and suffered a tough life at the very beginning. They taught Amy math and piano in an extreme strict way when she was a kid. Under the influence of her parents, now Amy is frugal and pretty strict with her daughters and herself. They are the valuable points of her. Although she is so extreme on her parenting, she has the advisable ideas that the parents and the parents to be to learn.
Firstly, as parents, they couldn’t ignore their children and put all focus on their job. There is no excuse for not concerning their children. Except supervising her daughters, Amy Chua has to give lessons in university, write books and handle the family chores. She is so busy, but she doesn’t ignore the daughters.
Secondly, parents should be strict with their children especially when they are kids because kids lack of self-control. They should not indulge their children in internet or sleepovers.
Thirdly, parents should master some skills in parenting. As a matter of fact, there are so many Chinese parents who are strict with their children with no avail of success. Success can’t be totally copied, because some parents ignore the skills in parenting. When their children don’t follow their will or perform well enough to satisfy them, they will lose their temper and even beat their children, yes, of course, Amy Chua will be mad but she won’t beat her daughters, in this condition, she will be sober and wait until her daughters perform well enough. She learnt some music knowledge in her children’s class and supervised them patiently. She knew where to correct the mistakes and gave the children extraordinary success.
Tiger mother aroused a big heat in parenting and threw such an important issue for us to think about. Battle Hymn of Tiger Mother gives us really some enlightenment. Anyway, that’s a really unique experience in reading this book.