Monday, April 11, 2011

The Chinese mothering style article

So there was an article in Time magazine about a woman who was Chinese and raised her daughters in that cultural mindset. Her husband is American. It was an interesting article in that she stated so we praise mediocrity in this country now and that is why we are behind in education. We praise the "losers". Everyone wins. No one is cut from the team, no one is allowed to fail in school.
Yet America strives to win it all. While I am not like the mom in the article that stands over her 7 yr old and says no dinner or going to bed until you have that scale right on the violin. If I know they have the ability and talent-then expectations are a good thing and I would have to agree with this mom. I may get knocked for saying that-but structure and discipline helps us all to find success later in life. It gives us the ability to get up on time bc we are committed to what we do. It helps us see that when we work hard at something there are tangible results. I am far from perfect-but someone once told me that they thought that the dad picked friends based on habits and hobbies. While I have no idea, his daughter has excelled in her area of skill.

You may ask, what prompted this....as I watched Keira in a different class tonight in gymnastics I realized that when our kids learn a skill and we want them to progress-we must do our part. She was too busy goofing off in the other class because she had too much free time. This make up class gave her no free time and she worked hard and progressed thru skills I did not know she even had the strength for. When she was skipping the lunges-I pointed it out to her and she stepped up and did them all out. Expectations.....kids will rise above them....
hopefully in the end I don't screw up my kids-but when they succeed at something they have been trying so hard at-the smile on their face is so worth it! the lesson they learn when they lose helps them to work harder for the next time....
I am glad I had the chance to be a mom...it maybe hard like 5 doctor's appointments in one day today, etc. But the lessons I have learned from them are priceless.

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