Amy Chua, controversial author and the original “tiger mum”, has said strict parenting requires parents to have a sense of humour and a thorough understanding of their children, during her visit to Hong Kong.
Listen to your children, but avoid being a pushover, the Yale law professor and mother of two girls, Sophia and Lulu, has said.
Her 2011 book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, stirred an international debate over her heavy-handed parenting style, but she said her daughters, now 30 and 27, would probably use the same methods, but with more fun.
Chua, who was in Hong Kong for three days last week to deliver a keynote speech at the Asia Society, urged people to read her book to the end, as she backed down a bit eventually.
“The ending of the book was when my younger daughter Lulu started to hate me,” she told the Post.
“She had this angry look, and if I didn’t change and loosen up a little bit, I was going to lose her. And that’s when I adjusted. But I feel like it’s more of an art than a science.”
The big lesson, she said, was that parents had to pay attention to their children’s individuality.
“The most important advantage of what I consider tough love in parenting is instilling resilience and grit, which will always be the key to happiness,” she added.
Born in the United States to Chinese parents, Chua, 61, has been a professor at Yale Law School since 2001 and is married to fellow law professor Jed Rubenfeld.
Her bestselling memoir about raising their daughters in a traditional and strict Chinese way, earned her both death threats and accolades.
It revealed that her daughters were never allowed to attend sleepovers at friends’ homes, have play dates, be in school plays, complain, watch TV, play computer games, choose their own extracurricular activities or play any instrument other than the piano or violin.
Academically, they were not allowed to get any grade less than an A and had to be No 1 in every subject, except gym and drama.
Chua described how she called one of her girls “garbage” for being disrespectful, and refused to let her daughter go to the bathroom until she mastered a difficult piano composition.
All that, apparently, is now history.
“They now say that they will probably like to raise their kids the same way with some adjustments, with a little more fun,” Chua said with a laugh.
“But I actually think they had lots of fun because that book was a little bit tongue in cheek, and they actually did have some play dates and sleepovers.”
But she said sleepovers actually made a lot of children miserable.
“A lot of people tell me they came home from sleepovers and there were all these mean girls. It’s not that fun,” she added.
In Hong Kong, students’ mental health issues have sparked concerns with suicides among primary and secondary schoolchildren hitting a high in recent years.
Chua said strict parenting was not necessarily linked to suicide, and one should not pinpoint the reasons students took their own lives.
“Kids with very strict parents actually have the lowest rates of suicide, which is not what people expect,” she said. “Social media creates various forms of oppression, including bullying. I think you just have to pay attention and not go for simple solutions.”
She said parenting was hard work and especially with mental health, parents not only had to pay attention but also needed to understand if their child was facing a real crisis.
She recalled an incident when she dropped everything and drove all the way to her daughter Lulu’s college after she told her she was depressed and it sounded bad.
But when she got there, her daughter was surprised to see her and made it seem like it was not a big deal.
Chua recommended that parents should listen to their children, but also know that “children are very smart” and learn to avoid being a pushover or becoming the punching bag.
“I don’t think you can just listen to everything they say, you have to live and learn, you have to know your children,” she said.
Chua said Western-style parenting emphasised encouraging children, but she felt that could have a negative impact.
“The opposite of tiger parents says, ‘Just pursue your passion, we believe in you, you’re amazing’, and there are actually a lot of articles in the West suggesting that this has led to greater depression,” she said.
Children who are always praised soon find out they do not feel as great as they were told they were.
“The children feel guilty. They can’t even blame their parents,” she said.
She had observed that some Western parents whose children committed suicide were very liberal and progressive in their parenting style.
Chua also mentioned that both parents had their part to play and strict parenting required some traditional tricks, such as parents playing “good cop and bad cop”.
“I was very strict with all these rules, but my husband was always like, ‘Let’s go outside and play, let’s go to a baseball game’, so that kind of balanced it,” she said.
She also stressed that her demanding parenting style was blended with a sense of humour.
“I raised my kids very strictly, but they always knew that I was kind of a funny person because laughter is like a release valve,” she said.
Both her daughters are law graduates too.
Her book sparked serious discussions on parenting, but Chua said she had nothing to revise, even if what she said caused her trouble.
For her, honesty came first.
“It spurred a very important international debate. Even if people disagreed with me, at least we started a conversation. It created such a firestorm just because it was completely raw and authentic,” she said.
“Even the parts where my daughter said, ‘You’re a terrible mom, I hate you.’ If I had taken that out, maybe I would have got into less trouble, but that’s what happened in my household.”
If you have suicidal thoughts, or you know someone who is, help is available. For Hong Kong, dial +852 2896 0000 for The Samaritans or +852 2382 0000 for Suicide Prevention Services.
In the US, call the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 or +1 800 273 8255. For a list of other nations’ helplines, see this page.