Are the French better parents?

A new year and a new parenting formula! Last year we were told that the Chinese way was better and this year’s hottest parenting methods come from the French via Paula Druckerman in her book Raising up bebe. I haven’t read the book, but read her article in Wall Street Journal. Does this not strike you as ironic, that as per authors of parenting books,  parents in China or France do such an excellent job without ever having read a single book on parenting, and those in the USA have no clue despite the market being glutted with books on the subject. And so we go write more! If you stop and think, maybe the problem is not of having enough advice, but too much of it, that makes us question our values instead of following our inner compass. 

One country’s parenting way in not better than other’s. What is common among any of the “old” countries is that parents there still have a deep sense of their roots, and that combined with the local culture, guides the way for them. If there is a magic formula that produces wonderful children, it is parents with a clear vision of what kind of adults they want their children to grow up into. Ms Druckerman, a helicopter parent by her own admission, went from New York to Paris and was amazed at the fact that the parents actually had some long term goals for their children that they followed up on. They saw themselves as the means for their children’s success instead of wringing their hands in exasperation of having no control on what their children did. French parents actually exerted their parental authority! Ms Druckerman could have as well gone to a small mid-western town in the US, or any other country in the world and made the exact same discovery. “How mid-western US parents are better than neurotic New York parents” doesn’t make a very good book title though. 

The problem is not that American parents are bad or that the French have discovered a secret sauce. It is not at all culture specific - parents who misguidedly look for a secret formula, some magic recipe in a book that will help them parent better, have already ceded their inner authority to be the best guide for their children. 

In most other countries of the world, parenting is driven by culture, not by research or parenting books. Parents are guided by a deep set of values imbibed form the culture they live in and the culture as a whole instills these values in their children. Sometimes parenting is driven simply by “what will people say”, because the culture clearly defines right and wrong. In India, where I grew up, a child would get a dressing down for making her parents look bad in front of neighbors and extended family by behaving badly. It was very deeply instilled that your behavior reflects on the entire family going back many generations, and you better not mess that up. My parents did not learn that from a book.  They did not have to explicitly teach it either - we met enough role models daily to emulate from.

America is a different country. Individual is more important than the collective family. The country is a melting pot, and there is no set of uniform cultural values that we are judged by. Here we raise our children in an isolated environment. We rarely meet our neighbors or extended family, so that constant threat of somebody watching and judging is removed. This isolation also mean that neither the parents nor the children see any regular real time role models to emulate. And lacking our own inner compass, we go trudging through books and newspapers to find that magic formula.


On a side note, it is bizarre that WSJ is the new outlet for parenting advice - even the 'tiger mother' article was published there!

Tiger Mother

The "Tiger mother" has been the target of everyone's hate in the US. Not having read the memoir or the controversial Wall Street Journal article, I did not want to write a knee-jerk reaction, based purely on what I read in the media. I have finally read the article, and now feel ready to express an opinion.

I am well aware that in here the terms "western" and "Chinese" parents refer to stereotypes. There are many bad parents in the east and many good parents in the western society. This is more of a general discussion of parenting values most common in each culture.

Surprisingly, I found myself agreeing with most of what Ms Chua had to say. She says "What Chinese parents understand is that nothing is fun until you're good at it. To get good at anything you have to work, and children on their own never want to work, which is why it is crucial to override their preferences." I absolutely agree - you cannot enjoy something unless you are accomplished at it. To get really good at something you have to go through a phase of absolute frustration and boredom where you have to keep doing the same thing over and over again until it clicks, and it is a rare child that will be willing to work through that on their own. Most will quit. However, if the child does work through that frustration, and attain mastery, the experience will forever be a source of self-confidence to help work through other difficulties in life. Many such successful experiences, stacked together will constitute resilience and perseverance - qualities very hard to instill. I also agree that western parents are often too concerned about their child's self-confidence, not realizing that "there's nothing better for building confidence than learning you can do something you thought you couldn't." Confidence comes from true accomplishment, not false praise.

In all the criticism of Ms Chua, there seems to be an underlying assumption that she does not love her children. Do only lax mothers love their children? I would argue that a mother who is willing to let go of short-term gratification that comes from her children liking her the next day, in favor of their long term success, loves her children even more. Ms Chua talks about cuddling and hugging her children. She is not all tough and no love. How the techniques used by Ms Chua affect a child depends heavily on whether the child feels loved, whether she realizes that her mother truly cares for her and will do anything for her. If Ms Chua had her daughter practice "The little white donkey" for hours, do not forget that Ms. Chua was right there with her for all those hours as well. She didn't just threaten her child, leave her with the piano and go shopping! Not many parents have that kind of staying power and would have resorted to bribing and then eventually given up. You have to care enough about your child's future to spend that kind of time with them, and I am sure that the child can see that caring in their day to day life. As Ms Chua says "For their part, many Chinese secretly believe that they care more about their children and are willing to sacrifice much more for them than Westerners, who seem perfectly content to let their children turn out badly." I know many women from eastern countries who give up a social life, stay on in bad marriages and sacrifice luxuries, just so that their child can become a successful adult with a secure future. Whereas many western mothers use the mantra "happy mothers make happy babies" to justify all kinds of ill-advised behavior.

As far as academics go, the constant effort these days in schools to make learning "fun" and, then providing all kinds of external motivations to get the ever distracted children to learn, annoys me no end. The purpose of education, especially the kind taught up to middle school, is not entertainment, but is to establish a basic foundation on which higher education can be based. If you don’t have arithmetic down in elementary school, and your parents don't care enough to ensure that you do, there is an extremely small chance you will ever be able to study advance math or engineering. Basic education - reading, writing and math is a lot of boring drill work. It is a myth that children will not do anything unless it is "fun". They will surely not, if left to themselves, but working with parents with the right attitude and who set correct expectations, you will be surprised what children are capable of. By setting the misguided expectation that learning should be "fun", we end up making school seem even more boring. Have you ever met a child who did not enjoy rising up to a challenge, meeting it, and basking in the glow of that success! However, helping a child through boring work and sticking with it until they get it, is hard work. In my opinion, efforts to make learning "fun" are really grown-ups way of copping out hoping that maybe children would just learn on their own.

In criticism of Tiger Mother, many have pointed out that despite all their academic accomplishments, eastern children often lack leadership skills. That has less to do with parenting skills and everything to do with assimilation. Social skills are learned from parents by osmosis, and unlike math there is no easy drill to instill those. Immigrant parents are not comfortable in the western society and usually have a hard time relating to and socializing with westerners. As a result their children lack that skill and pay the price in the work environment. They still get much ahead in the workplace because of their accomplishments, than the lack of assimilation skills would allow, and that is credit to their work-ethic and their parents' hard work.

Yes, I agree that this sometimes goes to the extreme, with too much being expected of children, and absolutely no freedom to fail. You can't set high expectations and then leave the children to fend for themselves through them. You have to be there helping, encouraging, guiding and pushing, as necessary. And then be eventually ready to back off.

My children barely watch TV and have no video games. I rarely take them out for "entertainment". We do go for movies, and to fairs and museums but I am not their perpetual activity-planner. They are not paid for chores and no disrespect to elders is tolerated. The only time I buy them non-essential items (toys, trinkets, etc.) is on their birthdays. This does not mean that my house is run like a military camp, or that my kids are not loved or praised, or a parent doesn't sit with them for hours to listen to their worries. They know their parents will be there behind them all the way, but they have to hold up their end too. Does that make me a "Tiger mother". Maybe it does.

More tricks of indirection

Bedtime has become another daily struggle in my household. This problem comes back at regular intervals to haunt me with new and creative forms. I repeat again and again that I will turn the lights out at such and such time. If they get in the bed before that they get reading time until the lights are out, and that my kids consider a big reward. Yet, I find myself tagging behind, repeatedly reminding them that their time is almost up, and still they dawdle. They will get involved in time-consuming activities such as rearranging all their stuffed animals, and then keep begging for "one more minute". Needless to say this is very frustrating, esp late in the evening when I am running a short fuse.

Tonight, just because I simply felt incapable of tagging behind without losing my temper completely, I picked up a kitchen timer, set it to fifteen minutes and said "I will come back to turn out the lights when the timer tings". They asked whether they can read if they got into bed earlier than the fifteen minutes and I said "of course". Then I walked away.

The results couldn't have been more different! The girls were in bed quickly, and there was no more imploring for "one more minute" when I turned out the light. They have a digital clock in their room so when I say lights are out at 8:30, it is not that I am leaving them clueless - they have an easy way to check how they are doing with time. Somehow, the tick-tock of the kitchen timer coupled with the countdown effect seems to have been a better persuader.

The bigger question is what kind of technique do I need to invent to keep myself using this new found wisdom, and not regress back to nagging the kids!

Power of indirection

You would think that if past ten years of mothering experience would have taught me anything, it would be that children do not listen to their mother, and that if you want a child to do something the last thing you want to do is to straight-out ask them to do it. It has never worked, at least not with my children. And yet, that is the method I employ most - "Please pick your clothes off the floor", "No, no, no...do not stuff them under your bed", "The laundry hamper is right there!", "YOU KNOW WHAT I AM GOING TO DO - JUST THROW ALL THESE CLOTHES IN THE TRASH BECAUSE THAT IS HOW YOU TREAT THEM. WHY IS IT THAT I HAVE TO KEEP ASKING YOU THE SAME THING EVERYDAY!" As you can see that the only thing I achieve is convincing my children that their mother is a banshee.

This problem was magnified once summer break started. Being a a big believer in the power of unscheduled time, and having the luxury to work from home, I have let the girls roam free for most part except imposing restrictions on how much time they spend with electronic media. I, however, have basic expectations that they will brush their teeth and take a shower every day. I would also like them to practie their musical instruments daily. My only "educational" goal for this summer was to teach the girls to take care of themselves so that they don't grow up into adults whose beds are forever rumpled with clothes piled high on them, and whose normal method of storing their belongings is on various piles on the floor. I do believe that there is a 'baseline' to everything in life - what we think is 'normal'. Girls who grow up seeing their mother being abused often assume that certain amount of abuse is normal in a relationship. I hinted at this in my last post as well that girls who see their mothers doing all household chores automatically assume all household chores when they get married. I grew up in a house where all beds were made every morning. To this day, I cannot sleep in an unmade bed. Even on the rare occasion that I do not get around to making my bed in the morning, I make it just before getting into it which seems ridiculous but then most of our actions are controlled by our subconcious mind. Coming back to the point, my hope is that by the end of the summer break the girls will make their beds every morning, keep their room and bathroom neat and do their own laundry which also includes putting clothes away in their dressers.

These "chores" shouldn't take more than an hour during the day, and I and the girls had agreed on these. Yet, trying to get them to do them was driving me insane. I kept requesting and reminding them often, and driving myself insane in the process. I am firmly against giving children any kind of reward for doing their share for the family, so I did not have money as a motivator. Then I remembered a tool I had used years ago when I had initially started imposing restrictions on TV time. When the girls were preschoolers they were allowed an hour of TV time a day (That sounds a lot when I think about it now). That hour was represented by a circle, divided into 12 sections each representing 5 minutes. I drew this on a whiteboard attached to the fridge every morning. After the girls were done watching TV, even for a few minutes, we filled in the sections for the time used up. Whenever the girls wanted to watch TV, I would say "check the chart" and the chart would tell them whether they had used up their daily quota or not. This method worked beautifully because it wasn't I who was telling them not to watch TV, it was the chart. After a couple of weeks of frustration with the chores during the summer break, I remembered this, and started to make a "to-do" list on an index card for each girl. Every morning I handed them a checklist with items such as "brush teeth" and "make bed" on it and it was amazing how well they took to it. They enjoyed doing their jobs and checking off the items on their list. When we struggled with getting everything done a few days in a row, I asked them how we should solve the problem and they came up with a wonderful solution. The suggested that once the tasks were done to my satisfaction, I was to sign off on the list. If the list didn't get signed off one day, the following day the list had to be completely signed off before they would be allowed to watch TV. This seemed fair. It doesn't seem like a big change - instead of verbally telling them what to do, I give them a written list, but the outcome couldn't be more different. Wow!

Breaking the cycle

This past weekend my family found itself in the midst of a hands-on live nature display featuring snakes. We were encouraged to hold and handle the non-poisonous snakes. We thought this to be a great opportunity and all of us (one after a little encouragement) proceeded to hold and admire the snake. They were beautiful creatures, and feel very smooth and cool to touch. I took pictures of my daughters holding the snakes and posted them on Facebook, and the main theme of people's comments was about how brave my girls were. Bravery is a word I do not throw around carelessly, and given that the whole incident was rather matter of fact for us, I was surprised that handling snakes was considered that unusual. I know most women go eek at the sight of the smallest of creatures. I have always seen that as a conditioned response - we see other women in real life and in movies act like this so we automatically start behaving that way. Somebody has to break the cycle! I make a conscious effort to not freak out at the sight of a bug in front of my children - not that I am inclined to except at the sight of a certain centipede, but subconscious is a very strong thing. Now I have two girls who don't go eek and maybe the cycle will be broken.

Talking of cycles there is another one that I am trying to break. Growing up, my mother did all the household chores. Even us children were not expected to help, and although she complained sometimes she never asked for help. Consequently I grew up not knowing much about cooking or doing laundry. Strangely though, once I was married I took on all the housekeeping chores just as my mother had, and I know she was doing what her own mother had done. Having to do all these chores without knowing how to do them coupled with the responsibilities of a full-time job drove me right out of my mind. And yet it did not occur to me until recently that I should ensure that my daughters do not fall into the same trap i.e. not learning to take care of themselves and thinking that as the woman of the house they should do all the chores. The cycle must be broken! TO this end I am making an effort to ask for help and letting my husband do chores such as washing dishes, and have started expecting the girls to do their own laundry and keep their environs in order. Given how tedious it is to stay after kids asking them to pick up clothes off the floor and teaching them how to fold clothes and organize their drawers, I am not surprised that my mother did it all. I swear, I could get it all done faster and with much less aggravation if I did it myself, but I have to keep the long term goal in mind. Break the cycle!

Pediatricians

Over the Thanksgiving break I met a young pediatrician at a friend's party. She was freshly out of her residency and into motherhood with an almost two year old daughter. Child rearing was the obvious topic of conversation. She shared that her daughter takes hours to go to bed and wakes up many times during the night. The doctor has all kinds of advice coming to her from older women in her family about what to feed the child, how to handle the sleep issue and how to treat common childhood ailments. I was stunned as to how clueless the young mother seemed about things such as discipline, sleeping etc. In fact, not much different from how I was with my first child but somehow I was expecting a pediatrician to be more aware. After all, aren't we always advised to consult our pediatrician when in doubt. I did receive very good and wise advice, and immense support from the first pediatrician I consulted for my babies. I still remember and use his wise words. Now that I think of it, all his advice wasn't really coming from his medical degree. It was the advice of a man who had spent 40 years of his life working with children and had seen it all. The medical degree did not give him the knowledge about child rearing, just the opportunity to be with many parents and children, and to learn from them.

This got me wondering if we should seek our pediatrician's advice on child-rearing matters, or consult them strictly for medical issues. What do you do?

NY Times article on co-sleeping

I just read this article in New York Times and was quite shocked at the tone of voice and choice of words. First let me confess that our household is quite similar to those described in the article - in terms of how they sleep, not in terms of all the fancy kids' furniture and sleep-therapists they can afford. However, unlike the families described, or the author herself, I do not think that kids sleeping in our bed is "gross". In fact, I want to laugh loudly at the statement that co-sleeping is inching into the mainstream. Puhleeeze - kids have been sleeping with their parents (except for maybe those of European royalty) all over the world since time immemorial. It is making kids sleep alone that inched into the mainstream in recent past. Has anyone stopped and thought that if parents are having so much trouble getting kids to sleep alone in their rooms, and need to employ sleep-therapists no less, maybe kids sleeping alone is what is 'abnormal'? The adults in the house get to sleep with somebody and little kids have to sleep alone, sometimes on a whole different floor of the house!? If you have to go to all these lengths to create a bear that talks like the mother, and smells like the mother, then isn't the child telling you that he'd rather be next to his "real" mother?

Here is my favorite quote from the article
"It’s commonly believed in the mental health field that it’s important the children learn to sleep on their own. Not doing it often generalizes to other problems, because it’s about a fairly important way that parents say no to their child.”

Bravo! Because I let kids sleep in my bed when they feel like it, I have been instantly labeled a bad and indulgent parent who is unable to set boundaries. Oh and also I must have intimacy issues in my marriage. My kids are not allowed to bully, call people names or kick the seat in front of them in an airplane, but I don't think a child seeking comfort with a parent is doing anything wrong at all. By letting my children know that I am there for them, I am harming their mental health forever! Wow! You gotta love these modern experts. They have so wonderfully positioned themselves over a mother's instincts and are all the more richer for it. This modern world is crazy - we need nutritional experts to tell us what to eat and parental experts to tell us how to raise our children, something that is so natural to our very being that even a bird can do it! The most intelligent life-form on the planet, however, needs an army of experts.

What I really want to say, once I have taken a few deep breaths, is that this should not even be an issue. People are different - parents and kids alike. Although experts who have copyrighted parenting methods would very much like us to think so, there really is no one right way to parent. We do what works for us and agrees with our values, and others do the same. Live and let live, and let us do our parenting in peace without assigning a subliminal pathological explanation to everything.

To say or keep quiet?

You have been there, haven't you? Your friend's child seems completely out of control, doesn't respect boundaries and is obnoxiously behaved. Of course, the mom is to blame. After all, if she had paid more attention to the child instead of spending all her time buying "cute" things for the child, the child would be better behaved today. Do you say anything to your friend about how obnoxious her child is?

Jump up and pull her down! Yeah baby! Oh, how quick we mothers are to judge others!

Mothering is very hard work, and I doubt there are many mothers out there who don't want the best for their children. The congratulations and the blame for how a child turns out are placed squarely on the mother's shoulder and that is indeed a heavy burden to go through life with. When I had only one child, rather challenging one if I must add, I felt that my friends who had more easy-going children questioned my parenting style. Then we had our second babies and this time some of my friends had the challenging ones. So are we even? Does it really work like this?

As a parent we make tough choices and there is a need in all of us to justify our choices and to know in our minds that our choices are right. Sometimes we do that by looking at other's choices and the impact of those choices. It is also true, and very unfortunate aspect of human
nature that the closer the other person is to us the more we analyze them and consequently find more mistakes in them. My Sister-in-law thinks I am too lax a mom and not setting enough boundaries for my kids. I think my SIL is too strict with her kids and that is why her kids exert control by doing things such as running away in the mall. My SIL believes that it is
downright unacceptable that my 5yo still spends half the night in my bed and I think it is downright unacceptable that SIL expects all of us to have a nice, uninterrupted, sit-down dinner when I have a 8mo old crawling baby. Who is to say what is right?

The results of everything we do sometimes take years to show, and sometimes it is nothing that we do at all but the basic nature of the child. I have two kids. When we are about to cross the street and I ask them to hold my hand, one of them happily does but the other one argues about why she doesn't need to hold my hand and offers ideas of what she could hold, all the way to the other side of the street. They are both mine, and I raise them the same but I am sure a passing mom has already judged me for not keeping my child safe.

I hope you see that I am not really trying to slam anyone, but just musing on the difficulty of the position we mothers are in. Maybe you are indeed right about you friend's child, and intervention is needed, but do it carefully and with respect. Telling a mother that she is wrong and that her child needs therapy can never be easy. If you really have to do it, I wish you the best.