Parenting - Put Up or Shut Up

[Andrew D]

I learned far more music theory in the choir than in my piano lessons. (And I agree that music theory is the most important thing to learn, because it is universally applicable to all (Western) instruments.)

Choristers tend very strongly to be self-motivated. Those who aren't don't last long.

There is plenty of individual satisfaction in choral singing. At least as important, there is the satisfaction of the successful COLLABORATIVE enterprise. That is something Chua's little childbots will never experience, at least not until they get free of her. They'll likely end up as the kind of performers who can play brilliant solo music (or duets with each other) but can't play a concerto, because they can't work with an orchestra. (And, of course, that will be all the orchestra's fault.)

Learning how to cooperate in order to make a success of a collaborative enterprise is a lot more important than merely achieving individual prowess. Collaborative enterprises are how the great bulk of real-world success is achieved, and it is not learned through practice in isolation.

Chua is not "nurturing" her children. If she were, she would be guided by THEIR talents; she would be working to help them develop THEIR OWN natural abilities. Instead, she is pushing them into what SHE wants them to be good at. She doesn't give a rat's ass if one of them has a gift for acting or the other a gift for painting. They are going to learn what SHE wants them to learn, and THEIR talents be damned.

It's all about her.

[oldr_n_wsr]

Excellent posts AndrewD, better than any I could have written.
My daughter took piano and saxaphone lessons (piano since 6yo (her choice) and still, saxaphone in high school) and also sang in the chior. We never pushed her other than to say to her, "if we are paying for lessons, you are going to practice, and if you are not going to practice, we are not paying for lessons". She practiced andeven though she is now 21, we still pay for the lessons she takes while home from college. She's a pretty good pianist and gets part time work at local resturants playing while people eat/drink/be merry while she's home from college. sing us a song you're the piano man.....

Re: "childbots" reminds me of Data from Star Trek TNG where he admitted that while he could play flawlessly, he couldn't capture the "emotion" of what he was playing.

Much of what we do, not just with the arts, even in everyday life and jobs, has to do with imagination and rule breaking and thinking outside the box (and I really hate that term as it is overused in most fields of endevour) that these kids will/may not develope skills for.

While many kids are pampered and might have great self esteem and see all set backs "the worlds fault" these kids will probably do well in life, but will not be the "envelope pushers" we need.

[dgs49]

Everybody knows that Chinks are good at Piano and Violin. Don't need no aptitude test to figure that out.

Group success vs. personal success? Which is more edifying or "valuable"? Who knows? There is something to be said for each.

I saw Tom Glavine on the golf channel the other day, and he said (not in so many words) that he found individual competitive accomplishments to be more satisfying than team accomplishments.

[dales]

BIGORTY ALERT:

Everybody knows that Chinks are good at Piano and Violin. Don't need no aptitude test to figure that out.

Since my ex-wife is Asian, I take particular offfense at that racial slur.

[oldr_n_wsr]

Meanwhile in corporate America you are praised to be a team player and an independent thinker.
Can someone make up their mind, please.

[Gob]

What if the kids have NO natural music talent?

The mother is forcing them to do a task which will benefit NO ONE in the end.

You cannot force someone to be talented in a specific field if they have no natural aptitude for it.

What if one of them had the desire and the potential to be a great actor, yet was prevented from and inhibited from pursuing it by that sad screwed up bitch of a mother?

[oldr_n_wsr]

What if the kids have NO natural music talent?

does natural talent = apptitude?
Whie I can see where you are going with this, there are things people should learn even if they do not have a "natural talent" for that task. I had no natural talent for hitting a fastball nor curveball, but the skills I learned when I was young in little league allowed me to play fast pitch softball for well over 20 years (and be pretty good at it).

[rubato]

What if the kids have NO natural music talent?

The mother is forcing them to do a task which will benefit NO ONE in the end.

You cannot force someone to be talented in a specific field if they have no natural aptitude for it.

What if one of them had the desire and the potential to be a great actor, yet was prevented from and inhibited from pursuing it by that sad screwed up bitch of a mother?

"A pupil from whom nothing is ever demanded which he cannot do, never
does all he can."
From: J. S. Mill

I think this is profoundly true. What is most important is to struggle to succeed no matter what your 'talents' are.

Try honestly try and fail at the things you are 'bad at' is just as important as being encouraged to do what you like.

yrs,
rubato

[Jarlaxle]

I knew someone who had parents (both, not just Mom) like this: anything less than straight A's and highest honors resulted in punishment. He & his sister were told they would be DISOWNED if they weren't valedictorians. In his junior year, he got a C+ on his calculus midterm...despite endless study, he just did not understand the subject. After getting home, he wrote, "Sorry, you were right, I'm a failure" on the exam, tied an electrical cord around his neck, and hung himself in the garage.

His sister was trading assgnments for blow jobs at 13, ran away from home at 16, and is probably dead by now.

[Jarlaxle]

What if the kids have NO natural music talent?

I know that feeling...much as I love music, I have absolutely zero musical ability.

[Sue U]

Re: "childbots" reminds me of Data from Star Trek TNG where he admitted that while he could play flawlessly, he couldn't capture the "emotion" of what he was playing.

I was going to say something along these lines. The fact is that lots of intensive practice may give you technical skills, but if your playing is all technical, without joy and wonder and exploration and discovery, you will never really play music. The same goes for all other fields of endeavor, whether arts or math or sciences or whatever. Learning and doing can be accomplished without true understanding, but it makes for a very tiresome and unfulfilling life.

I agree with the comments by Andrew, rubato and Guin. I grew up playing in student orchestras and chamber ensembles with a lot of Korean kids whose parents had high expectations for success. But I don't think any of them were as crazed as Ms. Chua; they all seemed to have room in their lives for fun as well.

[loCAtek]

My musical instrument of torture was clarinet; had no forkin' interest in it, what-so-ever.

BUT!

The momster had BOUGHT, rather than rented the device for my sister. While she had had freedom of choice, I did not, and was forced into lessons.

My choice had been piccolo, but the $$$ was more important and I was conned into playing clarinet by the false assurance that if I didn't like it after a year, I could quit.

365 days later, I said to my momster, I want to play the piccolo.

She replied, 'Oh, you've been playing clarinet for a year, why don't you keep that'

... whereupon, I knew I'd been conned and quit shortly thereafter.




Trust and love, deteriorated accordingly. To the point that neither exist for her anymore.

[Sean]

Violin and especially Piano are the appropriate instruments to learn, because once you have more-or-less mastered either one, especially the piano, every other instrument is easy. Try that with "voice." My son suffered through five years of piano lessons, hated it, then started playing several other instruments (on his own), which were relatively easy because he had internalized music theory. This would not have happened with the flute.

I don't really know where to start on the absurdity in that paragraph but I'll give it a go...

Every other instrument is easy if you can play violin or piano? I would be very interested (and I suspect highly amused) to know the reasoning behind this assertion...

Did your son make the news? I can see the headlines now: Person Who learned To Play A Musical Instrument Has Head-Start In Learning A Second Instrument Shock Horror!

I'm also assuming that all of those flautists I have played with and listened to were just pretending to read the sheet music in front of them as they can't possibly have "internalized" music theory...

[Sean]

What if the kids have NO natural music talent?

The mother is forcing them to do a task which will benefit NO ONE in the end.

You cannot force someone to be talented in a specific field if they have no natural aptitude for it.

What if one of them had the desire and the potential to be a great actor, yet was prevented from and inhibited from pursuing it by that sad screwed up bitch of a mother?

Never mind having no natural talent... What if the poor little buggers don't want to play an instrument?

Personally I could always tell after the first lesson if a child wanted to play or was being forced into it. If it was the latter I refused to teach them and made sure that the parents knew exactly why...

Music should be a thing of joy rather than a task to endure...

[Andrew D]

And now the child-abusing bitch claims that she never meant that people ought to raise children her way: "Since the article and book's release, Chua has retreated on some of her statements, saying that she meant the essay and book to be ironic - not a parenting how-to." “It’s not saying what people should do, it’s saying, ‘Here’s what I did, and boy did I learn a lesson.’ ”

And she unwittingly reveals what she really thinks of her children:

Ms. Chua’s husband appears only peripherally in “Tiger Mother” — though there is one battle in which she lashes out at him after he worries that she is pushing their daughters to the point that there is “no breathing room” in their home.

“All you do is think about writing your own books and your own future,” she says to him. “What dreams do you have for Sophia or for Lulu? Do you ever think about that? What dreams do you have for Coco?” He bursts out laughing — Coco is their dog.

Child, dog, whatever -- it's all the same to her.

What is really appalling is how low once-great law schools have sunk. Berkeley has John Yoo, undisputed enemy of America and of all humankind, and Yale has Amy Chua, child-abusing bitch. I'm just waiting for a Harvard professor to argue that slavery was a good thing ....

[rubato]

If you limit the definition of 'good parent' to "child plays with technical mastery and does arithmetic quickly" then she is a very good parent.

If you understand that "good parent" means something broader and especially includes "parent is able to perceive limits to own knowledge" then she is a failure.

yrs,
rubato

sorry, off to work.

[rubato]

She's like a stage magician who has gotten so good at misdirection that she's fooling herself now.

Just eliminate nearly all of the broad and complicated universe of "how do you educate and raise chlldren" and only look at the narrowest areas and there you are. I find it interesting which readers went along with the trick.

yrs,
rubato

[loCAtek]

The lesson is: your children will hate you.

I've explicitly stated that to you-all for years; I hate my mom. I've haven't spoken to her in almost 15 years, no desire to ever again.

I brought a report card home in middle school that was all 'A's' and one 'B'. Her response was an angry, "That B, should have been an A!!!"

Still attempting to strive, I made the lead in the High School Play (Diary of Anne Frank); she never commented about it, except to criticize that it interfered with my homework. The play went on to be acclaimed as one of the Drama Club's best! Yet, one day when I came home from rehearsal, my momster was upset that I wasn't there doing chores. If that wasn't enough she said, "What do you do with those boys after school!? Are you a whore!? ...that's it, you're a whore!!!"
Even achievement that couldn't be credited to her, was a punishable offense.

[Jarlaxle]

I'm just glad you didn't end up like the poor guy I shared classes with, or his sister.

[loCAtek]

Like I said, I think it through. I still feel the emotional impact, but try to step back and react in a rational manner, rather than emotionally respond. They always try to tweak you through your emotions. Spatial thinking allows you to see those things going on.




For instance, my dad would just laff at me, and the rejection was in the form of ridicule, not exactly negative nor false criticism.

He thought he was being funny; so I recognize the obfuscation of those masking insult with humor.

I see the true intent: if you can't grasp it-mock it; in that way you still control it

But controlling another, is not loving another.

In the case of human interaction: controlling someone is far from loving them.

One is selfish, the other is not.

Parenting shouldn't be selfish.