tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2464977109229359349.post8274380889036946208..comments2023-10-21T03:54:12.029-04:00Comments on A Gift Universe: Book Review: Tiger Mother and Home Alone AmericaSheilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10853868724554947854noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2464977109229359349.post-38505482381060332952012-10-12T16:18:15.380-04:002012-10-12T16:18:15.380-04:00Momsomniac, that is EXACTLY what I was talking abo...Momsomniac, that is EXACTLY what I was talking about! Though it is very sad that your accident put an end to your playing. Smart to have a backup.<br /><br />Have you ever seen Ice Princess? It's about all these figure skaters whose mothers have been pushing them into it since they were toddlers ... and a high school girl who discovers she loves skating and quickly catches up with the others, because of her passion for it. It's a good example of how the best in the field might not need pushing.<br /><br />Enbrethiliel, I would LOVE for my kids to learn Latin. But will I push it on them? Time will tell. But of course there are ways to encourage interest in something besides pushing. You can expose them to it, play games with it (my first graders LOVED Latin Simon Says) and set an example yourself. Children of readers turn out to be readers; sooner or later they get curious about this thing that fascinates all the grownups, and they want to do it too.<br /><br />Rites of passage are good, but of course just being brave enough to go to first grade doesn't mean you have the physical and mental readiness to write, for instance. There are a lot of different challenges to school, which kids are ready for at different ages: the stress of being away from home every day (which I'm STILL not ready for, LOL), the social complexity, reading readiness, writing readiness, ability to sit still for long periods, even immune system maturity (which happens about that time)! Some kids who show up for first grade really aren't ready. But what do you do? No one is willing to keep them out another year and have their child be older than the rest of the class.Sheilahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10853868724554947854noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2464977109229359349.post-60680701346443392312012-10-10T10:27:59.055-04:002012-10-10T10:27:59.055-04:00Re breakfast cereal: It seems intuitive to me that...Re breakfast cereal: It seems intuitive to me that if you have to fortify a cereal with 8 or 9 different things in order to make it "healthy", you'd be better off abandoning that whole track and eating some fruit or something. I'm not the healthiest eater myself, though (I will probably go eat some cookies for second breakfast as soon as I finish this comment...), so maybe I shouldn't judge.<br /><br />I'm glad you liked the rest of my comment too. :)The Sojournerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04559244806125834569noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2464977109229359349.post-11746283123760994922012-10-09T09:57:32.670-04:002012-10-09T09:57:32.670-04:00+JMJ+
Latin is actually a prime example. I, too,...+JMJ+ <br /><br />Latin is actually a prime example. I, too, have studied it for fun. <br /><br />But when I tried injecting it into my brother's homeschool curriculum, all heck broke lose! =P <br /><br />I've since given up trying to force him to learn it, reminding myself that he's not <i>my</i> son. But you can be sure that when I have children of my own, Latin is going to be huge! LOL! <br /><br />Off on a tangent now . . . I thought of this post repeatedly while writing one of my own--particularly your comment that there is no magical change that takes place at six years old (or thereabouts) that makes every child ready for the modern school system. The book I'm reading now, <i>Pet Sematary</i> by Stephen King, includes a scene in which a <i>five</i>-year-old girl has to make the transition from "stay-at-home kid" to "part time kindergartener." (My terms, not King's!) It is portrayed as a rite of passage--an inevitable part of growing up that the girl undergoes beautifully. And I do believe that rites of passage meet a real spiritual need. <br /><br />But as you said, there's no magical way to make everyone ready at some convenient, arbitrary age. A few pages later, the girl visits the pet cemetery for the first time and is deeply traumatised by it. The sad part is that <i>this</i> is the real rite of passage, but it is what she flunks. Yet it is not her fault at all: she really was not ready. <br /><br />Okay, Sheila. I'm done being weird in your combox. =) Enbrethilielhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03414765854670926854noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2464977109229359349.post-40549039950172265472012-10-08T20:48:30.892-04:002012-10-08T20:48:30.892-04:00I loved the Frech horn so much I practiced 7 hours...I loved the Frech horn so much I practiced 7 hours/day for years - my parents had nothing to do with it, other than acquiring a hour lesson/week for me. Then I ate a steering wheel in my late teens and ended my musical career. <br /><br />I try to steer my kids towards passion plus a beloved back-up plan, because things we cannot plan for do happen. Success to me simply means they end up happy, kind, and self-sufficient. Strangely, not easy goals, but not ones achieved with pushing.<br /><br />School is a funny thing - pre-school (4 hrs/day 2-4 days/week) was AWESOME for my kids. Elementary school was obviously stressful for #1 until just this year (2nd grade). On the first day of K, I felt like I was throwing him into the deep end of the pool...and walking away. : (Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2464977109229359349.post-6244664341814614412012-10-08T15:28:22.470-04:002012-10-08T15:28:22.470-04:00It's part of a balanced breakfast, don't y...It's part of a balanced breakfast, don't you know? Contains fiber! Enriched with 8 vitamins and minerals! Ignore the part where it's not actual food.<br /><br />See, Sojourner, that's what I'm driving at. There are tons of people I would consider "successful" who don't have a million talents. I think the ultimate in success is to find a way to get paid to do something you love so much you'd do it for free. There is no way to pressure someone into that kind of success.<br /><br />I honestly believe that Mrs. Chua's daughters, being as bright as they were (given that they're the kids of two Yale law professors, that's probably genetics) and having the tons and tons of opportunities they have, would have been successful in some way no matter what she had done. Now it's possible that they wouldn't have gotten good at the violin and piano, but even there, who knows? A gentle introduction might have done as well as her method. I know Marko "plays" the guitar about an hour a day if you add it all up! That's a lot of focus for a two-and-a-half year old, but he happens to love it. I have no desire to shove him into music if he's not into it, but he clearly is, so I'm hoping to get him a real instrument when he's older and let him try out lessons if we can afford them. And if it takes, it takes.<br /><br />Like Enbrethiliel says about the top of the pack ... is it possible that those kids who are going to be the top of the pack will also have the drive to get there on their own? Or if they don't ... why are we bothering to shove kids up to the top if they don't even like it? It seems that Chua's method replaces natural motivation -- the sheer joy of making music -- with external motivation from praise, trophies, and acclaim. Those are much harder to get, and if you aren't the tip of the top, turns out you were wasting your 10,000 hours.<br /><br />Me, I do little I don't enjoy. I wasn't pushed to do very much as a kid; yes, we did a lot of school, but I've mostly forgotten that. The stuff I remember is the stuff I chose myself: Latin, ancient British history, literature. I seriously do decline Latin words for fun. I like the patterns. When my students would ask me why they had to learn Latin, I finally got honest and said, "Really, I haven't a clue. It's a game for me. If it isn't for you, maybe you should try a language you can use more." Of course there are some real uses of Latin, but I never could have set my eyes on those enough to study it for ten years. Every one of those ten years, I chose Latin.<br /><br />I'm not positive, but it seems to me that most kids will discover something they love enough to motivate them on their own, if they're given the freedom to discover it. I guess we'll find out with my kids!Sheilahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10853868724554947854noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2464977109229359349.post-11665928131762368022012-10-08T10:49:28.393-04:002012-10-08T10:49:28.393-04:00My husband and I were just talking about "suc...My husband and I were just talking about "success" yesterday and how modern American parents seem to define "success" in one very narrow way. <br /><br />Take my husband's 18-year-old brother as an example: He's VERY good at music, reasonably good at sports, gets good grades, and is super involved in volunteer work. (Granted, a lot of American parents might object to *pro-life* volunteer work.) College admissions are going to be drooling over him. <br /><br />If you tried to force my husband into that mold, it would be a disaster. He is good at music but doesn't like practicing (as a result, he sings well and can pick out a tune on the piano but is useless on violin despite having had lessons), HATES any kind of physical exertion, and doesn't volunteer much. He does get good grades, though not as good as you'd think someone of his IQ would get. He prefers to sit at home and program for fun. Since he was given the freedom to do that as a teen, he happens to also be good at what he loves. Is he less successful than his brother because he's not good at those other things? Or are they both successful in their own way? Or is he more successful because he's more likely to make money with his hobby? (BIL is good enough that if he wanted to he probably could be a professional musician, but he wants to be a priest.)<br /><br />Is there a point to this comment? I don't know. I just love this topic. (Maybe because I'm highly intelligent but not very motivated. Who needs a career when you have a novel to write?)<br /><br />Also, since when is breakfast cereal good for you? 0.0The Sojournerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04559244806125834569noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2464977109229359349.post-51993740579536167852012-10-08T05:33:19.373-04:002012-10-08T05:33:19.373-04:00+JMJ+
I've wanted to read Battle Hymn of the...+JMJ+ <br /><br />I've wanted to read <i>Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother</i> for a while, but can never seem to get around to it. (Maybe if the magazine I write for asks me to review it . . .) <br /><br />My own mother is the very opposite of a Tiger Mother; and I confess that there were times I wished she were more militant about my and my siblings' development. I feel slightly hypocritical saying so, because when I was younger, I really did enjoy getting to watch three to four hours of TV each day and doing homework only when I felt like it. (I also spent many of those years longing to be in boarding school--because in boarding school, there are <i>rules</i>. =P) Meanwhile, I had cousins whose mother could give Amy Chua a totally unrepentant, unreflective run for her money: they were getting up as early as 4:30 AM each day to practice the piano. None of them have turned out to be musical prodigies, even if all of them have turned out all right. <br /><br />Incidentally, the first review I ever read of Chua's book was on the blog of a friend who is a musical prodigy and is surrounded by fellow musical prodigies every day. She and pretty much everyone she knows professionally had a parent like Chua and wonders why everyone else thinks that's such a bad thing. LOL! When I told her about Malcolm Gladwell's theory that you need to practice something for 10,000 hours to be an expert at it, she said (without irony) that 10,000 hours is far too low a figure. She also said that racking up such a high number of practice hours is so grueling and tedious that it <i>will</i> ruin music for anyone who does not have what it takes to be at the top (or near the top) of the pack. When you're older, you can push yourself through that; when you're younger, you may need someone to push you. Enbrethilielhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03414765854670926854noreply@blogger.com