Tiger Take-Away

Some of you may have heard - or will begin to hear - about the new book "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother". There is much debate over the Chinese parenting style of the author.

I haven't read the book (I plan to soon), but I've skimmed a few articles about it.

The best take-away lesson I've found is from the "Psychology Today" website, an article by Nancy Darling. Here's what she concludes:

"Decades of research in the US and elsewhere has shown:

• Stict, authoritarian parents have kids who excel in school, don't get in trouble, and are depressed
• Permissive parents have kids who feel good about their bad grades, will smoke a joint  but probably won't use heroin.  In other words, they have moderate self-esteem, lots of friends, poor performance, get in trouble, but not too much.
• Authoritative parents who are strict, but communicate love, have kids who tend to do well, have good friends, stay out of trouble, and feel good about themselves
• Abusive, coercive, and intrusive parenting is terrible for kids."

For definitions on the terms, you'd have to read the article - quite interesting and informative. Here's a link:

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/thinking-about-kids/201101/flinching-the-tiger-mom