Tom Landers

Much has been made of Amy Chua’s book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mom, and the extract posted in the Wall Street Journal January 8.  I’m not going to go into the finer points of Chua’s strict parenting philosophy (read the WSJ extract and you’ll get the idea), but the book and the uproar it caused exposed what I think is a misconception amongst all parents worldwide, which we’ll get to in a bit.

I have two children – a 14 year old boy and a 13 year old girl.  My wife and I are Caucasian; our children were born in Korea – we adopted them as infants.

The most important thing you need to know about my relation to parenting as it is currently defined is this:  I suck at it.

The second most important thing you should know is that I don’t think it has made that much of a difference one way or the other in the formation of the people my children have become.

Now, before you call Child Protective services, chill out a bit.  When I say I suck at parenting, I don’t mean that I don’t provide for my children or give them opportunities for education.  I’m not a drug addict or womanizer, nor am I absent from the home most of the time.  I never put my children in direct danger (with a strict definition of danger – if they want to set up a ramp and jump things with their bikes, that’s cool with me).

However, I do not harangue my kids over things like homework.  They know what their parents expect academically, and they either live up to the expectations or they don’t. If their grades slip too far, they’ll have a period of time to get the grade up – we just went through such a period with my son – or face the loss of their beloved electronics.

But I’m not about to tell them every 5 minutes to get their homework done – I’m going to rest and watch football.  I work hard, and I have only so much energy left by the time I get home.  I guess that makes me a Bassett hound dad.

The same concept goes for chores.  If they do chores, they get paid allowance.  If they do not, they get no money (and we eventually run out of dishes).

We make them go to church, but we do not make them sit with us.   We do enforce a “no electronics during the service” rule, but that’s more about courtesy than anything else.  They are allowed to participate in youth activities, but not required.

We should eat dinner together – generally we don’t.  I should monitor my kids’ internet usage – I do, but usually after the fact.  I should get the kids outside more, but I don’t get outside much myself.

My daughter is a free-spirit, appearance-wise.  We pretty much let her do her own thing in that regard, although sometimes we’ve had to make her change because her appearance would probably make the wrong kind of man walk up to her and ask her “how much?”.  But, she’s slowly learning what’s appropriate.

Mostly, my kids get home from school and I don’t see them again till dinnertime, then again at bedtime.  Like I said, according to every parenting book at the book store, I suck.

Yet, academically and behavior-wise, they live up to every expectation our society has for “good” and “smart” kids. In fact, they perform so well, I often have to wonder where the heck their smarts and work ethic came from.

They were part of the Duke Talent Identification program, and took the ACT in 7th grade.  Both of them had a cumulative above the average of all except our city’s elite high school seniors.  I’d LOVE to take credit for this, but I didn’t do ACT drills (that would be cruel to do to a 7th grader).

My son recently won his challenging school’s geography bee.  I had no idea he’d even entered.  He will now compete in the state contest, where I’m sure he’ll be beaten by kids who have been drilled and know oodles of facts by rote.  Yet, it wouldn’t surprise me if he did well – he LOVES geography and memorizes these strange geographical facts because they fascinate him.  Either way, I’m terribly proud of him.

My daughter teaches herself to play all kinds of musical instruments.  I’ve offered to pay for lessons, but she learns best when she teaches herself.

Regardless, I’ve come to learn this fact about parenting:  for the most part, our children are who they are.  Things like intelligence and disposition are, for the most part, heritable.  This is a touchy subject for Caucasian parents of Asian children, trust me.  And terrifying for all parents is the thought that the largest part of our children’s personalities is beyond our control.

Don’t get me wrong: we parents can really screw our children up.   Take a look around the blogosphere, and see how many adult bloggers have mommy or daddy issues.  I am not advocating parental neglect or abuse.

But, the idea that our actions as parents “mold” our children into who they become as adults just doesn’t hold up to experience.  This is where I think even my parenting hero, Lenore Skenazy, gets it a little wrong.  Allowing our children to be more independent does not “make”them have a more independent disposition.  Either they have a tendency to think and do for themselves or they do not.  We can foster that, but we do not cause it to come to be.

(I’m very aware of the biblical proverb that tells us to train a child in the way he should go.  I believe that showing our kids what is right and expected is not the same as denying their free will as they approach adulthood)

Amy Chua can pat herself on the back for molding her children into academic superpowers if she wishes.  I know better – if her kids were not already academically inclined, no amount of tiger parenting would have made much of a difference.

It would appear that Chua views her kids as buildings and herself as architect.  My experience tells me that my kids are more like rose bushes, and I am the gardener.  I can feed them, water them, keep them properly trimmed, ensure they are safe from the elements.

But in the end, I cannot control the color or shape of the blooms.  I can only admire them and wonder at the miracle that brought them about.