<p>Wildwood-</p>
<p>I understand what you are saying, obviously with music if the kid doesn’t practice they aren’t going to get anywhere, and anyone with a student studying an instrument, including myself, have had at times to lay down the law to practice and so forth or help the student through a rough spot, there comes a point where either the child starts practicing or they may as well give up. </p>
<p>But comparing that to what Chua did is a stretch, because in your case, and in mine, there wasn’t the level of manicness. It doesn’t sound like you demanded they play an instrument, told them which one to play, and then obsessed that they be #1, made them practice without going to the bathroom or having water and the like, there is a big difference between that and what she did. Of course you as a parent got irritated at the kid and yelled at them, few parents don’t (including myself, especially now with a teenager, oye), sometimes we say things we regret, but that is quite different then using belittlement and yelling as a ‘teaching tool’. If I had to do that with my son with his playing, I would tell him to give it up, it was obvious he didn’t want to do it. </p>
<p>As far as what happens with Chua’s kids you are correct, we can’t know (and probably won’t know) until they grow up, and it is quite possible they will be fine. I will add, though, that that isn’t necessarily a pat on the back for what she did, keep in mind that kids of parents who are truly abusive can end up doing well for themselves, people are resilient, but one doesn’t correlate to another. I also wonder what the kid’s relationship will be with her down the road, if they will end up respecting what their mom did or if they will distance themselves or have other issues. Put it this way, therapist offices are full of bright, successful people trying to figure out why they aren’t happy, despite the fact that according to many “they have it made”. </p>
<p>Oldfort talked about going to an ivy or top school and getting that job in investment banking or at a top law firm, for example. I can’t talk about top law firms, but I can talk about IB, having worked in the financial industry a long time. In that world, the divorce rate is sky high, the burnout rate is tremendous, things like alchoholism and drug use are pretty common and other ills like depression and the like aren’t unknown either. People who live that life often sell their soul to do it…is that success? Could it be that the people who stick with that kind of life do so because they themselves are screwed up? (I ask that hypothetically, I am not saying that is the case). The old saying that all that glitters is not gold is very true. </p>
<p>My biggest problem with the Chua method, that neither you nor I have done, is this obsession with competition, with being #1 as the ultimate goal. That probably works great in things like investment banking or law because those are cut throat professions, in IB the bankers do anything they can to outdo coworkers, if a colleague leaves their laptop on their desk and walks away, for example, colleagues will often go through the laptop to see what they are working on, steal the information, and go after the lead themselves, often deleting the information from the laptop (my wife worked in an investment bank as a support accountant a while ago, at that firm the bankers had roll top desks that they securely locked each night, not against outside people seeing stuff, but from each other; at another firm, bankers freaked out at having a computerized call tracking and deal tracking system, because they were mortally afraid that a colleage would hack in, grab their information and run on it). The problem is, in things like music, or in most business environments, that kind of mentality works against what someone is trying to do. If your whole outlook is colleagues are competitors, that everyone else is your enemy in your path, you won’t do well in the real world, because among other things, people generally work with others and often have to sacrifice things they are working on to help others succeed (in fact, in a lot of companies, that is a big rating item on reviews, working in a team, sacrificing your own stuff to help others succeed, etc). Someone brought up like Chua did has this idea it is them against everyone else, and that won’t work well unless they are in a lone eagle kind of thing. I can just see someone like that as a surgeon refusing to help a patient in serious straits, because with the patient likely to die, it would look bad on their record <em>gag</em></p>
<p>I was reading something recently in the NY Times about a church here in NYC, it is a presbytyrian mega church (kind of weird for NYC), and it has, among other members, a fairly large Asian contingent, many of whom are young, successful professionals which surprised the reporter. The reporter asked the pastor of the church, and he said many of them seemed to be drawn to the church because it had as part of its message that success wasn’t everything, that there is more to life then that successful career and high income, that there are things in life not related to that, and these young people were hearing this message for the first time in their lives and it resonated with them, it was a place where for the first time in their lives they could actually sit back and think “what I am meant to do on this earth? Who am I” rather then being told “This is what you are”.
While no one as far as I know have done longitudinal studies on kids raised by parents like Chua, to track what happens to them, anecdotal evidence I have heard/read seems to say that with these kids, either they rebel and push off the path their parents set for them and find their own thing, or that many of them end up unhappy, that things like suicide, alcoholism, drug abuse may be much higher among kids raised like this as they go into adulthood (it also probably would be hard to find out, because especially in the case of people of Asian background, things like suicide or drug or alchohol use, or depression, are considered marks of shame against the family and are kept secret). </p>
<p>As far as criticizing her, I am because she was the one stupid enough to write a book about this and put it out there, and when you have idiotic things being said, like this is ‘superior parenting’, or other idiots lauding this as the path to success, it is going to draw fire. Not to mention it also doesn’t put her in a great light as a parent either IMO, because she drew her kids into this, her family and as a parent I am aghast at that, that is putting yourself out there in the public eye to aggrandize herself and it is at her kid’s and spouses expense, especially as her kids are not yet adults and out on their own. Maybe thats my own personal thing, but it is why I find parents with ‘musical prodigies’ or people who push their kids into the spotlight, like Lindsay Lohans mom, to be repulsive, if they want to make fools of themselves I could care less, but using your family, or your kids, to make a name for yourself is pathetic IMO, as a parent we are supposed to protect our kids as best we can, not put them out there to make a name for ourselves…I better stop, next thing might be nuclear warfare <em>smile</em></p>