crazy chinese mother

idk my parents have always been *pretty much* "its ur life to fuck up", this is fine w/ me

what is this thread about anyway

thread is about what u want it to be [via liberal caucazn parenting]

they've already settled imo

lol imo they recognize that she is cool and pretty set with good shoulders up there, and she was just being a tad neurotic. IMO

this thread will be more fun as it begins to reek of virtuosity

a good set with good shoulders is half the battle imo

a good set with good shoulders is half the battle imo

yeah, with earlobes like hers, there's nowhere to go but up towards the crown of her gaul head

but anyway, yeah, parenting, i hate it just as much as phil donahue does.

speaking of parenting, have you guys seen the morton downey, jr. documentary?

when these kids grow up they're gonna find out that their mom used their life experiences to troll for hits on the internet

not as bad as

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/dec/18/television-talent-children-alice-douglas/print

Love these sports stories. Reminds me of this starting at about 7 minutes in:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntisjBTiX6I

My Dad told my Mum that she probably shouldnt come watch me play sports. Every time she did she would end up reaming me out on the car ride home about not taking sport seriously enough or w/e and I would walk back into the house in tears. Dad was a "just have fun" guy and Mum was "Fight first! Fight hard! No mercy served!" Cobra-Kai crazy woman when it came to sports. She was like town sports superstar so I don't think she really understood about not being competitive and not caring about sport (ie, my mindset as a kid)

i want to apologize to sandra tsing loh for suspecting she had anything to do with this article.

I'm kind of amazed that she would publicly admit to this:

Lulu couldn't [learn a difficult piano piece]. We worked on it nonstop for a week, drilling each of her hands separately, over and over. But whenever we tried putting the hands together, one always morphed into the other, and everything fell apart. Finally, the day before her lesson, Lulu announced in exasperation that she was giving up and stomped off.

"Get back to the piano now," I ordered.

"You can't make me."

"Oh yes, I can."

Back at the piano, Lulu made me pay. She punched, thrashed and kicked. She grabbed the music score and tore it to shreds. I taped the score back together and encased it in a plastic shield so that it could never be destroyed again. Then I hauled Lulu's dollhouse to the car and told her I'd donate it to the Salvation Army piece by piece if she didn't have "The Little White Donkey" perfect by the next day. When Lulu said, "I thought you were going to the Salvation Army, why are you still here?" I threatened her with no lunch, no dinner, no Christmas or Hanukkah presents, no birthday parties for two, three, four years. When she still kept playing it wrong, I told her she was purposely working herself into a frenzy because she was secretly afraid she couldn't do it. I told her to stop being lazy, cowardly, self-indulgent and pathetic.

...
I rolled up my sleeves and went back to Lulu. I used every weapon and tactic I could think of. We worked right through dinner into the night, and I wouldn't let Lulu get up, not for water, not even to go to the bathroom. The house became a war zone, and I lost my voice yelling, but still there seemed to be only negative progress, and even I began to have doubts...

Lulu learned the piece but I mean, still.

Yeah if the article isnt hyperbole (and I hope it is) thats abusive.

the best part about all this is that she's a yale law professor

and never goes home.

Funny thread, but as pointed out many times upthread, this behavior is not exclusive to Chinese parents, wtf.

Anyways, I was watching The Biggest Loser last night and there was a local (Bay Area) gal of Chinese descent on the program.

They interviewed her mother and the subtitles showed the Mom was saying something like "I am glad to have my daughter back"; however, in Cantonese I recognized her saying something like "She was so fat!" (wa ho fei wor ahhh*)

*please feel free to correct if I'm wrong.

Now I want to see the results of parenting by this mother and the guy who wrote this: http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/how-to-be-a-father-a-guide-to-unhappiness/Content?oid=5960877

wow thanks for posting that, great article

this article is kinda challoppy. "omg, everybody thinks childhood is a special, magical time, but it is RUBBISH i tells ya!" my childhood was pretty happy i would say, and one of the things i really miss about being a kid/teenager is the intensity and newness of everything. kids, like adults, can be miserable or happy, obvs.

the misery and fundamental unfairness in being a child has been well-established by Calvin & Hobbes (the cartoon), which speaks to childlike wonderment as well, but it's worth noting that a lot of Calvin's epic fantasies are basically escape from standard second-class citizen treatment that is fundamental to being a kid.

i thought that stranger article was a joke?

its no joke

No matter what you do, how much love and care you supply, how many toys and distractions you provide, a childhood will never be happy. Why? Because the content of a childhood is unhappiness. What's being a child? It's being something you do not want to be—incomplete, unshaped, future-bound.

This is complete bollocks, I had an awesome childhood.

"What's being a child? It's being something you do not want to be—incomplete, unshaped, future-bound."

yeah, looking forward to the future sure sucks. especially when you're naive and optimistic, what fresh hell!

I dunno, childhood does kind of suck.

it's true that you want to be something else when you're a kid, but that something else isn't necessarily "a full-grown adult" -- it's "10" or "13" or "15" or "18" or "21". it's exciting to count down to those things! adults only have one thing to count down to, and they'd rather not.

Isn't the way it goes essentially: kids want to be adults, adults want to kids, and therein lies the neverending discontent?

My dad gave me shit when I only got a 1400 on the SAT. Based on my reaction to that (it was sophomore year, I just stopped giving any kind of fuck junior and senior years), this woman would have killed me as a child. Or I would have pulled a Menendez Bros while she slept.

i remember really wanting to be 11 when i was 8

Isn't the way it goes essentially: kids want to be adults, adults want to kids, and therein lies the neverending discontent? chillwave

Being an adult is awesome, i would never trade it in a million years

http://27.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l7cve4WYyB1qdpfemo1_500.jpg

everyone knows that advertising makes big silly promises, but i was just in the grocery store and saw an ad for air-popped potato chips that said "REGRET NOTHING" and i thought man in terms of promises to humans that's like a sliver beneath "NEVER DIE"

anyway yeah if i'd change my childhood it would only be to make myself do different stuff. it was fine. now's fine too. things are just generally fine.

i'm not chinese though so

being an adult vs being a kid would be a great poll

will say my boy who's six will, when overpowered with joy or excitement, let out the funniest "whooooooo" sound, it is kind of a high pitched yelp. yesterday, we built a jump on the sledding hill, sent him over it, and he went flying up in the air. he double bounced out of the tube, slid to a stop, and "WHOOOOOOOO," cue exultations. it was so pure, so fantastic that i started laughing, the too-cool-for-everything tweeners next to us started laughing.

i don't know if his childhood will be happy to him. but i will never forget that. he was happy for a moment.

also, rosebud is now inflatable.

i remember really wanting to be 11 when i was 8

Haha yes I remember on Sesame st in the 70s one of the kids was, maybe 12? And to me she was like the awesome grownup one. I would have been about 6 or 7 I guess.

speaking as a first generation (non-chinese) immigrant and professional educator, i'd say there's a lot of truth to this article re: western and non-western approaches to parenting

man if my parents were like that about getting As in school I'd have been called "garbage" more than 30 times a month in high school

― mavisbeacon666 (San Te), Sunday, 9 January 2011 22:05

BTW the argument is that if your parents were like that you wouldn't not be getting As

i'm sorry if that sounds snarky - i didn't mean it to - i just think a lot of people are ignoring the woman's premise, which is that by being selectively crazy harsh she doesn't have to pull out the crazy harsh very often

speaking as a first generation (non-chinese) immigrant and professional educator, i'd say there's a lot of truth to this article re: western and non-western approaches to parenting

speaking as a first generation (non-chinese) immigrant and professional educator, i'd say there's definitely not

wait, i misread your post vahid. i totally agree. ignore the above.

fwiw my parents weren't exactly "crazy harsh" about grades (nb haven't read the article), but straight As were basically non-negotiable when I was a kid. so i got straight As.*

*actually i got one A-, in 10th grade bio. FFFFUUUUUUUU

"FFFFUUUUUUUU"
"WHOOOOOOOO"

same number of letters (!)

xpost: I kept going for the Calvin & Hobbes book on my shelf while student-teaching, never really knowing why, until one day realized that Calvin was my students and I was the monster battling Spaceman Spiff.

i'm interested in this "non-negotiability" concept

There's probably also something to be said about growing up in New Haven, where probably most-all families there (well the one's that don't live in the highest-crime-rate-in-the-US part of town, at least) are Yale families. I mean, when all the parents of their friends and schoolmates are Ivy League professors, you're probably getting a very different frame of reference about your success.

well i was a terrible negotiator