Growing up is hard work.
Parenting is hard work, especially when shepherding kids through the teen years.
Recently I met a woman who has middle schoolers. She told me she was about ready to give up whole warm-cookies-after-school-mother-child-reunion-fantasy for, oh, a nice glass of chardonnay, at about 2. That way, she at least would have a warm glow by the time her children came through the front door, shrieking about yet another social calamity.
Now, she was kidding. (I think.) And while I wouldn’t heartily recommend clutching a bottle of chardonnay as a parenting technique, I can surely understand the temptation.
This woman was looking for techniques, for some sort of guidebook. Knowing I have two older teens, this woman wondered if I had any advice.
I just smiled and said, “When it comes to parenting anyone much older than 3, we’re all just making it up as we go along, doing the best we can.”
That’s especially true, I think, for teens. Charts and stages and one-size-fits-all solutions just don’t work for teens ... or for shepherding them toward a healthy, well-rounded adulthood.
At one point, Amy Chua would have disagreed with me. Ms. Chua is the author of the memoir “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother.” At the beginning of her memoir, she lists all the rules she used to ensure that her daughters would turn out to be successful: No play dates! No TV! No grade lower than an A! Practice music three hours a day! And so on. (She also states she found Western parents to be too wimpy.)
Because of this excerpt, which has made the rounds on the Internet to a firestorm of criticism, critics have called her abusive, cruel, even evil. John Rosemond, purported parenting expert, even joined in the criticism.
But really, that’s too bad. Because it turns out that Ms. Chua isn’t really all that different than ... me. Or the mom who’s tempted by chardonnay at 2. In her memoir — which is very different than a manifesto or how-to book — Ms. Chua eventually shares how she retreated from her techniques, transformed as a mother and generally came of age herself when her daughter, at 13, rebelled.
There are important lessons to learn from Ms. Chua and the firestorm she’s experiencing:
Take a look at and react to statements in context; not just to excerpts.
Don’t leap to defensive, holier-than-thou judgment of others so quickly, without knowing the whole story.
View other parents — whatever they might be going through with their teens — with compassion. (You never know, the thing you swear you’ll never experience as a parent, you just might.)
Or, as Ms. Chua herself put it, in an interview on Jezebel.com: “We parents, including me, are all so anxious about whether we’re doing the right thing. You can never know the results. It’s this latent anxiety.”
So true.
I know one thing — I’d share some sympathy and warm cookies (or chardonnay) with Ms. Chua anytime.
Sharon Short’s column runs Monday in Life. Send e-mail to sharon short@sharonshort.com.
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