Resilience, Vulnerability, and Growing Up
“Hell is a fear of pain, while heaven is the faith that things will be OK.” Cloud Cult, Lights Inside My Head Over the last month or so, I have been exploring why boundaries, structures, and guidance are necessary for our kids to grow into their full potential. Here is a quick recap: Healthy boundaries and loving guidance are necessary to Keep our children safe Guide them towards healthy living Help them develop into responsible beings Support them in becoming emotionally resilient Having already written about the importance of keeping our children safe and healthy, and...
Read MoreBeyond Tiger Mothers and Glass Children — The Development of Responsibility
As much as we love being parents, not a single one of us wants this job forever. We all hope that gradually our children will begin wiping their own butts, complete their own projects, and learn how to get along with others without constant monitoring and intervention. In a nutshell, we want our kids to mature into responsible beings. In this post, I will hi-light the key ingredients to help our children grow into responsible beings. Becoming responsible is a long term process that requires an abundance of patience. Discipline — I have argued in a previous post — is best thought of as a...
Read MoreBeyond Tiger Mothers and Glass Children — Why Are Boundaries and Guidance Necessary?
“The Sun, each second, transforms four million tons of itself into light, giving itself over to become energy that we, with every meal, partake of. For four million years, humans have been feasting on the Sun’s energy stored in the form of wheat or reindeer, as each day the Sun dies as Sun and is reborn as the Vitality of Earth. Every child of ours needs to learn the simple truth: She is the energy of the Sun. And we adults should organize things so her face shines with the same radiant joy.” Brian Swimme, The Hidden Heart of the Cosmos As I have said in previous...
Read MoreBeyond Tiger Mothers and Glass Children — Love and Limits
“Spoiled children are children who get too much of what they want and too little of what they need.” Paraphrasing Alfie Kohn Setting limits can be one of the most challenging parts of parenting. We all have felt the impact of being un-necessarily restrained, manipulated, and controlled and the pain that it brings. Many of us conscious parents have vowed not to do this to our children. This move away from authoritarian parenting is indeed a step forward, but have we thrown out the baby with the bath water? In the last post, I made a case for the compassionate use of limits and...
Read MoreBeyond Tiger Mothers and Glass Children — Parenting Styles and Their Outcomes
“Discipline is the obligation of relationship.” Frank Marrero Let me open this exploration of Beyond Tiger Mothers and Glass Children by saying that choosing a style of parenting is a very personal thing and it must feel right to you first and foremost. The choice of how to parent your child will likely depend on a number of different influences including, but not limited to, What kind of adult you are hoping your child will grow into How you were parented, including conscious and unconscious adoption of your parents values, as well as conscious or unconscious reaction...
Read MoreBeyond Tiger Mothers and Glass Children — A Series on Love, Support, and The Development of Discipline
This week I am going to veer from my recently stated plan to address the many issues brought up by the book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua. This book made big waves after The Wall Street Journal printed a very provocative version in an article entitled, Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior. (Congratulations to the WSJ for presenting a false dichotomy, stirring up the hornets nest, and probably trippling their readership on that single article!) But let’s let the media keep puppeteering middle America while we move on to raise the dialogue to a new level, shall we? The Battle...
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Chris White, M.D. is a board-certified pediatrician whose parenting work aims to optimize the developmental potential of children and their parents. He regularly writes on 
