If you haven’t bothered to read any parenting-related news sites or blogs the past few weeks then the ‘Tiger Mother’ controversy will be news to you. Although author Amy Chua caused a lot of uproar with her Wall Street Journal essay about the superiority of Chinese mothers, the controversy caused others to look beyond Chua’s new book and at extreme parenting as a whole including Lu Hanessian.
Lu is on Attachment Parenting International’s Board of Directors and is also the host of API Live! In an article for the Courier-Post, Hanessian examines The “Affect” of Extreme Parenting. Here is an excerpt:
“I have a different take. The parenting extremism begins in our own minds with our own hyperfocus on efficacy. We are obsessed with doing. Doing it well. Doing it right. Doing to. Doing something that works. We are scarcely aware that the object of our doings is a human being who is soft-wired to connect, attach and belong, and who is physiologically designed to resist being controlled.”
Click through to read Lu’s entire article then head back here to share your thoughts on The “Affect” of Extreme Parenting.
She is right. If parents use the methods described in Amy Chua’s book they can really threaten the natural development of their children. The only way to be a good parent is to encourage the aspirations of your children but forcing them into doing something they don’t like is simply wrong.