One question: Do the Tiger Mother's children make their own lunches?

I haven’t yet read the new book by Amy Chua, long known as a scholar within the legal and academic community but more recently achieving meteoric fame for her controversial parenting memoir, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. I’ve read plenty of blog posts and articles devoted to the topic since the Wall Street Journal first excerpted it back in January, though, as well as numerous book reviews. And, of course, I read the Wall Street Journal excerpt itself.

But one question that remains unanswered for me is how much of a priority Amy Chua put on self-reliance. Because while I understand that she has proved herself nearly infallible at molding her children into straight-A students and musical prodigies, what I’d really like to know is how much she did for them and how much they learned to do for themselves along with the five-hour piano practices and the all-night study sessions. Could they make their own breakfasts or run a load of laundry? Did it matter to her whether or not they could?

It’s easy for me to say I don’t care that my kids, unlike hers, will probably never take the stage at Carnegie Hall; that’s far enough out of the realm of likelihood that I can afford to be nonchalant about it. What would make me as a parent envious – and what would probably make me subscribe to a different parenting approach from my own – is if it turned out her children were simply more self-sufficient, back when they were the age of my kids, than mine are.

I realize this is something of a recurrent theme with me, and when I gripe about it, there are always a few well-meaning readers who say “Well, you really could do something to change this, you know.” Yes, I complain a lot that Tim would rather stay thirsty than pour himself a glass of water if I’m not around to do it for him – and people respond with “So let him get a little thirsty.” But it’s hard to find a reasonable response to Holly’s perennial unwillingness to dress herself in the morning; I can’t just say “Fine, if you don’t dress yourself you won’t go to school today.” That wouldn’t get the job done, and she needs to go to school.

Yet it continues to vex me that morning after morning, she insists she needs my help in order to get dressed and brush her teeth, just as it vexes me that Tim will wait an hour or more after getting out of bed to have breakfast if I’m busy rather than just slide the bagel into the toaster himself.

As I often remind myself, I was not only able to do things for myself but was taking care of other people’s children as a regular babysitter when I was Tim’s age. Other parents trusted me at the age of 12 to make their children’s lunches and get them to bed on time, in unfamiliar houses; so surely this isn’t too much to expect of my own child. But it’s a very slow process around here. I’m trying to phase in one expectation at a time, and I’m making a little progress: Tim now understands he can’t have seltzer – which is almost all he drinks – unless he operates the seltzer maker, and if I ask two or three times he’ll set the table before dinner. Holly feeds the dog, when I remind her. But neither one of them is exactly brimming with initiative.

I don’t mean to complain; it’s just a point of comparison between my parenting priorities and those of other people. It’s not only author Amy Chua; I’ve observed in other families we know that kids who are developing significant talents in music or sports tend to have a lot done for them along the way. Maybe it’s just envy, but I have a sneaking suspicion that Amy Chua or someone under her hire was making sandwiches for her daughters and folding their laundry while they did their five hours of piano practice.

I realize it doesn’t have to be either/or; I’m just interested in looking at it as a matter of prioritization. I’ve been dressing Holly almost every day for eight and a half years; right now I’m more than ready to give up that particular pleasure. True, she hasn’t developed the self-discipline to practice a musical instrument or even study her multiplication tables for more than about fifteen minutes on end. But if she’d comb her hair and brush her teeth without me asking, and if Tim would make his own breakfast now and then, I’d feel that I’d conquered a quest of my own. The reward would for me seem even better than a headline at Carnegie Hall. Right now, anyway.

Instilling self-sufficiency one baby step at a time

How to teach kids self-reliance has been on my mind lately. It’s something my husband, my family members and one or two close friends would say I’m not very good at doing. Much as I joke about being mom to the world’s laziest kid, they would be quick to point out that I enable Tim’s tendencies by doing things for him rather than telling him to do things for himself. Maybe it’s because I want the propensity for him to help himself to evolve naturally; it’s not something I want to have to force. But he is who is, and as various people in my life have subtly (or, in my husband’s case, not subtly at all) tried to convey to me, his tendencies do not seem likely to change until I stop enabling.

Tim is the kid who will ask me to put ice in his drink, hand him a fork, fetch the butter out of the fridge. When it’s homework time, he’ll ask me to get his backpack for him. When he needs a shower, he wants me to put out a towel. He’ll never do anything for himself that he thinks there’s a chance I’ll do. One day he actually handed Holly a used Kleenex to throw out for him rather than crossing the room to the wastebasket. Normally the doting younger sister, she responded by exploding, “Gee, Tim!” with uncharacteristic exasperation.

So when the seltzer maker arrived, it presented a perfect opportunity to change Tim’s habits a little. Tim loves seltzer; it is just about all he drinks. He learned to use my parents’ seltzer maker and then they gave us our own, so from the moment it arrived we declared that seltzer making was Tim’s job. By deliberate choice, I haven’t even learned to use the seltzer maker. Sometimes when Tim drinks the last of the seltzer he goes days on end without bothering to make more, and sometimes he doesn’t hydrate as much as he should during those days. But I refuse to cave on it. The seltzer maker is his domain; when he wants seltzer badly enough, he makes more. It’s a small victory.

One day when Tim was in preschool, I stopped off at a yard sale. The merchandise comprised mostly sports equipment; I had been hoping to find some baby toys for Holly. Although I was the only customer, the woman running the yard sale called her son over, who was about ten. “Ian, go see if we have any baby toys in the garage,” she said. In retrospect, it seems trivial enough, but that made an impression on me. She wasn’t giving him a regular chore to do like making a bed or taking out the trash; she was just delegating a simple task to him that she could have just as easily done herself, but demonstrating to him that there was no reason he couldn’t be called into service. Similarly, I remember a teacher at Tim’s daycare when he was a baby who used to often ask preschoolers to fetch specific toys for the babies, and I could see it was not because the babies actually needed those specific toys but just to show the bigger kids the ways they could help out.

Tim is 11 now, and like most boys his age, there are certain chores he’s expected to do around the house. He does those chores, but ensuring that he makes his bed and puts away his clean laundry is of less concern to me than just seeing him be resourceful enough to take care of himself. The seltzer maker is a small start. Sometimes now I ask him to help Holly with something when I could just as easily do it myself, just for the sake of promoting the behavior I want to see.

Over the summer Rick taught him to operate the riding mower himself, and again, it was progress. Most kids love using riding mowers, so it wasn’t much of a sacrifice on his part, but it means he’s now responsible for mowing the side lawn. Again, a start.

Partly it’s a matter of training myself to expect more. It’s really no trouble to hand Tim a fork rather than telling him to get it himself. But then I remind myself that this is part of a continuum. He needs to develop self-reliance, even if it’s not instinctive to him, even if he’d much rather be served. So I frequently remind myself, “Let him do it for himself. Ask him to help you with this. Show him that he can take care of it on his own.” Even if he has to force these behaviors and will forever be someone who would rather be served than help himself, I’ll know I tried to do the right thing.