Smrt Lernins

Deva (my children’s delightful and wonderful godmother, and mother of quite possibly the cutest not-mine baby ever in the history of babies) asks, “I’d love your take on the whole “Tiger Mom” controversy.”

For starters, I’ll say that a) I wasn’t raised by a “Tiger Mom” and b) I am not a “Tiger Mom” so I don’t really have a dog in that particular fight. I also think there is a disparity between how the “Tiger Mom” is presented in the Wall Street Journal and in Amy Chua’s book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. The Wall Street Journal didn’t paint a completely accurate picture of her book, and she pointed out in the San Francisco Chronicle that she was very surprised to see that:

The Journal basically strung together the most controversial sections of the book. And I had no idea they’d put that kind of a title on it. But the worst thing was, they didn’t even hint that the book is about a journey, and that the person at beginning of the book is different from the person at the end — that I get my comeuppance and retreat from this very strict Chinese parenting model[...] I’d also note that I’m aware now of the limitations of that model — that it doesn’t incorporate enough choice, that it doesn’t account for kids’ individual personalities.

A newspaper sensationalizing something? SHOCKER!

However, let’s look at the concept of the “Tiger Mom.” In WSJ , Amy Chua’s edited-for-sensationalism segment says her children (and Asian children as a whole) are “stereotypically successful” because they were never allowed to:

• attend a sleepover

• have a playdate

• be in a school play

• complain about not being in a school play

• watch TV or play computer games

• choose their own extracurricular activities

• get any grade less than an A

• not be the No. 1 student in every subject except gym and drama

• play any instrument other than the piano or violin

• not play the piano or violin.

What, exactly, is the definition of “successful” here? Makes high grades? Gets into a good college? Excels at a specific musical instrument? If those are the only yardstick by which one measures success, then I suppose those children could be considered successful. That much pressure to succeed academically doesn’t come without a cost, however. In May of 2007, CNN did a piece on the link between the cultural push to succeed and a high rate of suicide among Asian-American women, finding:

Asian-American women ages 15-24 have the highest suicide rate of women in any race or ethnic group in that age group. Suicide is the second-leading cause of death for Asian-American women in that age range. [...] First and foremost, they say “model minority” pressure — the pressure some Asian-American families put on children to be high achievers at school and professionally — helps explain the problem.

“In my study, the model minority pressure is a huge factor,” says Noh, who studied 41 Asian-American women who’d attempted or contemplated suicide. “Sometimes it’s very overt — parents say, ‘You must choose this major or this type of job’ or ‘You should not bring home As and Bs, only As,” she says. “And girls have to be the perfect mother and daughter and wife as well.”

That list above doesn’t look like steps to success, at least, not success for her children. I see children being forced to live their parents lives and not being adequately prepared to forge lives of their own. Of course, if the children adequately live the lives their parents choose for them, the parents will feel it’s successful, though as the sobering statistics from the Department of Health and Human Services show, all that “success” comes with a price. If you’re willing to risk your child’s mental health to make them a certain kind of success (as defined by you), I don’t know that I’d call you a superior mother. I think I’d call you a selfish mother, motivated by how good your child’s success makes you look (to the outside world) or feel (when they achieve what you wanted and couldn’t/didn’t get), rather than by what is actually best for your child.

I’m not saying that pushing your child in some areas is a bad thing. I am not saying that having high expectations or expecting your children to strive for excellence is a bad thing. I challenge my children. I set standards slightly higher for them in some areas than other parents might set. Their schedules don’t revolve around long periods of time with other same-age children, though I think they do get enough time with peers of interest/intellect (as opposed to peers of age). I expect them to put in a little time with a musical instrument (of their choice) during childhood. I put them in activities and we have stints of time where our schedules are pretty full. I suggest extracurricular activities, in order to facilitate trying new or enriching things, though I don’t typically force them to continue activities they hate past the one semester/season and I prefer to find activities that suit their interests. None of that seems harmful to me, because, while it’s not always child-driven, it’s at least child-conscious. My friend Patchfire’s children are even more heavily scheduled than mine and they don’t seem the worse for it. The appear to thrive within their busy week. My goal isn’t to make my children into a narrowly-defined type of success, but to give them an education that is deep enough and wide enough that they can find a foundation for whatever type of success that they ultimately want to strive towards.

Full, varied schedules don’t appear inherently harmful to me, if those schedules include a) reasonable expectations for performance, based on the child’s abilities, b) at least some activities that meet the interests of the children, c) experiences that are enriching in multiple areas, not just one or two, and d) activities that provide for socialization (not socializing). In other words, don’t forget that the schedule you’re making for your kid actually includes a person in there somewhere, who will one day have to grow up and make choices for him/herself. Don’t squash your children’s ability to figure out what they want/like, don’t punish them if they don’t want/like the same things you do, and don’t make “making mom happy” the only goal in life, ok?

To summarize:

1) The controversy surround Chua is overblown.
2) The “Tiger Mom” does exist, however, within many cultures (not just Asian cultures), and she’s harming, not helping her kids.
3) The problem isn’t the high standards, but the shaming when they aren’t met and the completely lack of freedom/personal fulfillment for the children.
4) In the face of unremitting pushing from parents, culture, and social expectations, a significant percent of people are going to break.
5) Your kids have to grow up to be their own people, so try not to get in the way of that, will you?

Anyway, that’s what [Smrt] Homeschooler thinks about Tiger Moms. How about you?

Officer Daddyman’s sensei, whom I affectionately refer to as Ninja Houseguest, is in town from Japan and staying with us for the next week. While he’s here, he’ll be teaching classes around the Atlanta area and somewhere in Alabama, and then teaching a two-day seminar over the weekend.

This is going to be an interesting week for us, schedule wise. We have an additional adult’s schedule to accommodate, plus Daddyman’s schedule will be different, due to traveling around with Ninja Houseguest. Can the McLernins adequately integrate Ninja Schooling into our already busy schedule?

Hopefully, today won’t be the standard. We accomplished exactly science and Essay Town before zipping off to the airport where, in a nearly-British comedy of errors, I circled and circled, he walked in and out of the building, Daddyman called the airport and paged, and we finally ended up meeting inside an hour later with me in tears and him in mild frustration. I was not up for any more school by the time we made it back home at 3:30.

Tomorrow, Ninja Houseguest is being taken to a dojo south of the city by another ninja, so we’ll be able to go most about our normal schedule, up until Tank and Babypie’s 1:30 doctor appointment, where Babypie gets a checkup and we try to ascertain the roots of Tank’s speech difficulties. Hopefully, we’ll be able to squeeze as much work as possible into the morning hours.

Wednesday, I’ve decided the best course of action is to dump everything in favor of a field trip. Fernbank is currently holding an exhibition on water, which also happens to be the subject Captain Science has been studying in his PLATO Science units over the last few weeks. We’ll go down town for a few hours, enjoy Fernbank, maybe even eat a free hot dog, if they’re still doing the “Free Hotdog Wednesday” promotion.

Thursday, Ninja Houseguest and Officer Daddyman will drive out to Alabama in the afternoon, so we’ll have the pleasant distraction of bother of their presences during our school day. I’ll have to bring the kids to Math Olympiad myself or see if I can rope Patchfire’s husband into doing it. Maybe we’ll skip it, depending on how frazzled my nerves are by that point, though Captain Science really does enjoy it and it’s a good social outlet. I’m hoping we can have another meetup w/ the Mitnens, but I guess we’ll just have to see how that goes. *fingers crossed*

Friday, Daddyman has made it his goal to find “something interesting to do” in the area. Ninja Houseguest hasn’t ever had much opportunity to do touristy stuff when he’s here, so Daddyman wants to take him some place fun and interesting. Hopefully, it’ll be something we can tag along with in the name of another field trip! Any suggestions? We have to be back by the late afternoon for a friend’s son’s birthday party.

This weekend, it’ll be just me and the kids the whole time, so I think we’ll rattle around like marbles in a can for a while and maybe bug Nana a bit.

*phew* Ninja schooling sounds exhausting!

Alas, this isn’t a post about how great I look in my swimsuit, posed on top of a classic convertible.

I’m finishing up our school calendar for the year. Isn’t that exciting? For comparison, here is the 2010-2011 calendar for our public school district. They’re starting on Thursday, Aug. 5th and ending on Wednesday, May 25th. We are starting on Monday, Aug. 2nd and ending on Friday, May 20th (My 32nd birthday present to myself is to give myself a last day of school. Aren’t I considerate?). Cobb is also shortening the year by 5 days for budgetary concerns that I don’t share.

Cobb County has adopted a “balanced” school year, with breaks spread a little more evenly throughout the year. I actually like that model and am using something similar in our calendar, with 5-6 weeks on and then a week off. I am intentionally scheduling our breaks before or after the public school system’s breaks, however, because I don’t want to share our time off w/ the whole county. I’m selfish that way.

Patchfire’s need for symmetry drives to her implement a perfectly symmetrical year, with 90 days before and 90 days after midpoint*. I almost managed that, darn it, but then ended up with 93 days before the midpoint and 90 after. I’m wrestling with whether to leave those days there in case we need them, to schedule three extra 3-day weekends before midpoint, or to schedule one or two extra 3-day weekends before midpoint and the other one or two after.

These are serious issues, guys. My sanity hinges on knowing my school days ahead of time! Quit looking at me like that. Quit snickering!

If you really want to take a look at our quasi-completed school calendar, you can sneak a peek at it here. It formatted weirdly, so just mentally skootch those numbers back over into the squares where they belong, ok?

*Ok, she points out that this is not entirely true. She just needs to hit at least 90 days by midpoint and have the number of days be divisible by five, and counts the extra as being ahead. She is encouraging me to keep those days as emergency backup days. I decided I’ll keep two of them as backup days and add one as a three-day weekend in April (92 before midpoint, 89 after).

Why, why, why do the mommy groups all plan their activities for traditional school hours?

Ok, I understand why it works for them. They can ditch their older children on the public school system and now want to use that time to do their various mommy activities. Unfortunately, they don’t seem to understand that those times are really not the best for their homeschooling friends–or if they understand it in theory, they either don’t understand it in practice or don’t particularly care–and either get miffy about our expressions of scheduling dismay, start the process of subtle exclusion from that social group, or both.

I’d love to attend some local parenting group activities. I really would. I’d love to be more involved in local birth and breastfeeding advocacy organizations. I’d love to go to cloth diapering workshops, play dates for toddlers at various parks, and moms-only coffee at the local coffee shop. Unfortunately, I do not have someone else available to educate my kids for me.

Believe it or not, the flexibility of homeschooling doesn’t mean I can go to some adult- or toddler-geared activity multiple days a week. I know you’re all shocked, but Captain Science has to do his schooling at some point, and that point needs to not be dinner time. Even if we were one of the “done by noon” homeschooling families, we still couldn’t make all these 10am activities for small children, because Captain S is still there. He doesn’t magically disappear during school hours. He can’t stay here alone while I cart Babypie and Tank off to play dates. He can’t go to music time or story time without being the inappropriately old, freakishly tall boy at whom the other parents look askance when he smiles at or talks to their toddlers, and frankly, I don’t want some stranger-danger fearing mama mentally profiling my sweet and innocent 9-year-old son as someone who might in some way be a threat to her baby, simply because he’s friendly and doesn’t have anywhere else to go.

As much as I joke about doing something and “counting” it as a lesson (example: “Going to Costco involves a lot of walking. Totally counting that as P.E. for today!”), we are not a homeschooling family whose educational philosophy is based primarily on getting out of the house and doing stuff. We aren’t unschoolers; We have quite a lot of formal curricula to work through in a week. We also have other lessons and classes, scheduled for, amazingly enough, school hours, and no school bus is going to come to take Captain Science to and fro.

In a perfect world, the “crunchy” mama set would realize that many of their number homeschool, but this world is far from perfect. I’m watching homeschooling slowly, ever so slowly, result in a gradual exclusion from many of my former social groups. Part of it might be natural growth, as our children are taking different paths, but I think that much of it just has to do with the fact that my “free” time is now decidedly less expansive, my entourage size doesn’t change based on school hours (it’s always Smrt Mama + 3), and I can’t meet up with most of my non-homeschooling friends/groups with enough frequency to maintain the friendships/sense of membership.

I feel like I spend so much time talking about exclusion — from the homeschooling world as a whole, due to secularity, from secular homeschooling, due to rigorous classical curricula. This is just one more facet of that. The inconvenience of the rigorous homeschooling schedule can be a stumbling block in maintaining pre-homeschooling friendships and activities.

When deciding on our homeschooling schedule, we had several things to take into account. Officer Daddyman is on evening watch, which means he leaves the house at around 2pm and doesn’t return until 11pm or later. He works part time security jobs at odd hours. His off days rotate forward by one day every fourth Sunday. The Tank goes to a three day a week, four hour a day preschool. We have a co-op on Tuesday that runs most of the day. We go to another family’s house for science class on Thursdays.

Captain Science thrives on routine. The more predictable the schedule, the happier a child he us. The very best schedule for us would be to get up at the same time each day, start and finish school at the same time each day, and do the same things in the same order each day. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately, for the sake of Captain Science’s ability to cope with change), our family schedule simply doesn’t allow us to do that.

Due to Daddyman’s rotating off days, we had originally considered keeping school days on his work days and rotating our “weekend” to match up with his. Because The Tank goes to school outside the home, however, and because we have commitments elsewhere, we realized that wouldn’t be practical. We keep to a traditional Monday through Friday schedule. This means that Officer Daddyman is sometimes home all day to help with homeschool and sometimes is gone all day and doesn’t see the kids at all on a day when we have no school. When Captain Science was in public school, he would sometimes have three or four days in a row of not seeing his dad at all, though, so at this point, any additional amount of time we see Daddyman feels like lagniappe.

On Monday, either Daddyman or I wakes up at 7:50 to get The Tank ready for school. We get the Captain up and rolling if he’s not up already, so he can eat breakfast. Sometimes, he and Daddyman will go on a run while Babypie and I take The Tank to school. Sometimes, Captain Science goes ahead and starts on his math (his first subject of any at-home day) while Daddyman sleeps in a bit with Babypie, especially if Daddyman has worked late the night before. Once I’m back from dropping off The Tank, we go on about our day, until 12:40, when I have to go get The Tank again. I leave Captain Science, and occasionally Babypie, with Daddyman. Once I’m home, we just work until the work is done.

On Tuesday, Daddyman and Captain Science get up early to go to the first session of co-op classes, the martial arts class that Daddyman teaches at 10. I stay behind and get lunches packed and the two little ones dressed and ready, so I can be there for my class at 11. Daddyman stays at co-op until noon, watching Babypie while I teach, and then he leaves. I feed the boys and then take The Tank and Babypie home with me for naps at around 12:30, returning at 3:00 to get Captain Science. That’s usually the end of our homeschool day, thank goodness!

Right now, Daddyman works a part time on Wednesdays at a local bank. He leaves before dawn and then usually goes straight to his shift, as his off days are Thurs/Fri right now. Homeschooling can sometimes feel very overwhelming on Wednesdays, because I get up at 7:50 with The Tank, get all his school stuff ready, and have to get everyone in the car to drop him off. Captain Science can’t start his math until we’re home at 9:15 or 9:20, so it’s hard to get far before we have to turn around and go back to the preschool (can you see why I’m considering not reenrolling him for the next school year?). I have all three kids, alone, all day long, and the little two are cranky because they want their daddy. On Wednesdays, I usually flee to Nana’s house for coffee, just for some adult company and a little freedom from the boys, who will play with her neighbors for a while.

Thursdays, I get up with everyone again, load them up, and drop off The Tank. After that, I take Captain Science over to Patchfire’s house for science, stay until 12:20 when Eclectic Girl has to go to piano lessons, then come home. Daddyman usually goes to pick up The Tank on Thursdays, so Captain Science can eat lunch and start on his other school work.

Fridays are such a relief! No preschool! No work! Unless Daddyman has court, he’s home all day. We don’t get rolling very early on these days, more like 9+ than 8ish. Officer Daddyman usually cooks a big brunchfest at around 10-11. If Captain Science has been having trouble with any math concepts, Daddyman spends the rest of the morning helping him with that. We don’t have a lot of curricula to cover on Fridays, as this is the day we do things like typing and logic, so we can relax and not have to rush. We like to wrap it up early if possible, because we have a standing dinner and play date with The Mitnens*. Occasionally, Captain Science has a Dawdling Day, though, and we are late to our date.

Saturdays are makeup days if we’ve had to miss a day for illness or injury, though we’ve only had two of those so far. Officer Daddyman is currently working on Saturdays and Sundays, so we tend to bum around with family or friends, and make out of the house plans that don’t involve him.

We have hectic, full lives, as you can see, yet we can make homeschooling work for us. If anything, homeschooling better suits our schedule, because we have more together time and because we don’t have to revolve five days a week around meeting someone at the bus stop. We can hit the playground before the afterschool rush. Homeschooling fits our crazy schedule, and we like it that way!

*The Tank says “Mitnen” for “mister” and “miss.” He also can’t say the letter “S” very well, so he calls Patchfire’s husband “Mitnen Ham” and her “Mitnen [Patchfire].” Now the McLernins refer to the whole family as “The Mitnens.”