Tiger Mother Moment

I’m assuming that most of you have already read the Wall Street Journal “Tiger Mother” Article. If not, you might want to pop over and give it a glance. This woman says some amazing things and you’ll probably have a strong reaction to much of what she writes. (And if you’re really curious, you can read thousands of comments and responses to it, including In Defense of the Guilty, Ambivalent, Preoccupied Western Mom.)

In light of the millions of words you can already read analyzing the strengths and weaknesses and theologically-errant and behaviorally-questionable aspects of “the tiger mother”, I’m not going to even dip my toe into that water beyond saying that I disagree with much of what she wrote and I agree with some things at a surface level, but I surely did not hear any gospel in her parenting. So. You know. I hope I don’t follow in her path in that regard.

BUT–I did have a total tiger mother experience last night that I thought I’d retell for you just to, hmmmmm, make you question my parenting? No. (So unless you are a real-life friend who really knows me, please don’t assume you know how I parent my children based on this one story.) Have a little chuckle and grin picturing Sophie and me? Maybe. (It does make me smile every time I think of it.) Affirm one aspect of what Amy Chua wrote? Sure. Yeah. I do have to agree with her on this …

So here’s the story: Yesterday was a “beyond my first job as wife and mother” day. I worked on lots of things—my current book manuscript, my new retreat on fear, two of my three teachings for this fall’s Amazing Grace 360, one of my new teachings for next month’s Women’s Leadership Conference, my summer discussion course for the teens and young women in my church, etc. etc. It was a hard, but great, day and since I accomplished so much, I decided to stop work and have family time when Fred and the girls got home around 6:00PM.

One aspect of family time was helping Sophie to learn four new fiddle tunes for an upcoming Ceileidh Fiddlers’ gig. (If you haven’t seen Sophie fiddle yet, you might want to click through to this video from her very first rehearsal with the fiddlers. She was six years old and we had NEVER practiced that song at anything CLOSE to that tempo. When the leader counted it off, I thought, “There is no way she’s going to be able to keep up.” But she did. And the look on her face at 1 minute 38 seconds is hysterical. Of all the things I know in life, I know she really couldn’t believe that she could keep going either.)

So there we were last night, trying to work through this extremely long and extremely hard fiddle tune that bounces from 6/8 to 4/4 and has dotted eighth sixteenth and sixteenth dotted eighth rhythms throughout both time signatures plus tied quarter notes to eighth notes, funky upbeats on repeats, PLUS lots and lots of NOTES too in addition to the crazy rhythms. (Non-musicians, if I’m losing you here, just bear with me. I think you’ll get the gist of my point.)

As we practiced the song, I could tell Soph was just faking it—she has a great ear and can pretty much play anything once she hears it. So she was waiting for me to play it and then playing it back like a little recording. But she had NO idea how to interpret the rhythms. None. But I know that being a good musician means actually knowing how to count, subdivide, and read music and even if a “good ear” comes naturally to a person, reading complex rhythms in changing time signatures takes WORK. Effort. Failure. Trying again. Failing again. Persevering.

And that’s what we were doing. FOR HOURS.

She was tired. I was tired. It was past her bedtime. A part of her did NOT want to keep trying. A part of her was DYING to get it right. We were doing math (fractions). We were drawing pictures and making analogies to baking chocolate chip cookies. (1/2 cup and 1/4 cup are needed for the sugars in the standard Nestle recipe—very helpful for demonstrating what a dotted eighth note and a sixteenth note look like in 4/4.). We were tapping and counting. We broke out the metronome. Once I knew she was close, I refused to count with her or play with her. She HAD to actually do it. Once she got it in 4/4, I jumped her back to 6/8 and her brain went SCREECH. And she had to work hard to get it. Again. Then I’d jump her back to 4/4.

(During this entire time, Fred fed Ella, read to Ella, bathed Ella, read to her some more, gave her a baba and was ready to put her down for the night. That’s how long Soph and I were at the piano wrestling through this hard task.)
 
It was extremely, extraordinarily exhausting. I could almost see her brain synapses being formed and stretched. And OH! When she ACTUALLY got it? When she could explain it to me (you really only ever know something when you can teach it to someone else), count it out loud AND play it? She. Was Ecstatic.

We went dancing upstairs to get her bathed and the whole time she was twirling and singing her, “I have the best mother in the whole world!” happy song. To which I responded, “Soph, I just wrestled with you for hours, requiring you to actually learn all of that, even though it was super hard. Why would you say I’m the best mother in the world?

Soph just laughed in response and then proceeded to cuddle with Fred and explain in detail all about dotted eighth sixteenth and sixteenth dotted eighth rhythms and the difference between 6/8 and 4/4 and MAN was she just glowing. It was great.

So here is the one aspect of that “tiger mother” article that I do agree with 100%: It’s not easy for us to allow our children to struggle, really struggle. Learning is hard! excellence is hard! But the earlier we can help them to feel that horrible feeling of, “I can’t do this!” and then, prayerfully, purposefully, help them to WORK HARD (really, really hard) and even though they STILL FAIL (because the task is hard and can’t be mastered with minimal effort), we help them to keep working. To come back day after day or week after week or stay at something for an appropriate length of time so that our kids can learn to push back against that, “I can’t do this!” feeling, to listen to counsel and instruction, to fail and try again, to fail some more and try again … to work and work and work and THEN. (Cue the trumpets! Cue the happy dance!) To succeed. To feel that feeling of, “I did it! I did it! I couldn’t do it and then I kept working hard and now I can do it!” THAT is a good thing. A very good thing.

Sophie was rejoicing in the Lord for his help. Sophie was grateful to have a mother who can’t play ANYTHING by ear but who can subdivide and count music better than most. Sophie was tired but happy. And her efforts helped to form her character and the kind of adult she is going to grow up to be … Lord willing, a person who remembers that anything that is really worth doing takes hard work. And when we butt up against something that we CAN’T do, that doesn’t mean that we should just give up and shy away. We may never be an expert at (fill in the blanks) … music, math, chemistry, dance, whatever! But sometimes, we CAN learn something new and hard. But we have to pray and work hard and learn to persevere.

So that was my tiger mother moment. And it really was sweet.

Hope your Saturday is going great!

Sending my love,
Tara B.

[A re-post from 2011]