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Comment by fatjokes | Hacker News Reader

I'm not a fan of the Tiger Mother method of parenting, but the description of the incident hardly sounds like a breakdown. It describes Lulu when she was 4 years old, so it's more of a child's temper tantrum than a breakdown.

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It was when she was 13, not 4. At 13 she is certainly capable of understanding her environment, how she's being raised, and realize she's being raised differently than her friends.

>and realize she's being raised differently than her friends.

I think this is an underappreciated point. It's not that this style of parenting is inherently flawed (aside from the emotional abuse), the biggest factor is that she can see that she's not like her friends and the comparatively easy life that her friends have leads to resentment. I'm sure she would be much better off if she were immersed in the Chinese culture where this style of parenting is typical.

You might think that, but evidence suggests you'd be wrong if the experience of Korean students is anything to go by. As Wikipedia notes in its entry on South Korea's extraordinary suicide rate "In cases of youth suicide, the most common cause is pressure related to the College Scholastic Ability Test."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_South_Korea#Causes

Indeed, social pressure seems to amplify the pain, rather than minimize it through normalization.

"The obsession with academic success has even given rise to a new expression among young people: "umchinah," or my mother's friend's son – the elusive competitor who excels at everything."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/15/student-suicides-le...

> "I'm not what you want – I'm not Chinese! I don't want to be Chinese. Why can't you get that through your head? I hate the violin. I hate my life. I hate you, and I hate this family!" Her relationship with Lulu in crisis, Chua, finally, thankfully, raises the white flag."

You may be right, but in this incident she's is referring to specific Chinese cultural norms, not the high expectations in her upbringing.

> It's not that this style of parenting is inherently flawed (aside from the emotional abuse)

Uhm... yeah, aside from that.

Heh, the point was that emotional abuse ala Amy Chua isn't a necessary component of being a "tiger mom", so considering it without the abuse angle is reasonable. It's obvious that emotional abuse leads to bad outcomes, its not obvious that tiger parenting necessarily does.

I think you're misreading the article. The first paragraph describes an incident involving a four-year-old Lulu. It's not very clear when the quoted incident occurred, but either way the language used in the outburst would almost certainly not be used by a four-year-old in a tantrum and is much more characteristic of an early teen.

Her daughter is on very good terms with her, and points out a lot of sentences in her mother's book were intended as dry sarcasm

http://www.nypost.com/p/entertainment/why_love_my_strict_chi...

That is the older daughter, not the younger daughter who had the outburst.

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