Give them roots and wings

Aa part of his after PSLE activity, I got Elkan to read some of my books.  One book which I thought he might enjoy was Amy Chua’s Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother.

For those of you who are not familiar with the book, it is a memoir written by a “Chinese mother” living in America, on how she brought up her two daughters – Sophie and Lulu to score ‘A’s in school and to become an accomplished young pianist and violinist respectively.  The mother – Amy Chua – had exacting standards, e.g. she threw away the birthday cards her daughters drew for her and made them re-draw them, because they were not good enough.  When her daughters were practicing their music, she would not allow them to even go to the bathroom, till they had perfected the piece of music.

She received quite a lot of criticisms when the book was first published.   But I enjoyed the book when I read it – I thought it was quite hilarious and I could relate to much of it, having learnt the piano, and now being a Chinese mother – though quite different from her.  I understood why she did what she did, and the way she did it, and I respected her drive and willpower.

Anyway, I thought it might make Elkan laugh, and I was interested to know how he would react to her parenting story.

His reaction was way beyond what I imagined it would be.

He was incensed with anger on Lulu’s behalf.  (“Good thing they are girls.  I would fight her.”)

This was Elkan, at age 6, posing as a T-Rex.
He looks fierce here, but it was a “pretend-fierce”
When talking to me about Amy Chua, he was
REALLY fierce…

He was infuriated to the point of tears near the end of the book, and was extremely agitated and tearing when he spoke to me about the story.

“If I were her child, when I grew up, I would tell her – when YOU had the authority (and his eyes were round and big, and his finger was pointing at an imaginary mother), I had to do what YOU thought was best.  Now that YOU  are old, and I have the authority, YOU would have to do what I think is best.  And I would not have any children until you are dead, because I do not want my children to follow what I will do to you (goodness, I wonder what atrocities he was planning to do to this imaginary mom).”

I tried to offer him Amy Chua’s perspective – that everyone needs to work hard to be able to do the things that they like to do, so e.g. maybe the child wanted to be a lawyer so with the mother’s training, she could be a lawyer, and do a job which she enjoys.  Then he jumped in saying:

“Well if I were in that type of a family, they will probably say that for a hundred generations, all of us in the family have been successful actors (well, I doubt if any Chinese family would encourage their children to be actors, but that was not the time to try to inform my son of such things… he was enraged and on a roll… ), and you would have to be a successful actor.  So I would probably become a miserable successful actor, when I could have been a happy, successful lawyer”

Upon which he sobbed his heart out for that poor unhappy successful actor who wanted to be a lawyer.

He said that he was very happy for Lulu when she reacted in the way which she did to her mother at the end of the story. “Serves her right”, he said.

Of course in the midst of his ranting, I asked gingerly – err.. am I that kind of mother, whereupon he gently said “no lah”. What a relief. (Phew! So he will probably not torture me when I am old, and I would have a chance of having grandchildren from him).

This is Elkan and me, when he was about three.
Elkan was upset with me about something these two days.
Today when he came back from school I asked him :
“Are you still my little boy?”
He replied : I will always be your little boy.

But I thought his response was very revealing of the transition of our children into their teenage years.
As I have written many times previously – Elkan is the most compliant of all my children. He is a fun-loving and easy-going child. He was bright, curious and teachable – a joy and delight to us – a dream child who was easy to love.

Elkan loves to laugh. It was so easy to make him laugh.
He was so so so so cute.

It would be easy for me to assume that he would continue this way through his teenage years to adulthood. But it will not be so.  Some parts of him will remain the same, but some parts will change.  I believe that the man has always been in the child – it is just that he was in a different stage of his life, and he is now going through a maturing process and the man is coming out.

All three of them, from the same father and mother, but oh so different.
How will they all be one day?

In the end, Elkan agreed that some parts of the “Chinese mother”‘s style of parenting are not bad.  He said that he would choose to be in between.  I agree with him.
We ended the discussion on that.  But I think that I do enjoy my growing child.  He is passionate about his beliefs, and I respect him for that.  As I have written previously, it is like birthing him again – it is a new discovery not just for him, but also for us as parents.