Were you “tiger” parented? How do you think it turned out for you?

[User37482]

Just wondering how people who were actually tiger parented actually feel about how they were parented? Have you done the same for your own children?

Hi. Was tiger parented. I'm extremely outwardly confident, and have a very well paid job. I've had a nervous breakdown in the past because I had a toxic boss who just kept piling more and more on me which I kept doing. I struggle with crippling anxiety and I'm a people pleaser.
My brothers wife has left him and taken his children because he's a workaholic.
Neither of us are close to my mum although she does get some nice gifts at birthdays and Christmas and she still brags our achievements to her friends.

I went to Oxford with a lot of people who were tiger parented. I'm not sure it makes for a rounded, mentally secure individual. Infinitely better than not giving a shit about your kids though, which also creates people who are not rounded or secure. The difference is the tiger parented kids usually have stellar GCSEs, so at least they have more options available to create a happy adult life.

This is exactly how I want to parent too. My DDs are 2.5 and 7 weeks. I can already see that DD2.5 is really bright and I want to foster that and support her to be best she can, but I do worry about being too tiger.

I think it’s because it doesn’t actually “matter” to her or reflect on her iyswim. I recognise this. My in-laws are very accepting of gay people (friends etc) for example but if one of their own kids were gay it would be the worst thing in the world. They were very “oh it’s up to them if they want to have children” about their friends kids but my MIL literally wouldn’t leave me alone about having kids. It’s because those other people don’t personally reflect on my in laws they can be kind and accepting.

Ah you get me! LOL it’s terrifying trying to get the balance right.

I think as well sometimes you find it hard to know where the line is. DD’s reading skills are genuinely very good, we read to her ability but her ability grows and then what do I do? I move at her pace but if her pace is quite quick and she is able to read more challenging stuff do I match her energy there or do I try to slow her down. I’ve chosen to keep her reading pace and just try to figure out the limits of her comprehension. She understands the vocabulary, I check she understands what a word means and she can figure it out from context.

I imagine a kid who is very good at maths has the same problem do you keep just doing stuff they know already and find easy or do you think well I may as well show you this because theres no point in you doing the same thing at the same level if you’ve already mastered this.

Encourage their interests. Play games (loads of board games exist aimed at different ages), try jigsaw puzzles, build lego with them, go on walks and spot the difference between leaves from different trees - or take paper and crayons and do 'brass rubbings' of the bark and compare them.

Read them lots of books, talk about the pictures and the characters and what is happening in the story. Put different tubs from your recycling in a bucket of water and pour from one to another (in summer, getting wet is fun!). Make a birthday card for grandma, cutting things out and sticking them on. Put a line of masking tape on the floor and walk along it, then hop along it.

Just don't get into sitting down and hammering through worksheets. Or any other activity, DD hated jigsaw puzzles but loved lego. Listen to them. Have fun together.

I had critical and undemonstrative parents. I achieved very good O levels and promptly dropped out of school. After a few years of growing up I got a good job and raised my children, getting much more praise for this.
I’ve tried to always be loving and supportive to DD but her trajectory has been very similar. Neither of us are close to our mothers.

I was at a secondary school (not in UK) where many kids were tiger-parented. Almost all were Asian. There were some sad outcomes. A lot of them seemed troubled and would beat themselves up for getting only 100% on a test, not 110% (missing the hard bonus question). They would validate each other's perfectionism, too, which made it worse.

Most of their joy and pride in themselves came from non-academic things - games, music, sport. They were often bored in class because they'd already been made to study the material at home.

The ones with the best outcomes turned to religion as adults. One even became a monk! He's quite happy now, I believe.

Tiger parenting didn't work out for me. I was tiger parented, private schooled, got into medical school abroad, went mad with freedom, and also burned out immediately. I couldn't study without my parents there. I failed out and it was a huge waste of money (both private school and university) and time. My behaviour also directly resulted in my mother's depression - because I didn't study and I failed and I embarrassed my parents.

I drifted for about 10 years in minimum wage jobs. Eventually I went back to university for myself, learned how to study on my own, got a first in a STEM subject (parents were still disappointed in me for starting over) and got a job. I pushed myself hard for a few years but I don't want to do things that make me unhappy anymore - I'd rather not work then be put under pressure by others. (Just realising this now, the impact that tiger parenting still has on me.) Now I'm a stay at home mum and cook, clean and do laundry every day - just like my mother.

Now I have a superficially pleasant but very distant relationship with my parents. I don't want to tell them any details of my life because I know they are always judging me. They won't criticise me now because they know I'll just cut them off again and they won't see their grandchild.

I hate them and I can't forgive them for the miserable childhood I had. I was often compared by them to high achievers of their friends. I actually thought that if I got less than A grades that it would be better to be dead, and as a teenager and in university I often thought about how to do it. I shunned potential friends because I thought it was more important to study. Even though I did exactly what they wanted, my mother was paranoid about me going off the wrong path and often warned me "don't do drugs, don't drink, don't get an eating disorder, don't become a prostitute". Being a teenager I started to get tired after school and wanting a nap and I was accused of taking drugs (I was scared to even drink!). I was accused of having an eating disorder and even confronted with evidence (some mildew in the bathtub), (while also being introduced by my mother to the cabbage soup diet and to SlimFast age 17). On the plus side I was always financially supported, mainly because they didn't want me to resort to prostituting myself. I got AAB for my A-levels and when I told my Dad excitedly his first words were "I dreamed you would get 3As".
My achievements didn't feel like mine - when I got medical school offers my mother opened my post to read them first - she said she couldn't help herself.

When I went back to university at 30 I thought I had gotten over it, but when I did a phD and started to struggle and it took me right back how I felt as a teenager and all those dark thoughts. I was afraid to fail because I was afraid of my parents.

I can see many of my peers from school who had more relaxed childhoods, thrive from the confidence they got at private school and become very successful in work.

I vowed that when I had my own kids that I wouldn't push them academically at all. I would just want them to have a happy and varied life and have some kind of vocation at the end.

As it turns out my primary age child has SEN with very high needs and severely delayed in all areas, bright but lacking the emotional regulation to learn unless he wants to. It's freeing in a way - I can't push him to read or write or do maths - I have to wait until he's ready. I have absolutely no academic expectations and any tiny bit of progress is a win and is celebrated. I have to be low demand and gentle - the complete opposite from tiger parenting. The SEN is a terrible struggle, but it's a relief in a way, to be free from those parenting pressures.

I don't have to ask my parents why they did what they did. I know they loved me and thought they were doing what was best for me, and they didn't know any better. They were also immigrants who scrimped and saved but we didn't go without - until I was 12 I had a wonderful and happy childhood. It was everything after that (pre-GCSE) that the pressure started and it became completely s*.

Thanks for the thread. I've posted about it multiple times in different contexts and it's always therapeutic. I hope that if there are potential or current tiger parents on here, they realise that it doesn't work out for everyone and it can actually push your children in the wrong direction. It's fing abusive and fs up children's lives.

@User37482 I can’t believe what I’m reading , 4 years old… absolutely crazy. Do you have other children?
I come from a Northern European country with follows a more Scandinavian approach to learning and education (also highly regarded-I believe Finland has one of the best education systems and outcomes in the world). Children where I live now don’t actually start reading and writing until around 7/8, they also do not start school until 6/7. If a child themselves is genuinely interested and intrinsically motivated to learn early , that’s great. I have a degree , post-grads , masters -all in education and through my studies and my many years of practically teaching I have learnt that the intrinsic aspect of learning is the most important, this outside push , push is absolutely not and feels less about the child and more about the parent. They are now under pressure from a ridiculously young age (I mean 4 is basically just out of toddler stage) to achieve and not disappoint. Children and hugely influenced by their parents and tend to repeat behaviour. Also I absolutely see no correlation between “tiger parents “ and levels of success, it’s much more linked to self-esteem, support systems and backgrounds that people grow up in. I’ve seen students whose parents can’t speak the language here , who themselves did not have access to education and those kids absolutely thrive and become successful despite their initial barriers as their parents have achieved more in being a stable and safe foundation for them outside of school. At 4 your child (unless naturally very gifted and tbh even then ..) should be learning through play.

Maybe some of us need our own therapy thread 😬

As with some PP my mother also was great with "waifs and strays" and was super understanding with them - and I think they would be astonished to know what it was like being her daughter.

With my kids, I think I am too traumatised to do lots of worksheets with them from a young age, they do their homework but otherwise I try and make learning fun.

We do a lot of board games and these have really helped my kids. I choose them to try and encourage things they struggle with at school - my younger one benefits from ones that require reading the cards as he can be difficult to get to do reading (loves being read to but is lazy about reading himself), the older one finds creative writing hard so we do story cubes

Tellingly, I mentioned this to my mother - defensively as she was telling me off for not drilling them on worksheets every night - and she more or less said that if they were having fun, it wasn't a proper childhood. Which sums it all up really

The podcast If Books Could Kill recently covered the original Tiger Mom book - it was an interesting listen as they go into some of the research on outcomes from tiger parenting. Spoiler alert - they aren't great.

One thing that resonated with me was greater tendency towards addictive behaviour as an adult.

I am sure some of it is innate - I think I also have ADHD - but I really really struggle to relax. People on here often talk about spending a weekend in "chilling" and I don't even know what they mean, there's no way I could do it. I am not addicted to alcohol but I do drink too much and I smoked a lot of weed at university too, basically because I never learned now to relax and these things help me to.

she more or less said that if they were having fun, it wasn't a proper childhood.

Wow. That is .... terrible. I'm so sorry you went through that, and glad to hear you are breaking the pattern with your own DCs. 💚

Yes, I was parented exactly how you describe. Very high expectations. I knew my parents were proud of me as they boasted to others, but to my face, the mantra was “don’t be pleased by yourself, there are always people better”.

I didn’t have Amy Chua level parenting, as I am fortunate that the areas that I excel are those that are valued by the Asian parent - academic and music. However, if sport was prized, I would have been in trouble. I’m also lucky that I am quite self driven, so I didn’t need to be nagged. It was all done.

I also felt lucky that I never had to do tutoring or cope with the intense pressure that my Singaporean cousins had.

As an adult, I am secure and my relationship with my parents is strong. I am very successful.

However, the negatives it has given me is a perfectionist streak, fear of failure and imposter syndrome. Deep down, I feel that everything that has come to me has been by luck and I don’t believe that I deserve the good opinion that others have of me.

Now I am a parent, I demonstrate my love and pride to my child freely. I make sure that I express clearly that my pride is not based on results, but on kind behaviours and effort.

Most importantly, I give her opportunities to fail…and to see that, even when things do not go as planned, we still love her unconditionally and are still proud that she tried. I think failure is important. You need to fail to learn. It teaches you resilience and grit. It helps develop humility. You need to fail to learn that, when things go wrong, you can pick yourself up and try again, and the world doesn’t end.

It was incredibly damaging; undermined my self esteem and confidence, my ability to make decisions, my ability to make and maintain friendships, and we have a pretty shit relationship now.

I would never parent my children the way I was, I missed out on so much. My children do great academically, but we focus as a family on spending positive time together, having fun and they get to enjoy the magic of sleepovers. I’m hopeful we’ll continue to have solid relationships when they become adults, because they know they are loved unconditionally and know they are safe with me.

I think you have misunderstood something, we do the things we do with her because she is able. I haven’t accelerated her, she was trying to sound out letters or words or would ask me what things said. So I taught her to read, this wasn’t a brutal experience, I saw it as enabling her to do independently something she wanted to do. She happened to be very good at it. School ask for 70 minutes a week of reading over 7 days, we do 100ish over 5 days as thats how long it takes to complete a book.

Similarly on maths (which we don’t really do much on tbh) she taught herself to add when she was under 3, we never pushed this as tbh her reading was very time consuming and between clubs, nursery and friends we didn’t have time and we don’t do weekends. She does maths worksheets (which are not challenging for her, she can do the numbers in her head) to practice how to form characters as her teacher from nursery suggested she should be working on handwriting. This I’m fine with leaving, she’s developing mastery and her writing is improving. She has weak motor skills and yes we did playdough etc she has always had zero interest in colouring and drawing which is one of the reasons I suspect she struggles with this, she prefers jumping and rolling around which we have always encouraged.

Comprehension we do because between us and school we are trying to see if there is gap between ability and understanding. These she actually loves and always wants to do one more page.

Spelling is set by the school but tbh she’s almost finished the list she’s supposed to know for the year (it’s a small list and we only do 5 a week).

Handwriting practice is because of the fine motor skills issue.

So the other things we do with her, we taught her some card games, we play board games, draughts, connect 4, do jigsaws and other puzzle games she paints, has a ridiculous collection of glitter glue and things to stick on other things (fluffy balls, eyes etc, she likes making birthday cards or making her own creations to stick on the walls). Every weekend we basically have birthday parties, playdates, shows booked in (not on purpose, this is just stuff thats come up). She also has clubs, swimming etc.

It’s difficult to give a picture on a forum of everything she does or what her life looks like. I am not promoting tiger parenting I’m trying to understand the effects of it. we are not like the tiger parents mentioned here, many I would consider to be abusive.

I worry that there is a balance to be struck here between stretching and forcing. I am trying to get the balance right.

Partly the things you object to are features of the british schooling system. Start school the year you turn 5, learn to read about then (mine started to learn how to read a year before the start of school so not madly out) learning spellings is also common in reception. Numbers I actually have no idea, I’m going with what she’s picked up herself, handwriting as it was picked up by nursery, comprehension because it’s also been something school has discussed with me as thats not clear where it lies.

I wouldn't say I was tiger parented as such but my parents had high academic & career orientated expectations of me.
Now late 40s and am becoming a SAHP for a while and was flabbergasted when my mum said how pleased she was as she'd always thought I worked too hard and been too focussed on my career.
I am a complete people pleaser. Like a PP, I relate to the toxic boss situation who just piles on the work. That has put me in some ridiculous situations over the years and, if I'd had better boundaries, I wouldn't have let myself get into those positions.
DC1 is self motivated. When she was younger, we did lots of play with a learning focus which I think helped but, as she's become a teen, with the self motivation, I have completely backed off. With DC2, I was more relaxed but perhaps too relaxed!

Just to be clear, I don’t want to be a tiger parent I worry I might turn into one!

I think if you're asking these questions that's good.

I think your children will be much happier if motivation comes not just from within but it comes from a good place.

My internal motivation to study was to escape my home. Once I was at university I completely lost the motivation and failed out.

I also put myself under a lot of pressure because my parents made me think school exams were my one and only shot. It's obviously not true and I would encourage kids to understand there are multiple routes to success and you don't have to have it all mapped out by 18 or whatever. My sibling underperformed at A levels but went on to do an degree and then became a doctor after.

I would also be aware that your child can create their own internal narrative. My parents made feel there was nothing more important than exams including friends. From there I went on to think that it was better to be dead than to get bad results. It's madness when I think about it but my teenage brain was a funny thing.

I would try to cultivate good focus and concentration when kids are young, but through play and fun, like Lego or sport or anything, and cultivate enjoyment and curiosity about anything. Personally that's about as far as I'd go.

@FallingIsLearning I agree with everything you said but would add one thing:

Giving children agency is really important.

I was given absolutely none.

I didn't choose anything we did with our free time, I didn't choose my food, my extracurriculars, my clothing, absolutely nothing. I wasn't given pocket money even though my parents were quite wealthy. I had to ask for money for anything I wanted and if my mother disapproved, I couldn't have it.

And that control extended to tiny details. She didn't like some colours, I wasn't allowed to wear them.

I did what any self respecting teenager would have done. When I got to university, I made some bad choices just to piss her off. I did cash in hand work so I had money to spend, I had a secret bank account.

It worked out ok in the end but I put myself in some risky situations because I was so intoxicated by having freedom.

Well done! I didn't go to Oxford, but my parents were a bit thrown by me going to University.

I'm more with you than the tiger parent model. My children (now in their twenties) learned to read early just because books were a thing in our house. They had natural rather than enforced expectations. No Kumon or anything. Just play. They did however play instruments and were involved in bands. One went to Cambridge and studied english, the other to Durham for maths, and thereafter post grad and a university teaching position. So no slouches!
They were also allowed to be teenagers, though if I'm honest they were very easy teenagers so there wasn't any enforcement needed. I enjoyed their childhoods and hope they enjoyed them too!

I'm so sorry to hear this.

Parents don't understood how much damage they can inflict- either knowingly or not. You are good enough and I wish you all the best.

I agree with pp. My son has started primary one and it's not even on our radar to start extra curricular home work..

Its too much.

"...she was under 3, we never pushed this as tbh her reading was very time consuming"

No reading should be time consuming for a 3yr old.
Wtf

My Dh was a uni drop who is reasonably successful. I was literally the only person on my university course who wasn’t white as a chose a degree which most brown people didn’t choose at the time.

We have flexible ideas about what success looks like. I want her to be happy but I also want her to have choices.

I do think from reading these accounts that I’m in no danger of becoming a tiger parent. A lot of the parenting seems cruel tbh. I’m really sorry for all of you have suffered because it is suffering and deeply damaging. It’s not how I want my Dd to experience her childhood.

I think theres is a mid point between high expectations and encouragement vs shaming and bullying.