Asian Parenting, or Unasian Parenting, Part 2

If I get a dollar every single time someone asks me if I only allows my kids to get As, I would have enough money to retire and also send all three of my kids to a reputable private college.  Although I grew up in an Asian family where $5-$20 bills were rewarded for getting As, for my kids, getting As is....nothing different.  We don't celebrate or rewards As, or Bs, or punish Cs, for that matter.  Report cards don't mean anything in our house and all our kids know that.  They somewhat gets the point that no ones cares about their report card but themselves. I still remember one time I was mad at daughter for staying up until two to finish an English essay, then forgot to bring it to school the next day...resulting a B instead of an A.  Another girl heard us talking about it in the carpool and assumed I was mad because of the grade.  The next day I got a Facebook comment on my wall: her mom telling me that she doesn't care if her daughter gets a C, since people with all As have no social life...If you tell my 15 year old daughter that, she'd laugh until she couldn't get up.


Although I don't agree with most of the Asian parenting style...I did read up on parenting and education books.  Through out the 15 years since my first child was born, I've read more than my share of parenting/education books.  A lot of them I read and forgot...but a few stood out.  The first one is Einstein Never Used Flashcards: How Our Children Really Learn--and Why They Need to Play More and Memorize Less.  I always think playing is the most important thing a child can do, not ABCs, reading or math.  If they learn the enjoyment of playing...the learning will follow.  After all, our fascination about life is everything that carries us along, right?  Then lets move on to reading....




I always thought that reading aloud to your kids would help them learn to read in a snap.  Since I want my kids to enjoy the love of reading for life, I started reading to my first born when she was still inside me.  I also read diligently to her when she was a baby, a toddler, a preschooler, and a kindergartner, day in and day out, sometimes up to 40 books before bed.  Then the Judgement Day arrived.  She wasn't reading in first grade, nor second.  When her friends were devouring Harry Potters, she was just playing with her hair.  I took matter into my own hand and bought 10 different learn to read books and taught her phonetics myself.  Finally, she started reading own her own in third grade and hasn't stopped since.  The reading books for parents is definitely, Jim Trelease's The Read-Aloud Handbook.  It has great recommendations of books to read to your children as well as the reasons why.  A new book, A Family of Readers: The Book Lover's Guide to Children's and Young Adult Literature, by Roger Sutton, who has lots of experience editing and reviewing children's literature has a wealth of information and book recommendation, too.



My two other children did not have such a hard time learning how to read.  Reading just came naturally for them without my help.  My middle child started reading game tips and tricks he found online...for Mario, Kirby and Animal Crossing games, when he was 5 or 6....then moved on to Captain Underpants, and eventually to Warriors and Pendragon.  He's now ten and loves to read books about Halo, spies, robots and aliens.  He never went through the beginning reader stage or struggles.  My youngest one, who's 7, just started reading alone.  His favorites are the Magic Tree House books and non-fiction.  Asian or not, I think the love of reading if the best gift you can give your children.