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.
I'm a sucker for reading, and for books. Our family has thousands of books, 4 eReaders, and almost every single popular magazines. Times, Newsweek, Good Housekeeping, Fortune, People, National Geographic, The Horn Book, Money...to name a few; and this is not counting 
our professional subscriptions. I'm not an educator nor a writer, but after 40 years of reading and 3 children ranged from 7 to 15, I do know a little about book choices. Family and friends always ask for my recommendations, and I always happily oblige. It finally occurs to me to write them down somewhere, where I could just refer the post to the people who ask...
So here's my first list, best baby books:
Goodnight Moon - Almost everyone heard about this book, and have purchased this some time in their life, but there's much more than just reading it out loud...for example: Make you child find the little mouse that's hiding in every spread.
I Love You, Sun. I Love You Moon - This is another book that has almost a sing-song like lyrics...telling your child to love everything in the nature: flowers, clouds, river, fish....and of course, you and me.
Freight Train - At a glance, it looks like a 'boy' book, but both boys and girls will enjoy the simple and basic drawings, introducing your child not only to the different cars of the train, but also concepts such as over/under, light/dark and day/night.
Jamberry - A delightful and rhyming read, with a boy and a bear picking all kinds of berries....One berry, two berry, pick me a blueberry. The illustrations are upbeat and colorful.
Is Your Mama a Llama? - Little llama goes around asking all his baby animal friends if their mother is a llama, too. The answers are all poetic and rhyming, telling little llama that their mom is not a llama because she has flippers, has feathers, or says, "Moo...", etc.
The Very Hungry Caterpillar - The cater
pillar just hatched from an egg, so he's going around hunting for food. He ate one apple, 2 pears.....and so on. There are little holes on the pages (where the caterpillar eats through...) and your baby can put their finger in each, as they count with you.
Pat the Bunny - This is a texture book, where a bit of different textured material is inserted in each page so your baby can touch and feel them, for example, the fluffy material for the bunny, and the shiny one for the mirror. A series of similar books are published after this book became popular, but this original is the best of all.
Studies have found that reading to your babies cultivates the love of literature and reading in your child, as well as creating a special time that you and your baby spend together, which he will always remember and cherish. If you only have time to do one thing with your child each day, read aloud to him. It's the best gift you could give your child.
Happy reading!
I'm an Asian mom, but unlike the woman who published a book about Chinese mothering this month, I have no intention of controlling my kids' future, life, education, happiness or anything else for that matter. I may not have a law degree from Yale, but then you don't need a Yale degree to raise normal, happy, creative and curious kids.
I started off with the hands off, non-pushing approach. When we were looking for preschools for my oldest, who's a high school freshman now, we steered cleared of any preschools with signs of teaching word recognition, spelling, counting or phonics in the classroom. We ended up in a preschool with its own back hill garden, classroom with lots of toys and two huge playground stocked with climbing structures, sand, water station, a play barn, hand made slides, painting wall and a plain field. The science room is stocked with a snake, an insect box, two bunnies, silkworms, lizards, two parakeets, a few microscopes and lots of magnifying glasses. The preschooler room has a play kitchen, a dress up area, an art table, a book nook, a second tier structure where you could climb up to snuggle in some soft pillows and sofa, stocked also with books, and lots of games and building supplies. The playroom for older kids are stocked with board games, Legos, Erectors, wooden blocks, K'Nex, GeoMag, Lincoln Logs, Tinkertoys, Zoob, and have you heard of these: Kaplas. The teachers read and sang to them constantly throughout the day.
For my kids, missing preschool was a big disappointment. That means they did not get to pick their own vegetables to cook their own lunch, play a game of seashells Mancala with their best friend, build a fort in the hill garden, feed the chickens and collect the eggs, or draw trading cards to trade. Around the Holidays, it was so much more important to show up since they may also missed the chance to decorate the haunted house or attend the auction for donated toys, books and games, with the coupons they earned doing chores for the teachers.
ABC or math was never taught in that preschool, or in our house, before Kindergarten. We did, constantly, do two things: read and play. My eldest did not start read on her own until the end of second grade....but then the reading never stops, even with all the other life, social and school requirements vying for her attention. My two boys started reading on their own, both in first grade. So far I haven't heard any complaints about school, learning, or reading being stupid or boring, and I have their preschool to thank.
