Actually I have a lot to tell,, but I keep putting it off because I feel easily tired and feel sleepy sooner than usual. Omg, is that because I'm getting older and older everyday?? I remember when I was still in uni, I could sleep late almost everyday because of the never ending assignment. And noww? even at 8.30 PM I usually already start yawning. Arghh! Okay, before I fell asleep without writing anything, I better start now..
Tonight I wanna write a book review that finally I could finished after mmm.. about 6 weeks reading (or maybe more). Hehee.. The book is in english. <-- That's the answer if you ask why I need such time to finished it. Roughly, I just need a night or less than a week to finished a book in Bahasa Indonesia. For me, it needs more effort to read an english book. Sometimes in just one page there's more than 5 words that I didn't understand. So, usually I couldn't stand read more than 2 chapters a day. But I should proud of myself after finished a 237 pages book wrote in english with approximately 390 words per page, right? :p
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| pict from here |
Ka Chiqa borrowed this book from Watsonville Public Library. She said this's a controversial book that told a true story about a very strict chinese mother and how she raised her two daughters. Then, I read the summary on the back of the book, it was said like this:
" Here are some things my daughters were never allowed to do: attend sleepover, have a playdate, be in school play, complain about not being in a school play, watch TV or play computer games, choose their own extracurricular activities, get any grade less than A, not be the #1 student in every subject except gym and drama, play any instrument other than the piano or violin, not play the piano or violin. "
What the heck! That's popped up in my mind as I read the summary. I was curious about the author, Amy Chua, and how she rules her family and how her daughters deal with it. I never agree of parents insist their wants to their kids and that's why I wanted to read this book.
But wait, the idea of this book doesn't similar with the other true story book, The Child Called It, that told about a child that being cruely tortured for years by his parents. No, this's totally different. This's more about how she educates her daughters using 'brain' not physically.
I really don't like about what she thought about her parenting in the few first chapters. I thought she's an over confident show-off mother. She thought she knew what's the best for her daughters and that's made me sick. This's also become one reason why I need a long time to finished this book: I hate the main character of this book. Sometimes I feel like I didn't wanna continue to read it but the I read it again anyway.
Amy Chua herself is a Harvard alumni and now a Law Proffesor at Yale. Her husband is a Jewish and also a Yale Proffesor. She always compared Chinese parenting versus Western Parenting and bragged that Chinese's is better. She said childhood was a training period. She chose what instrument that she thought suits her daughter. She obliged her daughters to practice 2-3 hours everyday, even on the weekend and also in vacation! OMG! That's crazy! She's crazy, precisely!
That's my opinion at the first time, but as I read, read, and read, I saw that she did quite a good job actually. Her daughter are a straight A student at school, really well spoken, and have many friends. In music, they won in several prestigious competition in a very young age. The result is undoubtly very clear. Her ways of strict parenting works!
My hatred feeling to Amy is diminished. She's very consistent and demanding in raising her daughters and it's not easy. I saw that Amy was ready to be disliked and hate by her daughters. And, she's not only struggle with the obedient first daughter, Sophia, but also the rebel, Lulu, the younger daughter. She believed that her daughters could do anything that they themself thought they couldn't. She's not just demanding because she would give appreciation and something unexpected if they could do it very well.
In the end, she just realized that her Chinese parenting could not applied to any child (which she had a big fight with Lulu on their vacation at Rusia because Lulu just couldn't stand it anymore) because every child is different. She also finally wanted to listen what her daughter actually wants and let them did it (She let Lulu played tennis). She showed that she's just a loving mom with unusual ways to showed it.
After reading this book, I randomly search at google how's her family doing right now and I found a fact that her daughters finally turn to be a brilliant girls that every other girl would envy. Even Sophia (that made it to Harvard) , who used to be a shy and loner girl, became a confident, smart, and has a good sense of humor. I found a video on Youtube that Sophia was giving a speech on her high school graduation and on that video, someone left a comment that maybe Amy Chua doesn't make mistake after all that somehow I agreed.
This book make me thinking about something: Every child doesn't know what they really want is, so parents have to guide them to find what they want to do for they future. It's not that I definitely will adopted Amy's ways in parenting whenever I have kids in the future. I don't want to be a tiger mom.
I just remember about 19 years back when I was still a toddler, I really like to draw and always won a competition and I also like to play with keyboard piano at my mom's school (my mom is a teacher). I'm wondering, didn't my parents saw my interest in that two things? Because they never push me to develop that talent, so now my ability in drawing is just mediocre and I can't play even just one music instrument. I don't want to regret what my parents have give to me all this time, I just want to do something different to my kids in the future. I will watch my kids closely so I know what they good at and will push them to improve their skill since a young age. It sounds easy right? I don't know what will the future brings, I just hope they can do better than me. Amin. ;) (btw, kok jadi ngayal punya anak ajee gw..)
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