Several years ago, a friend came to our gathering looking worried. We thought something traumatic had happened. After much prompting, she revealed that her one year old had apparently uttered ‘jiak’ (meaning ‘eat’ in Hokkien) as her first word. That disturbed her overnight – that her toddler’s first word was neither English nor her Mother […]
The phrase ‘tiger mom’ is one that has been familiar with too many Asian parents since the release of Yale professor Amy Chua’s controversial tome, the ’Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother’. In its pages, Amy told all about her tough-love way of raising two highly-accomplished daughters – if you have never called your children […]
Today your little one brought home a spelling test marked with a big red A*, and presented it to you with a giddy grin on his face. Naturally, you gush about it, tell him what a smart boy he is, and have the test stuck on the fridge with a magnet so the rest of […]
Spare the rod, spoil the child. But is that really the case? The age-old debate on whether corporal punishment is appropriate for misbehaving kids rages on, fueled by increasing accounts of pampered, strawberry-generation youngsters raising hell over teachers who dared enforce discipline at school. Instilling discipline with pain is something that the older generation would […]