Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother

by Amy Chua

  Meanwhile, my violin practice sessions with Lulu were getting more and more harrowing. “Stop hovering over me,” she’d say. “You remind me of Lord Voldemort. I can’t play when you’re standing so close to me.”

  Unlike Western parents, reminding my child of Lord Voldemort didn’t bother me. I just tried to stay focused. “Do one small thing for me, Lulu,” I’d say reasonably. “One small thing: Play the line again, but this time keep your vibrato perfectly even. And make sure you shift smoothly from first position to third. And remember to use your whole bow, because it’s fortissimo, with a little more bow speed at the end. Also, don’t forget to keep your right thumb bent and your left pinkie curved. Go ahead—play.”

  Lulu would respond by doing none of the things I asked her to do. When I got exasperated, she’d say, “I’m sorry? What did you want me to do again?”

  Other times when I was giving instructions, Lulu would pluck loudly at her strings as if she were playing a banjo. Or even worse, she’d start to swing her violin around like a lasso until I shouted in horror. When I told her to straighten her posture and raise her violin, she’d sometimes crumple to the floor and pretend she was dead with her tongue stuck out. And always the constant refrain: “Are we done yet?”

  Yet other times, Lulu would seem to love the violin. After practicing with me, she’d sometimes want to play more by herself, and she’d fill the house with her beautiful tones, forgetting all about the time. She’d ask to bring her violin to school and come home flushed and pleased after playing for her class. Or she’d come running up to me when I was at my computer and say, “Mommy, guess what my favorite part in the Bach is!” I’d try to guess—I actually got it right about 70% of the time—and she’d either say “How did you know?” or “No, it’s this part—isn’t it pretty?”

  If it weren’t for those moments, I probably would have given up. Or maybe not. In any case, as with Sophia and the piano, I had the highest hopes for Lulu and the violin. I wanted her to win the Greater New Haven Concerto Competition so that she could play as a soloist at Battell Chapel too. I wanted her to become concertmaster of the best youth orchestra. I wanted her to be the best violinist in the state—and that was for starters. I knew that was the only way Lulu could be happy. So the more time Lulu wasted—quibbling with me, drilling halfheartedly, clowning around—the longer I made her play. “We’re going to get this piece right,” I’d say to her, “however long it takes. It’s up to you. We can stay here until midnight if we need to.” And sometimes we did.

  “My friend Daniela was amazed at how much I practice,” Lulu said one afternoon. “She couldn’t believe it. I told her six hours a day, and she went—” And here Lulu imitated Daniela with her mouth open.

  “You shouldn’t have said six hours, Lulu—she’s going to get the wrong idea. It’s only six hours when you waste five of them.”

  Lulu ignored this. “Daniela felt so sorry for me. She asked when I had time to do anything else. I told her that I don’t really have time for anything fun, because I’m Chinese.”

  I bit my tongue and said nothing. Lulu was always collecting allies, marshaling her troops. But I didn’t care. In America, everyone was always going to take her side. I wasn’t going to let peer pressure get to me. The few times I did, I regretted it.

  Once, for example, I allowed Sophia to attend a sleepover party. This was an exception. When I was little, my mother used to say, “Why do you need to sleep at someone else’s house? What’s wrong with your own family?” As a parent, I took the same position, but on this occasion Sophia begged and begged me, and in a moment of uncharacteristic weakness, I finally gave in. The next morning, she came back not only exhausted (and unable to practice piano well) but crabby and miserable. It turns out that sleepovers aren’t fun at all for many kids—they can be a kind of punishment parents unknowingly inflict on their children through permissiveness. After pumping Sophia for information, I learned that A, B, and C had excluded D; B had gossiped viciously about E when she was in the other room; and F at age twelve had talked all night about her sexual exploits. Sophia didn’t need to be exposed to the worst of Western society, and I wasn’t going to let platitudes like “Children need to explore” or “They need to make their own mistakes” lead me astray.

  There are many things the Chinese do differently from Westerners. There’s the question of extra credit, for example. One time, Lulu came home and told me about a math test she’d just taken. She said she thought it had gone extremely well, which is why she didn’t feel the need to do the extra-credit problems.

  I was speechless for a second, uncomprehending. “Why not?” I asked. “Why didn’t you do them?”

  “I didn’t want to miss recess.”

  A fundamental tenet of being Chinese is that you always do all of the extra credit all of the time.

  “Why?” asked Lulu, when I explained this to her.

  For me this was like asking why I should breathe.

  “None of my friends do it,” Lulu added.

  “That’s not true,” I said. “I’m 100% sure that Amy and Junno did the extra credit.” Amy and Junno were the Asian kids in Lulu’s class. And I was right about them; Lulu admitted it.

  “But Rashad and Ian did the extra credit too, and they’re not Asian,” she added.

  “Aha! So many of your friends did do the extra credit! And I didn’t say only Asians do extra credit. Anyone with good parents knows you have to do the extra credit. I’m in shock, Lulu. What will the teacher think of you?You went to recess instead of doing extra credit?” I was almost in tears. “Extra credit is not extra. It’s just credit. It’s what separates the good students from the bad students.”

  “Aww—recess is so fun,” Lulu offered as her final sally. But after that Lulu, like Sophia, always did the extra credit. Sometimes the girls got more points on extra credit than on the test itself—an absurdity that would never happen in China. Extra credit is one reason that Asian kids get such notoriously good grades in the United States.

  Rote drilling is another. Once, Sophia came in second on a multiplication speed test, which her fifth-grade teacher administered every Friday. She lost to a Korean boy named Yoon-seok. Over the next week, I made Sophia do twenty practice tests (of 100 problems each) every night, with me clocking her with a stopwatch. After that, she came in first every time. Poor Yoon-seok. He went back to Korea with his family, but probably not because of the speed test.

  Practicing more than everyone else is also why Asian kids dominate the top music conservatories. That’s how Lulu kept impressing Mr. Shugart every Saturday with how fast she improved. “You catch on so quickly,” he’d frequently say. “You’re going to be a great violinist.”

  In the fall of 2005, when Lulu was nine, Mr. Shugart said, “Lulu, I think you’re ready to play a concerto. What do you say we take a break from the Suzuki books?” He wanted her to learn Viotti’s Concerto no. 23 in G Major. “If you work really hard, Lulu, I bet you can have the first movement ready for the winter recital. The only thing is,” he added thoughtfully, “there’s a tough cadenza in the piece.” Mr. Shugart was wily, and he understood Lulu. A cadenza is a special section, usually near the end of a concerto movement, where the soloist plays unaccompanied. “It’s kind of a chance to show off,” said Mr. Shugart, “but it’s really long and difficult. Most kids your age wouldn’t be able to play it.”

  Lulu looked interested. “How long is it?”

  “The cadenza?” said Mr. Shugart. “Oh, very long. About a page.”

  “I think I can do it,” Lulu said. She had a lot of confidence, and, as long as it wasn’t me forcing it on her, she loved a challenge.

  We plunged into the Viotti, and the battles escalated. “Calm down, Mommy,” Lulu would say maddeningly. “You’re starting to get hysterical and breathe all funny again. We still have a month to practice.” All I could think of was the work ahead of us. Although relatively simple, the Viotti concerto was a big step up from what Lulu was used to
. The cadenza was filled with rapid string crossings as well as “double stops” and “triple stops”—notes played simultaneously on two or three different strings, the equivalent of chords on the piano—which were difficult to play in tune.

  I wanted the cadenza to be good. It became a kind of obsession for me. The rest of the Viotti was okay—parts of it were a bit pedantic—but Mr. Shugart was right: The cadenza made the whole piece worthwhile. And about a week before the recital, I realized that Lulu’s cadenza had the potential to be spectacular. She made its melodic parts sing out exquisitely; somehow that was intuitive for her. But not nearly so good were the sections that required technical precision—in particular, a series of double-stop-string-crossing zingers near the end. During practice, it was always hit or miss with those passages. If Lulu was in a good mood and concentrating, she could nail them. If she was in a bad or distracted mood, the cadenza fell flat. The worst thing was that I had no control over which mood it would be.

  Then I had an epiphany. “Lulu,” I said, “I have a deal to propose.”

  “Oh no, not again,” Lulu groaned.

  “This is a good one, Lulu.You’ll like it.”

  “What—practice two hours, and I won’t have to set the table? No thanks, Mommy.”

  “Lulu, just listen for a second. If you play the cadenza really well next Saturday—better than you’ve ever played it—I’ll give you something you won’t believe, something that I know you will love.”

  Lulu looked scornful. “You mean like a cookie? Or five minutes on a computer game?”

  I shook my head. “Something so amazing even you won’t be able to resist.”

  “A playdate?”

  I shook my head.

  “Chocolate?”

  I shook my head again, and it was my turn to be scornful. “You think that I think you can’t resist chocolate? I know you a little better than that, Lulu. I have in mind something you’ll never EVER guess.”

  And I was right. She never guessed, perhaps because it was so wildly out of the realm of possibility given the available facts.

  In the end, I told her. “It’s a pet. A dog. If you give me a great cadenza next Saturday, I’ll get us a dog.”

  For the first time in her life, Lulu was dumbstruck. “A . . . dog?” she repeated. “A live one?” she added suspiciously.

  “Yes. A puppy.You and Sophia can decide what kind.”

  And that’s how I outsmarted myself, changing our lives forever.

  Part Two

  Tigers are always tense and like to be in a hurry. They are very confident, perhaps too confident sometimes. They like being obeyed and not the other way around. Suitable careers for Tigers include advertising agent, office manager, travel agent, actor, writer, pilot, flight attendant, musician, comedian, and chauffeur.

  13

  Coco

  Coco is our dog, my first pet ever. She’s not Jed’s first pet. He had a mutt called Frisky when he was a boy. Frisky, who barked a lot, was abducted and put to death by evil neighbors while Jed’s family was on vacation. At least that’s what Jed has always suspected. It’s possible that Frisky just got lost, and was picked up by a loving Washington, D.C., family.

  Technically, Coco was not Sophia and Lulu’s first pet either. We had an earlier ordeal that was thankfully short-lived. When the girls were very young, Jed got them a pair of pet rabbits named Whiggy and Tory. I disliked them from the moment I saw them and would have nothing to do with them. They were unintelligent and not at all what they claimed to be. The pet-store person told Jed they were dwarf rabbits that would stay small and cute. That was a lie. Within weeks they had grown huge and fat. They moved with the gait of sumo wrestlers—they looked like sumo wrestlers—and could barely fit into their 2’ x 3’ cage. They also kept trying to mate with each other even though they were both males, making things very awkward for Jed. “What are they doing, Daddy?” the girls kept asking. Eventually, the rabbits mysteriously escaped.

  Coco is a Samoyed, a white, fluffy dog about the size of a Siberian husky, with dark almond eyes. Samoyeds are famous for their smiling faces and lush tails that curl up over their backs. Coco has the Samoyed smile, and the dazzling pure-white Samoyed fur. For some reason Coco’s tail is a little short and looks more like a pom-pom than a plume, but she’s still stunningly beautiful. Although it hasn’t been scientifically proven, Samoyeds are said to have descended from wolves, but in personality they are the opposite of wolves. They are sweet, gentle, friendly, loving animals, and for that reason very poor guard dogs. Originally from Siberia, they pulled sleds during the day and at night kept their owners warm by sleeping on top of them. During the winter, Coco keeps us warm in the same way. Another nice thing about Samoyeds is that they don’t have dog odor. Coco smells like clean, fresh straw.

  Coco was born on January 26, 2006. The runt of the litter, she has always been unusually timid. When we picked her up at the age of three months, she was a quivering white puffball. (Baby Samoyeds look like baby polar bears, and there’s nothing cuter.) On the car ride back, she huddled in the corner of her crate, shaking. At home, she was too scared to eat anything. To this day, she is about 10% smaller than most Samoyeds. She is also terrified of thunder, angry voices, cats, and small vicious dogs. She still won’t go down our narrow back stairs. In other words, Coco is the opposite of the leader of the pack.

  Nevertheless, not knowing a thing about raising dogs, my first instinct was to apply Chinese parenting to Coco. I had heard of dogs who can count and do the Heimlich maneuver, and the breeder told us that Samoyeds are very intelligent. I had also heard of many famous Samoyeds. Kaifas and Suggen were the lead dogs for the explorer Fridtjof Nansen’s famous 1895 attempt to reach the North Pole. In 1911, a Samoyed named Etah was the lead dog for the first expedition to successfully reach the South Pole. Coco was incredibly fast and agile, and I could tell that she had real potential. The more Jed gently pointed out that she did not have an overachieving personality, and that the point of a pet is not necessarily to take them to the highest level, the more I was convinced that Coco had hidden talent.

  I began to do extensive research. I bought many books and especially liked The Art of Raising a Puppy by the Monks of New Skete. I befriended other dog owners in my neighborhood and got helpful tips about dog parks and dog activities. I found a place that offered a Doggy Kindergarten class, a prerequisite for more advanced courses, and signed us up.

  But first, there were the basics, like housebreaking. This proved more difficult than I expected. In fact, it took several months. But when we finally achieved success—Coco would run to the door and signal whenever she needed to go—it was like a miracle.

  Around this time, unbelievably, an exhaustion factor started to set in with the other members of my family. Jed, Sophia, and Lulu seemed to feel that Coco had had enough training— even though the only skill she’d mastered was not going to the bathroom anymore on our rugs. They just wanted to hug and pet Coco, and play around with her in our yard. When I looked flabbergasted, Jed pointed out that Coco could also sit and fetch and that she excelled at Frisbee.

  Unfortunately, that was all Coco could do. She didn’t respond to the command “Come.” Worse, unless it came from Jed—who had early on demonstrated his dominance as the alpha male in the household—Coco didn’t respond to the command “No,” which meant that she ate pencils, DVDs, and all my nicest shoes. Whenever we had a dinner party, she’d pretend to be asleep in the kitchen until the appetizers were brought out. Then she’d dart to the living room, grab a whole pâté, and gallop around in circles, the pâté flapping and getting progressively smaller as she chomped away. Because she was so fast, we couldn’t catch her.

  Coco also wouldn’t walk; she only sprinted at top speed. This was a problem for me, because I did all the dog walking, which in our case meant being dragged at fifty miles per hour, often straight into a tree trunk (when she was chasing a squirrel) or someone else’s garage (when she was chasing a squirrel). I
pointed all this out to my family, but none of them seemed concerned. “I don’t have time.... I need to practice piano,” Sophia mumbled. “Why does she need to walk?” Lulu asked.

  Once, when I came back from a “walk” with my elbows scraped and my knees grass-stained, Jed said, “It’s her Samoyed nature. She thinks you’re a sled, and she wants to pull you. Let’s forget about teaching her to walk. Why don’t we just get a cart that you can sit in and have Coco pull you around?”

  But I didn’t want to be the neighborhood charioteer. And I didn’t want to give up. If everyone else’s dog could walk, why couldn’t ours? So I alone took on the challenge. Following my books, I led Coco around in circles in my driveway, rewarding her with pieces of chopped steak if she didn’t pull. I made ominous low sounds when she didn’t obey, and high reaffirming sounds when she did. I took her for walks down half a block that lasted forever because I had to stop short and count to thirty every time the leash went taut. And finally, after all else failed, I took a tip from a fellow Samoyed owner and bought an elaborate harness that pressed against Coco’s chest when she pulled.

  Around that time, my glamorous friends Alexis and Jordan came to visit from Boston with their elegant sable-colored dogs, Millie and Bascha. Sisters and Australian shepherds, Millie and Bascha were the same age as Coco but smaller and sleek. Millie and Bascha were amazingly on the ball. Obviously herding dogs, they worked as a team and kept trying to herd Coco, who looks a bit like a sheep—and around Millie and Bascha, acted like a sheep. Millie and Bascha are always looking for an angle. They can do things like unlock doors and open spaghetti boxes—things that would never even occur to Coco.