News | June 22, 2021 3:19 AM | Hang Bona
Being an ‘Elephant Mom’ in the Time of the Tiger Mother
It’s okay for parents to nurture, protect, and encourage their children, especially when they’re very young.
I still remember the first time someone spoke to me about grit, It wasn’t when I lost my dad and saw my mother fall apart.
It wasn’t when my mother died, and I felt like I was falling apart.
It wasn’t when people who I believed would invest in my business didn’t, It wasn’t when the great recession hit our advertisers and my business had to stop publishing a magazine.
It was when I was thinking of pulling my 3-year-old out of a preschool in which she clearly wasn’t thriving, She was anxious, frozen, a shadow of the child she used to be before she started there.
But it was a co-op preschool, meaning I couldn’t just turn around and leave, When you sign up to join a co-op, you also sign up to work various jobs around the school and to commit to being an active part of a larger community.
In other words, I had to talk to the other parents at the co-op about my decision, One of them cautioned me: “What about grit?” she said, For a minute, I was taken aback, Was she talking about me or my 3-year-old?.
She wasn’t talking about me.
It shouldn’t have shocked my system, I’ve often felt like a misfit around parents when they talk about how kids have it too easy these days or how important it is to inculcate a sense of independence in them as early as possible.
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