Battle hymn of the tiger mother (book)

Despite her effort to make fun of herself, I or most of the readers heard only loud bragging from this book. After the blood puddling piano and violin lessons, her older one had a piano recital at Carnegie hall and the little one achieved superb reputation from world famous violin teacher.


Moreover many of the readers of course including myself are disgusted by the way she bosses and insults her own children, threatened them to burn their stuffed animals for not playing instruments well or took down the birthday card they wrote for herself saying she deserved better.



I was wondering why the book sold so well so far. This could be accused for the child abuse (verbally, saying "garbage" to the child can't be said in usual circumstances) or the author would be considered as having anger control disorder.


I happened to see the article about it on magazine "New Yorker", it says "secretly American parents wanted to have a permission to be tough on their children, tired to say good-job to their children for mediocre thing, annoyed to be afraid of hurting their feelings. It was said.



Every reader should be smart enough not to adopt her entire way of course, meanwhile we should be a parents who can say big no to our children. That's how we age 30-40's parents generation got to be raised. That may have been caused some problems such as deppression or low self estimeem, but not for everybody. Most of us survaived over the hard no-is-no parenting.


In addition I found immigrant mentarity in there. For the successful life in the U.S, the first generation doubtlessly toil super hard. They learned of course the education was the key for next generation to get up on the same stage with Americans. The most certain way for them was to have their children get the professional skills like doctors, lawers, accountant or musisian.


Time magazine shows the statistic 50% of Asian-American over 25 years old has bachelor degree or more in US. Isn't that amazing? Most of them are Chinese or Korean immigrant. While their parents barely speak English, what an accomplishment!

I myself am a mother of daughters and I'm one of those minority person in U.S. I can tell she was only a mother just wanting her girls success because that is her success. But let me tell her something. "Stop pushing so hard on yourself. You are doing great job. Be happy!" I bet she'll tell me "Don't worry, loser!". Oh, well...

the first ordeal

While we were skiing for the first time this year...

Dogs were in this dog's day care center.

There were several dogs already. Toby had never been in the same room with stranger dogs before. At the instance we came in, two Jack Russels barked and growled to Toby, he freaked out and whined behind my legs.

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"He'll be fine!" the owner of this place who was so nice and a believer of the concept of the power of the pack from Ceser Milan's show announced us.

As a result he was fine. He survived whole 12 hours without us.

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I have to admit I missed him. I happened to smell Toby's puppy smell from my gloves on the ski lift and I missed him. It was like Mom missed her baby boy after he left for his nursery school for the first time.

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After he overcame his first obstacle, you know what ?, he started lifting his leg when he pees!! I wonder what he learned...macho?! oh, nooo..

winter wonderland 2

They were having a GREAT time in snow.

After that...poor Toby's wearing a lot of snow balls on his belly. It took us to comb them off for 20 min.

The girls tried the longest sleigh ride on the drive way. Snow bumper made it much more fun!!

Roofed bridge. I felt like breaking into the barn by car and went through it.

On the way home, tired kids and puppy shared the pillow for a few hours.

It was a perfect winter wonderland. Thanks!!

winter wonderland

One weekend on January, we drove up to Vermont.

Our wonderful friend generously invited us to their beautiful cabin.

Felt like I was in a drawing of Christmas card, this was the perfect cabin you can imagine of, beautifully made, cozy and homey inside, so quiet all you can hear is the crackle of logs in a fireplace and of course laughter of children.

Dads and girls and dogs went to walk in the woods.

Mystic fetches this log size wood.

Toby fetches this chopstick size twig.

Do you guys have to be that close?

The curtain of icicles. In here time was melting so slowly as well.

doggy playdate

Let me introduce my girlfriend Mystic.

The first time I met her I was scared to death because she was huge. Moreover she insisted to play ball with me. she pounced around me with holding a ball which size was as big as my head in her mouth. I was shaking and whined, all i can do was hiding behind my mommy's legs.
But, I've been growing everyday. I was not the coward Toby today. I played with her in her dog run. I challenged to get her tail and tried to nibble her ankles. didn't make it though..maybe next time...

the first yoga in 2011

She is the founder of Jivamukti Yoga at NY. It was the second time i participated her annual workshop.
She asked us what yoga was. She asked us to feel, listen, imagine and think of love.

Since this class was mainly for advanced practitioners, I had hard time to keep up. I was wishing only if I would be able to do forarm stand.

But wait, last year I was scared to do headstand which I can do now. OK, at the next year's her workshop, I'll invert on my forarms. This is my New Year's resolution for yoga.

Run! Toby, run!

We went to this dog park on New Years day.

Toby ran, ran and ran.
His floppy ears were flown up to the air like a bunny's when he went down.

When he was going UP, his floppies allowed gravity pull down. A running fur ball.

Yipieee!!!