5 ways to find balance in Asian parenting culture
Asian parenting is known to be strict, authoritative, and result oriented. This has much to do with centuries of striving in education and grooming for the formidable imperial exams, and recently the tough Gaokao college entrance exam in China. Today, this pressure has resulted in an anxious generation who base their self worth on academic outcomes, while deficient in social emotional skills, not to mention rising suicide rates driven by perceived academic failures. Asian parents are more stressed than ever in keeping up with their own careers and their kids’ school performance, while dealing with the frustration of kids who don’t share the same drive. There are benefits to a rigorous parenting style, including the ability to be highly disciplined, thrive in the workplace, yet stay humble in the long term. So how do we find balance while striving for high standards?
How do we find balance in a high demand parenting culture?
1. Recognise your kids’ efforts with encouragement and reward.
Balancing an authoritative style with an encouraging one helps kids understand their self worth is not entirely based on results, but on ongoing effort to work toward a certain standard. Often, kids who perform poorly have lost their confidence to excel as they’re labelled a failure, but can improve drastically with encouragement, which can come as praise or a reward chart for giving their best.
2. Prioritise raising your kids to be good team players and leaders.
Oftentimes, development of social and leadership skills get lost amongst the day to day academic demands and extracurricular activities. Much of their day consists of following instructions and keeping up with the workload. Mix it up by signing them up to meaningful activities like public speaking, volunteering, or the children’s entrepreneur market. Helping kids understand the benefits of having positive relationships with others is just as important as encouraging them to do their best in their school assignments. Being good leaders gives them a natural motivation to do better and better prepares them to have meaningful friendships.
3. Allow ample time for unstructured free play.
Parents often pack their kids’ after school and weekend schedules with dozens of extracurricular activities - tutoring, piano, swimming, ballet, taekwando, art. There are two reasons parents do this, first to keep their kids occupied and prevent boredom, second to identify kids’ special talents early that may help them stand out later on to elite schools. What unstructured free play does is help kids become creative as they need to use their imagination to play, interact with other kids, and unwind from the day so their nervous systems are better regulated. This can be frequent indoor or outdoor playdates with friends, or time to play puzzles or draw at home. Kids who have more downtime are calmer and less stressed, which positively impacts overall performance.
4. Give kids the opportunity to make both good choices and mistakes.
Helicopter parenting means all decisions are made for kids because grown ups ‘know what’s best’. This takes away the chance for kids to understand what good choices mean, and the repercussions of making bad choices. Kids often feel adults nag at them without understanding the ‘why’, and do the exact opposite. Explain the ‘why’, and as long as it’s physically safe, let kids make mistakes, this is how they learn. For the must do’s, give a range of acceptable choices, such as ‘You can do your homework now or after your snack. Which do you prefer?’ Kids will develop less resentment over being told what to do, and you cam ensure they stay on track. Win win.
5. Do the same for yourself, set regular social and alone time in the diary.
Being less obsessed with results as a parent means finding balance in your own life too - recognise your own efforts and give yourself rewards. Be comfortable with having downtime and not feeling like you need to pack every free moment with work, life admin, or entertaining your kids. Structure set times each day to spend quality time with your kids, and similarly set some time for yourself, even if it’s 30 mins a day. If that’s not possible, see how you can delegate tasks to others. Traditionally, it’s taken a village to raise kids, you were never meant to do this alone.
The takeaway
We take insights from Dutch parents, who are the happiest and raise the happiest kids in the world, and explore what fits into traditional ways of raising kids. While it’s important to set your children up for the best future possible, the future is unpredictable, so it’s important to train them to think creatively and adapt to any new situation. Sometimes they fail no matter how hard they try, and it’s important to help them stay motivated and have faith in themselves, and not give up. Many successful individuals have failed countless times before breakthroughs. This resilience is developed through supportive social interactions during rough patches, opportunities to make good decisions, and time to reflect on their learnings. A parent’s job is to give a framework of skills they need, micromanaging every hour of their day does not guarantee success and instead builds resentment. Take a step back, relax, and you may find more enjoyment in this journey!
We hope you found this helpful! If you need support, we offer 1:1 parent support sessions to help you relieve the stresses of parenting long term. Simply get in touch with us and we’ll find a time!