Tiger Parents Just Don't Know.

I think there's something Tiger Parents don't know: You've already succeeded. You are a winner. You have 'won'. Now. Already. Coming from the horrific background of old Asia Tiger Parents are acting out a survival mechanism. Everyone then was a 'loser'. All the people were 'losers' by definition, by the sheer raw facts of life. Peasants, toiling seven days a week for just enough to live on if the harvest was good. All the people were serfs, peasants, labourers. Mud huts, Dirt floors etc. etc. Millions died in famines and political blunderings. For people back then they looked around and saw that 'we are all losers, losing'. And they resolve to fight their way up and out of it. And that's what Tiger Parents are still trying to do. But today in any advanced western country the people are all winners just naturally. They win because they are in such country. They win because they are educated and healthy. They win because they are 'good' people with good instincts and benevolent feelings towards each other, understanding cooperation and friendship.. not haggard workworn competitors for one bowl of rice. So they act like winners. They are calm and unhurried. The absorb their environment. They take the time to look around and see and understand what is there.
They master new skills and new learnings as a matter of course, often gaining more in an evening with friends and computers than a week at school. What the parents see as hopeless waste of time when you should be 'plowing the fields', so to speak, working desperately to get yourself out of the mud, is really nothing like that at all. It is the conduct of the winner, who has solved, settled all those desperate existential issues of the 'loser' downtrodden peasant, now enjoying his success, his freedom from that slavery and looking around and deciding how best to fit into and manifest in his new world. Without realising it they cast you in the role of their grandparents, their ancestors and want you to play it out. They cast you in the role of 'loser'. Their mantra: if you don't work like crazy you will never escape loserdom. They cannot see it: you have escaped. The escape is done. Now there's more to do. There are things that need doing that winners do. Winners, for instance, spend more doing things for others. Winners spend more time absorbing information for the sake of it. Winners play and love more. Are happier. You are winners. Please do not let them make you believe otherwise. And quietly, lovingly, if you can, make them realise. But that won't be easy. They are literally in a state of constant high tension and we could even say 'panic'. You have to be very gentle with them. But firm in the truth: we have 'won' those existential questions of the peasant and we now move ahead into a world you have never imagined.