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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Parents should push their kids, if kids need pushing. When I was young my parents gave me freedom and I didn’t make use it, didn’t go to good college.. so when I became a parent I don’t want my kids to struggle in studies or sports. We have done kumon, chess, Rubik cube, math counts, science Olympiad, taekwondo, little league and private sports lessons as needed. The kids need directions and guidance initially, once you know that they can manage then no pushing is needed.[/quote]

There is a balance. Yes, children give up too quickly on some things and it is the parents job to nudge them.

However, I have seem many Asian parents (and I am an Asian), schedule the kids back to back right from a very young age with activity upon activity.

To me the worst is Kumon. It kills any interest the kids have in math, not for all but for many. The worst is it kills off the mental faculty to imagine and almost feel the math in your head. I say this as the parent of a kid who is absolutely fascinated by math. All the credit for his interest should go to NOT doing Kumon. We went to our SIL house once who has a kid with the same age and they were doing Kumon worksheets in the summer holidays. My SIL asked my son to join in as well and he hated it.

To me, having a lot of downtime is supremely important. Using the downtime however way they want - they should actually get bored, they should have free time to socialize outside of academic activity (a science olympiad meeting does not meet my definition of socialization, even though it is fun and they are doing it with their best friend). [b]So downtime, socialization and time to get bored. [/b]These are to me just as important as any of the academic activities you listed above.

Where Asians overdo is to take away the downtime and fill it up with academic activities. Any downtime is seen as a waste of time.

Then the kids tend to develop some weak spots socially and in other such soft skills. Skills that are tough to measure, skills that do not come with a medal attached to them. Since these are not measured, medals not awarded, we Asians tend to ignore them. Not every Asian, but it is the general tendency among highly educated Asian families.

That is really what I am worried about for my own kids. My tendency just like most Asians is to overschedule. I have to very consciously try not to do it. It is difficult due to peer pressure among parents. They seem to think, look their kids are doing Science Bowl, Chess, Tennis, etc. let us add Chess too. I see this over, over and over again. The kids really end up deficient in many skills that really matter in the real world as a result.

Not saying I have the balance pat down, I struggle myself how much to push and how much free time to have. As Asians, we tend to more likely to overschedule than under schedule.

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