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I find it interesting that the OP never came back! I bet they don't even have children!
I think everyone has different methods of parenting. I don't feel it's babying them if I drive them to practice that's a few hours away or keep tabs on where their at. I think that's good parenting as well. Sure they should learn responsibilities at an early age and I think most responsible parents teach that. At least I did anyway!
I find it interesting that the OP never came back! I bet they don't even have children!
I think everyone has different methods of parenting. I don't feel it's babying them if I drive them to practice that's a few hours away or keep tabs on where their at. I think that's good parenting as well. Sure they should learn responsibilities at an early age and I think most responsible parents teach that. At least I did anyway!
I don't believe anyone is saying, anything about driving your kid to practice that is a few hours away??
but certainly letting them walk back and forth to school, isn't a bad thing. I walked back and forth to school, every day, in winter, when it rained, etc....and walked to practice. At the time, I was also waitressed at a diner 1.5 miles away, which I walked or sometimes in the winter took a taxi. It didn't kill me....
I'm glad you and others do teach kids responsibilities....I think it's very important, to teach a kid from little on up, to take part in helping around the house, with chores, etc. So it becomes a family thing...forget about the fact that they might not do it as good as you, you can always go back over it another time.
we all sat down to eat together, that was our family time. It is very important to encourage children to engage in conversation, and not to react emotionally if a kid says something about a bully, but to try and act normal so you can stay in contact with the child about situations that occur outside the home, and then advise each other on how to handle it.
It is also wise, to listen and reinforce your child's teacher, so that you can nip problems in the bud right in the beginning. Give the teacher some credit, and let her discipline your child if he or she was wrong, instead of getting them out of trouble, by yelling at the coach...or teachers and fathers have to grow a set, and stop acting as if your kids football or soccer games is the Superbowl....for God's sake its a game, that's all it is...stop yelling at the coach or other parents....grow up and become responsible role models. No you CGab, I'm just saying....
but certainly letting them walk back and forth to school, isn't a bad thing. I walked back and forth to school, every day, in winter, when it rained, etc....and walked to practice. .
Depending where someone lives in proximity to the school dictates whether this would work or not. My kids attended an elementary school 3 miles from home (driven distance). To walk would have added another mile in one direction, due to needing to cross a very busy highway. Throw in the fact there is not a sidewalk along at least half of that distance...nope, not happening!
Their middle school and high school was 10 miles away. I drove them until they got licenses and a vehicle. Then they drove themselves.
There is no culture and not one single parent who does everything right and perfect. You can look and take the best from different places but mostly you should do your best and do yourself and your children a favor and embrace that no one is perfect. I married into an Asian family. They definitely do NOT do everything right. Not even close. But they do their best and they love each other.
Worked for a Japanese company for 10 years, with extended stays in the country where I basically became a salaryman myself and got to feel what it is like to be a Japanese person, and got to observe a lot about the culture, including the kids. What I saw was not a culture that promoted self-sufficience, and certainly not independence of thought, nor of genuine family closeness.
Fathers and children rarely see each other. Salarymen leave all the parenting to the mother, who usually stays home. Men work very late, and are often expected afterwards to go out to long dinners and drinking with their coworkers every night. Husbands and wives live such separate lives, that now that cultural taboos on divorce have shifted, divorces among post-retirement couples have skyrocketed. In Japan they call it "wet leaf syndrome". The husband's life and identity revolved around his company, while the wife forged her own life. Once the man no longer works, he doesn't know what to do with himself, so he clings to his wife like a "wet leaf", which she finds annoying, so she's outta there. The corporation engrains an almost child-like dependence in all things on its employees.
My wife was pregnant and then had a baby while I was working for this company. My Japanese coworkers were shocked to discover that I had been in the delivery room with her. That's unheard-of in Japan, for fear the husband will no longer be attracted to the wife if he sees how the sausage is made. After the baby is born, the wife usually moves in with her mother, so the husband doesn't have to be awakened by a baby who can't sleep through the night when he has to go to work.
During the teenage years, kids rarely go to school close to their house, which means lots of time spent on trains. I'd regularly be on a train at 8, 9 PM on a weeknight and see teens still in their school uniforms.
Japanese people are afraid to travel independently in their own country. Since I was often there for weeks at a time, my Japanese coworkers stopped escorting me around the country on sightseeing trips on weekends. The first weekend I was on my own, one of my coworkers asked me what I planned to do that weekend. I said I was going to go up to Nikko (I worked in Sodegaura in the Tokyo Bay area, and my hotel was in Chiba City). She said "oh, well we'll book you on a tour up there." I said, oh, that's okay, but she was really pushing it, so I said I wasn't sure if I was going to go to Nikko or just stay in Chiba and relax, but if I went to Chiba, I'd have the hotel concierge book me on a tour. That satisfied her. Then on Saturday I just hopped on a train by myself and went to Nikko on my own and had a great time. The next Monday, she asked me if I got a tour, and I said no, I just decided at the last minute to go on my own. She was shocked, but after that, they left me alone to travel independently. I found out from traveling with them on other weekends that unless they are going to visit family or a location close by they know really well, Japanese people feel much more comfortable booking a professional tour even to places on Honshu.
And Japanese culture, especially corporate culture, is one where individuality, initiative, speaking one's mind, risk taking is all discouraged. Bad business practices in companies often don't get challenged because people are so intimated about speaking up and contradicting superiors.
There is a strange American tendency to venerate, even fetishize Japanese culture as being superior, but I saw a lot of things not to be admired, sexism, racism and xenophobia, emotional and sexual repression, politeness and duty taking the place of honest warmth and quality time in personal relationships, and a lot of quietly unhappy people who take out their frustration on people lower than them on the corporate ladder. And that all starts with how the children are raised.
There is a strange American tendency to venerate, even fetishize Japanese culture as being superior, but I saw a lot of things not to be admired, sexism, racism and xenophobia, emotional and sexual repression, politeness and duty taking the place of honest warmth and quality time in personal relationships, and a lot of quietly unhappy people who take out their frustration on people lower than them on the corporate ladder. And that all starts with how the children are raised.
Have you noticed that we do that with almost every other first world culture?
Be it their healthcare, public transport, diets, parenting, education, etc...
Which isn't to say that we couldn't do better with our healthcare system, expand public transit, or eat better.
But there's a yin for every yang, and you have to remember that every country plays with its own unique deck of cards.
Saw this and found it interesting, but from what I have seen is totally way better than American parenting. In Japan kids are expected to be self-sufficient and capable of taking care of themselves, making them much more mature when they grow up. Unlike Americans where they are constantly babied, have mothers drive them everywhere, kept very close tabs etc.
Before you reply I highly recommend at least reading it, it is very interesting!
Have you parented? I read the article. I'm not sure how you can compare a childhood in a largely homogeneous country like Japan to the melting pot of America. Nor can you compare the freedoms offered to children in a country with little crime and strict gun control to the precautions many parents here feel are necessary.
But, for the record, I, and many, many other parents I know somehow managed to raise self-sufficient, mature, and successful adults right here in the US. Go figure.
And I'm more than a little suspicious of an article that tries to claim that a country of 125,000,000+ people has a nationwide way of parenting - to say nothing of the suggestion that the United States does as well. Parents parent in myriad ways in the United States. I suspect there is a tremendous variety of parenting in Japan, too.
I also note the authors says people in Japan never lock their bikes. Gee, I wonder why that hasn't caught on in the States, too? Maybe I should chuck my bike lock because, hey, that's how they do it in Tokyo!
Saw this and found it interesting, but from what I have seen is totally way better than American parenting. In Japan kids are expected to be self-sufficient and capable of taking care of themselves, making them much more mature when they grow up. Unlike Americans where they are constantly babied, have mothers drive them everywhere, kept very close tabs etc.
Before you reply I highly recommend at least reading it, it is very interesting!
NO! Suicide rates amongst Japanese children have been the highest in the world for decades. And they keep rising. What a STUPID thing to think! Just take a gun out and shoot your kid in the head right now, it'll be kinder than what they are subjected to in Japan.
I tend to believe that most successful American families do share similar parenting strategies used by the Tiger moms and self sufficient societies like Japan. American family values changes more often. You have one gen that is more self sufficient than another and then another gen that are pampered and then it goes back and forth.
What is different about Japanese school system and America is that their elementary system is very difficult at an early age and college is actually very relaxing for Japanese because majority of their studying and cramming were done during High school years and they breeze through college. While in America, most kids and teens are enjoying these years while cramming hard during college or simply dropout. In Japan, dropping out of college is unheard of.
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