Joseph Morris

Professor Henderson

Academic Writing

March 1st, 2011

Dear Ms Chua,

I have recently read your article on the Wall Street Journal’s website. I have to start this letter off by being quite frank; at some points it felt like a criminal confession. The method in which you described you parenting techniques was so repulsive that I just had to write you a letter describing my feelings on the matter. My biggest problems with your article are that you purposely inhibit your children’s freedom and creative expression, you are preventing their ability to make friends and be themselves, illegally disciplining your children, the potential emotional harm you are inflicting on your children, and the philosophy in which you base all of your ideas off of is extremely flawed. 

You mentioned that you do not allow your children to pick their own extracurricular activities, specifically school plays. Creative activities such as drama clubs have a proven positive impact on a student’s development. They teach children how to be self-confident, give them an outlet for there emotions with in a safe environment, and are just fun for the students in general (Downshen). To discredit such a beneficial part of education and forbid it from your children is reprehensible. You may argue that the violin and the piano are enough creative outlet for your children. I believe that the way in which you teach your children to play these instruments takes out all of the beneficialness that may come out of playing these instruments. 

I take a lot of offense to the fact you prohibit your children from having a play-date or a sleepover. I can not think of any other reason you would prevent your children from doing these things unless you thought that they do not need friends till later in life. You seem to purposely want to isolate your children from other children so that they do not have ‘distractions’ or some excuse such as that. This is wrong on so many levels. As stated by Steven Downshen, MD, in an article on TeensHealth website, extracurricular activities helps develop creative insights on the world and people around them. To prevent your children from making friends like that is to prevent the development of basic communication skills, preventing them from being introduced to the fundamentals of all future relationships, prevents their ability to accept others and show trust and affection to others, and to cause the child to feel like a outsider and lonely (Downshen)

In case you are not aware, not allowing your child to eat drink or even go to the bathroom for any reason, especially for something as trivial as finishing a piece of music, is abuse. It’s not potential or arguably abuse, it’s the actual legal definition of abuse. As stated on the website for Child Welfare, a website provided by the US Department of Health and Safety, abuse is:
- "Any recent act or failure to act on the part of a parent or caretaker, which results in death, serious physical or emotional harm, sexual abuse, or exploitation, or an act or failure to act which presents an imminent risk of serious harm". (www.childwelfare.com)
What you did to your child is what’s called emotional and physical mistreatment. It’s also arguably neglect of the child’s basic needs. To call your child ‘garbage’, ‘stupid’, or ‘worthless’ is emotional abuse that cause and has caused serious psychological effects.

You have argued that western-parents are too easy on their children and that they settle with A minuses and Bs because they do not believe enough in their children. I think this is a horrible thing to say. Western parents believe in their children and accept them for who they are. You seem to think that a child trying their best is not good enough. You made a ridiculous comment in which you criticized western parents for only being able to ‘ask their kids to try their best’. You have described a parenting style in which you aim so hard at having your children reach the top that they you force them to dismiss all other parts of life that are so numerous in our years as middle school and high school students. You force your children to give up on anything they want to do that you do not want them to do and turn them into grade producing, socially inept machines. The fact that I believe you would take the last sentence as a complement is sickening. No child should be put through the teaching and parenting styles you describe in your article.

In your article you spend a lot of time telling the reader what western parents will think and do in situations. You talk as though you have any room to be telling the reader how a western parent think. An example of this is where you say “Western parents have to struggle with their own conflicted feeling about achievement, and try to persuade themselves they are not disappointed about how their kids turned out”; this is a very arrogant thing to say. As long as the parents know that their child is trying their hardest and are happy, a word you seem to not understand not have in your dictionary, these parents are proud and happy themselves. You project your own feelings about grades and parenting on others which only weakens your argument and makes you come over as contemptuous. 

Another big point I disagree with in your article is the philosophy that children owe their parents everything from birth.  This philosophy that the parent is always right and that the children must only do things to please their parents means that the children will never be able to develop intrinsic motivation and have initiative beyond the idea of pleasing their parents. Their development into self-sufficient human beings will be drastically stunted by this process. This is the kind of ideal that encourages situations of child abuse. Abusive parents often have a mindset that their children owe them their lives and that they can do anything to their children without repercussions. And as stated earlier in this essay, you would classify as an abusive parent. Your article is a recipe on how to emotionally and socially cripple your children and make them dependent on your approval for the rest of their lives. 












Work Cited

"Definitions of Child Abuse and Neglect." Child Welfare Information Gateway. July 2009. Web. 21 Mar. 2011. <http://www.childwelfare.gov/systemwide/laws_policies/statutes/define.cfm>.

 Dowshen, Steven. "Extracurricular Activities." KidsHealth - the Web's Most Visited Site about Children's Health. May 2010. Web. 21 Mar. 2011. <http://kidshealth.org/teen/school_jobs/school/involved_school.html>.