Whenever I picture my sister during high school, the image I see in my head is that of a door, because during those years she was permanently bunkered in her locked bedroom practicing the violin with our mother sitting on the bed with a metronome.
My mother, the stereotypical Asian parent who championed ceaseless hard work, tried to mold me into an overachiever like my sister, but I resisted until she eventually gave up. Hence, I became a project for my father, who happily guided me towards spending the bulk of our time together playing pingpong in the basement. The thing is, I now feel eternally grateful for my mother’s efforts. I’m moderately proficient in a half-dozen instruments and can play a variety of sports at a pretty high level; as a result I’m full of party tricks, and kick ass at company outings.
But when my son, Griffin, was born last May, I was determined to approach parenting differently, by gently nurturing (as opposed to cattle-driving) him towards his eventual passions. On top of this, I’d grown weary of devolving into a helicopter dad—one who pays extremely close attention to his child to the point of overparenting. At a wedding, I witnessed a dad literally yanking his daughter around on a leash, and at a picnic I once saw a woman actually taking the term to heart and hovering over her son with her arms surrounding him.
Yet being a lax parent isn’t easy. I realized this last month while on vacation. We were supposed to be on break from an especially brutal New England winter, but I couldn’t enjoy it because I was preoccupied with protecting my son from the dangers of the world. For example, I wasn’t familiar with the flora in Florida, so I made him wear mittens out in the yard, lest he be able to pick up blades of toxic grass with his opposable thumbs and insert them into his mouth.
As for not turning into my mom, I was a failure on that front, too. On the last day of vacation I tossed a rubber ball into my son’s lap and he actually threw it back, and in that instant I gained a newfound perspective on my mom’s parenting philosophy. I’d always figured she was merely a typical Tiger Mom pushing her kids to succeed. But perhaps there was something else motivating her to make us work hard?
I mentioned this epiphany to my wife that night.
“Griffin is our meal ticket!” I said. “This little guy’s going to pitch for the Red Sox someday, and he’ll buy us a mansion with his playoff bonus.”
My wife frowned, as I picked up our son and opened the screen door.
“Now if you’ll excuse me, my son has to practice his slider out in the backyard.”
—David Yoo
