Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Why Chinese Mothers are Superior.....(WSJ article)

I don't think (though I may be wrong...) that there's much controversy over what "free time" is. It's time when you have nothing scheduled and when you can decide, on the spur of that moment, what you are going to do, and change your mind every minute if you like. After you schedule something in it, it might still be "leisure time" but it's no longer "free time".

How much is necessary I'm not sure; that's more difficult. I don't think five minutes contributes, though, really - the importance of it is the experience of deciding what to do with it, and five minutes isn't long enough to have that really. You only get a chance to do one thing, and not much of that. Sorry.

I've just finished reading Amy Chua's book at a sitting. Very strange experience. It's funny and insightful - and yet horrifying; she knows, and yet doesn't know, what she sounds like. You should read it, Wren.

I'm with ColinsMum. If it's scheduled, it's not free time. Free time is a chunk of time when a person does whatever comes to mind. You can't be creative or imaginative unless you have a lot of this kind of time. Perhaps you don't put a priority on imagination; I do.

I don't think it's possible to define a precise percentage of a day or week as free time; it just has to happen. Perhaps it's a learned skill and, again, isn't a priority among Chua-method advocates. I think it's essential to healthy development. I'm not going to be fuzzy about cultural differences on this point. ALL kids need time to develop on their own, in their own way.

I think a lot of the issues we've been discussing on this thread boil down to a couple large parental assumptions. If people disagree, please, please say so.

Assumption #1: Children do not want to learn. People do not want to work. I must hover over my child constantly and force her to work, or she will never learn anything and will never be successful. I define "successful."

Assumption #2: Children generally want to learn, and most people want to accomplish something with their lives. My child seems to fit this description, more or less. I need to try to teach her the value of finishing things and working hard. I hope my child will be successful. It's up to her to define "successful."

It seems to me that a lot of Chua-style advocates don't consider the possibility that a person can do something useful or important without being forced to. How unfortunate.

I also think that this method can do a lot of damage to children, as the comments on the WSJ article show.

Val

Wren,I think they mean many parents see value for the children from being bored. Some brag about taking that to the extreme too. Most people pride themselves on being balanced. I have to think people would parent differently in different environments and in different situations. To each their own. Like you seem to live in the fast lane. Study's say there's better ways. But recent newspaper articles say spending time being bored leads to increased risk of heart attack. I'm not sure if they were being ironic. It was the WSJ, not Prevention magazine.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703395904576025482554838642.html?mod=WSJ_Ahed_AutomatedTypes#articleTabs%3Darticle

Val, there also was mention of the assumption that Chuanese kids will be responsible for taking care of their parents in their old age rather than dump them in a nursing home and go on with their life. And commenters mentioned kid's will do that more out of love. I've read that other cultures feel more responsibility to live their lives for their whole families, not for themselves. Although this story would be an American fantasy of what would look like. Really I'll bet it looks more like families taking care of their own because there's no medicaid to pay for the nursing homes in poverty country's. I don't know. Reading about other countries paints such conflicting images. Guess I'll never know the whole truth about some things. So, add that to the assumptions. Not who will be successful but who will be responsible as well. That doesn't change the balance of who's right. It's just another thing.

He-hee. You can tell I read all the 4000 WSJ comments.

Oh yeah, what I've seen the chaunese described as, "parenting from a place of fear", which isn't very healthy.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/br...-kind-of-chinese-mother-is-amy-chua.aspx

"As one of my Korean-American friends wrote to me in an email: "The constant conflict between what feels like unconditional support (why else would a parent invest so much energy and focus so entirely on a child?) and entirely conditional love (if you don't perform, I won't really love you) can be soul-destroying." Let's not lose sight of these consequences just because we're blinded by Chua's shiny, beautiful, ridiculously successful and seemingly well-adjusted kids. One family case study does not a larger cultural point make."

I am not sure the free time definition fits all. "creative and imagination". Does that assume that when a child has free time, they cannot watch TV? They have to do something creative and imaginative?

We live at the beach during the summer. Dd is on the beach from lunch until dinner. On weekends, she is on the beach in the mornings. She can swim, dig a hole to China, look for crabs or jellyfish -- whatever the project she or group of children are doing. Is that free time? She cannot choose to go to the playground, though there are swings on the beach and she choose to go there.

If you are going to define time as the child can switch and do something else on the spur, what are the limitations of choices? Do they have to stay in the house? In their room? Can they watch TV, use their computer? Can they do anything? What if they want to bake with you? Baking is usually something I have to schedule since I have to buy a mix and frosting (hey I do the best I can.)

I think you criticize me unnecessarily without clarifying what you think free time is.

When she goes and plays Barbie, or games on her computer, definitely free time. But children do not have the freedom today like I had. I could run across the street and meet friends and build forts in the woods in my free time. My child is pretty much in sight all the time. She is restricted due to safety concerns of today.

Ren

Of course not. What Val wrote was
(I think, personally, that this statement may be too strong - or at least, that Val and I might have different ideas about what "a lot" means here - but at least it's clear that she made no claim that all free time had to be spent imaginatively.)
Of course.

I would have thought it was sufficiently obvious that there will be, for a variety of reasons, constraints on what a child can do in any given time period, that it would have been pointlessly pedantic to include it in the definition. But all right: it's free time if
(a) the child can choose, within constraints that are imposed by by circumstance rather than with the intention of guiding the child's choice, what to do, and
(b) the child is free to change the choice at any moment.

What I mean to exclude here is choices which are constrained because of what the parent wants the child to do: e.g. "would you like to play the piano or read a book?" isn't free time, and nor is "tell me what constructive thing you're going to do for the next hour and then do it". The child gets to ask and answer the question "what shall I do now?" and to re-ask it as often as s/he wishes.

Of course there are grey areas. An example that comes to my mind is the time my son has on the bus (if he doesn't have homework that needs to be done). I don't mind what he does (including just looking out of the window) and he does find a variety of things to do, but of course the constraints there are very stringent!

FWIW, my DS doesn't get much in the way of free time during the week, by the time he's had school and the clubs he chose and he's done his homework and two instrument practices, and I think that's OK. I do think it's good that he gets some, and I resist scheduling our weekends, in order that he gets extended periods of free time every weekend.

There are so many areas of grey I can't see for the clouds.

You have got to be kidding. Constraints vary in degree in each situation, again, you are not defining and that what my question was all about.

How many minutes of being creative and imaginative do you need for free time? Just like no one dares put down how much time a mother should spend with their child to make quantity not quality the issue -- too political.

Val, I dare you to write an exact amount of free time a child needs so they can be creative and imaginative. And then tell me what the correlational positive results form that amount of time. Just like 9 months of breastfeeding gives you all the benefits. They have found after 9 months, the additional positive benefits drop off like a rock off a cliff. Not that it isn't good to breastfeed longer but the differential benefits impact is neglible.

Give something tangible about free time and creative and imaginative since you criticized my quip about the 5 minutes of Barbie time before school.

Ren

I gave you a definition that's as good as anything you'll ever get in social science. What don't you like about it?

You're still missing Val's point. Read her post again. The people who think it's important to be bored would say that free time is still important even if NONE of it is spent being creative and imaginative. It's not - it can be argued - that free time is important because in that time you can do creative, imaginative things; it's that free time is important because, from the experience of making your own choices about spending your time, you learn that you can do things noone has thought of for you - creativity. Now, you may disagree with the argument, but please confirm that you now understand what it is?

"They" have found no such thing. Nobody has ever found a way to research the full benefits of child-led weaning; that is not the same as establishing that none exist, or even as establishing that they are small. It would be at least as difficult to research the effects (independent of all other aspects of parenting) of allowing particular amounts of free time, obviously.

Ahh, Wren. I think you're taking things far too literally. The whole point of being creative and imaginative is that the tangibles and constraints that you want to define don't apply.

The amount of time needed varies from person to person and it can't be precisely defined. But by "a lot" in my first post (to answer ColinsMum), I meant, frequently enough that it's a normal part of life, and long enough to let something develop.

This question isn't political. Creativity is, simply, freeform. I suspect that people who aren't creative can't understand that concept. It may seem as alien as red is to someone who's colorblind (or, should I say, red?). Unlike colorblindness, I expect it can be developed (at least a bit) if people slow down a bit and let it happen.

Creativity and imaginative thinking can't be scheduled, forced, or planned. They just happen. They are spontaneous.

And for them to happen, you need free time AND you can't be too stressed out or too busy. This, for me, at least, is the core of my argument against the hyper-parenting you and Amy Chua advocate. When nearly every moment has to be productive, there is no room for imagination, new ideas, and creativity. There's simply too much mental clutter to allow it.

I don't know you; perhaps you aren't a very creative person. That's okay; I'm not judging! BUT, it's important to realize that one or more of your kids might be creative. I see creativity as an extremely important ability that needs to be nurtured.

In the way of studies, there have been research studies regarding creativity, and from what I've read, they've found that it's an important trait. Google the terms and if you can't find anything, PM me.

Val