A Child’s fun and Self-esteem versus the Survival of a Nation – Part 2/3

April 15, 2011

Once a child’s behavior becomes a habit, the child feels entitled to always live that lifestyle.

Who is in charge of a child’s diet creating lifestyle habits?

The answer should be “parents” but in the US, it is normal for the child to make these decisions leading to children eating unhealthy food, watching TV, playing video games or social networking on Facebook for about 10 hours a day.

Unfortunately, statistics show the average American parent is doing a lousy job. One exception may be the Asian-American community, which includes Chinese and Japanese.

The definition for average says, a statistic describing the location of a distribution; “it set the norm for American homes”, which means this is the largest segment of parents in the country.

This is what parenting is measured against and if you don’t parent like this, you are not considered normal by  American standards—a form of peer pressure.

That normal American parent also protects the child from experiencing failure since failure hurts self-esteem.

Life Span reports, “The Japanese still live longer than anyone else…. The Japanese said their long lives was due to moderation in eating and drinking. Other advice was early to bed and early to rise, religious faith and hard work.”

However, in the US, the “average”, normal American parent is obsessed with the child’s self-esteem and is more concerned with the child having fun and telling the child to follow his or her dreams.

Did you know that about 40,000 young Americans migrate to Hollywood, California every year dreaming of becoming the next super star but less than one percent will actually land an acting role with no guarantee of fame, fortune or winning an Oscar?

President Barack Obama is the 44th president of the US since 1789 when George Washington was sworn in as the first American President. What are the odds that any child will become a president?

Individuals that achieve his or her dreams are in the minority — a very small minority.

When children dream such dreams, it is up to the parent to teach the child reality.

To be continued on April 16, 2011 in Part 3 or start with Part 1 

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

2 Comments | America, American culture, China, Chinese Culture, cultural differences, education, family values, parenting | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

A Child’s fun and Self-esteem versus the Survival of a Nation – Part 1/3

April 14, 2011


The front-page of a recent Sunday, Contra Costa Times newspaper shouted at me from inside its box, “Shortened Lives. Where you live Matters“.

I leaned over to read what I could through the glass/plastic and discovered that the average Asian-American woman lives twenty years longer than an African-American man does. The numbers were shocking.

The average Asian-American female lived to be 89.4 (Asian-American men live to be 85.1), while the average African-American man lived to be 69.9.  African-American women did better.  They averaged 77.5.

The Contra Costa Times feature went on to report, “The long life span for Asian-Americans follows a national trend.… Much of it may have to do with diet.”

Education was also mentioned. Statistics show that the more education one has, the longer one may live.

I bought the paper and read the piece and the before I was done reading, the message was that the government and health care were being held responsible to level the life-expectancy field.

I beg your pardon.

It isn’t the government or a doctor’s job to instill healthy habits in a child so he or she grows up to be a healthy adult with a chance at living a longer life. The government and doctors may give advice but the job falls to the parent.

To be continued on April 15, 2011 in Part 2 or discover how Tiger Parents are Saving America One Child at a Time

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Predicting the Fall of a Civilization – Part 2/2

April 13, 2011


I’ve talked to enough Chinese to know that it is a commonly held opinion that if the average American eats and raises children a certain way and the US is  the world’s only super power, then if the Chinese eat and act the same way, China will become the next super power on the block.

This flawed belief may explain what my friend (in Part 1) wrote about the spoiled children of China’s middle class being “WAY fatter” with a sense of entitlement.

It might also explain the exploding popularity of American fast food in China leading to an epidemic of obesity, diabetes, heart disease and cancer, which is parallel to what has happened and is still happening in the US.

To see if America and China are showing signs of an impending collapse, I checked Wikipedia’s Fall of Civilizations where a summary of the opinions of twelve experts are on display.

I will mention three of these experts.

Edward Gibbons in The Decline of the Roman Empire wrote, “The decline of Rome was the natural and inevitable effect of immoderate greatness. Prosperity ripened the principle of decay…”

Arnold J. Toynbee in his A study of History wrote, “The cause of the fall of a civilization occurred when the cultural elite became a parasitic elite.”

Jeffrey A. McNeely suggested, “A review of historical evidence shows that past civilizations have tended to over-exploit their forests and that such abuse of important resources has been a significant factor in the decline of the over-exploiting society.”

After reading what all twelve experts said about the collapse of civilizations, it was obvious that there may be several causes that bring on a collapse.

However, when three of the twelve all have different opinions and all three of those opinions are happening in America and starting to happen in China, this is a good reason to be concerned.

Return to Part 1 or discover The Next Super Power

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

Leave a Comment » | America, American culture, Chinese Culture, Chinese middle class, economy, environment, family values | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Predicting the Fall of a Civilization – Part 1/2

April 12, 2011

For decades, I’ve said that American arrogance (due to being the only super power), run-away consumerism and growing debt of all kinds coupled with how the average American child is being raised by parents obsessed with the child’s self-esteem above all else would lead to the inevitable end of the American experiment in personal freedoms and a rapid decline in living standards followed by chaos and anarchy.

Then I had an e-mail this week from an American friend and expatriate living in China, who recently returned to teaching English to Chinese children.

I asked him in an E-mail how it was going.

He replied, “You’ll be interested to know the kids are WAY fatter and noisier than they were in 2004. I asked some other teachers about this. They attribute it to McDonalds (3 all on the same 3-kilometer street in this very small city). In 2004 there were none (in that city), and Chinese parents spoiling their kids more and more; that sense of entitlement carries over into the classroom….”

After teaching American children and teens for thirty years and experiencing the same decline in child health and behavior, I understood what he meant.

Could this cultural decay be a sign of the pending collapse of civilization?

To be continued on April 13, 2011 in Part 2 or discover Super Power Dawn

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

2 Comments | America, American culture, China, Chinese Culture, Chinese middle class, economy, environment, expatriates, family values, parenting | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

When it comes to Parenting, One Size Does Not Fit All – Part 5/5

April 11, 2011

There is a difference in values and education between urban and rural parents since many Chinese in rural China never went to school or had a school close to the village while larger towns and cities all had schools.

In the last thirty years that has been changing. After Mao died in 1976 and as late as 1980, twenty percent of Chinese were literate and 80% were not.  In the last thirty years, literacy has been raised to above 90%. If the average Chinese parent was a SAP, that wouldn’t have happened. 

In fact, I’ve heard that Amy Tan’s (the author of The Joy Luck Club) mother’s primary concern was that her daughter speak English without an accent.

Amy Tan writes that her mother wanted her to be a doctor and a concert pianist. Amy Tan’s mother was an immigrant from mainland China and she was not a SAP parent by any definition but she wasn’t as extreme as Amy Chua either.

China’s leaders in Beijing knew that for China to modernize and prosper, the people would have to be literate and educated so starting in the 1980s, the public schools spread into rural China for the first time in history to reach as much of the rural population as possible.

However, urban education is still better than rural education. It takes more than a generation to bring about changes this drastic.

Meanwhile, the opposite is happening in the United States where the average literate person reads at or below fifth-grade level and among younger Americans we find few serious readers.

While China promotes education and is supported by Tiger Parents of all stripes, in America for the last sixty years, the SAPs have waged a war on education to make learning more fun than educational, which has damaged America’s ability to maintain its economic status in the world.

To reverse this trend, what America needs is more Tiger Parents of all stripes and fewer SAPs.

Return to Part 4 or start with Part 1

______________

Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

1 Comment | America, American culture, China, Chinese Culture, Chinese women, cultural differences, education, family values, parenting | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

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