Parental boasting about their children's accomplishments can certainly be obnoxious. But cultural differences play a part, too
We've all been there. That moment when a parent won't shut up about how great their kid is. Their three-year-old who knows her ABCs is destined to write the next bestseller. Their 10-year-old who plays too many video games is surely going to found the next Facebook. Their 25-year-old who's an unpaid intern is secretly running New York City.
It's become so bad that there are actually medical articles recommending how to respond to parental boasting. Apparently, if you want to remain friends with the bragger, the best response is "That's great". Then change the subject. You can roll your eyes later.
But where exactly is that cut-off point for over-the-top bragging? Better yet, should you keep in mind that different cultures treat this very differently?
Consider the Guardian commentary last week from Brent Gordon, the father of a 10-year-old girl named Sam who plays American football in her local boys league. She's not just doing something unusual, she's doing it incredibly well. So well, in fact, that millions of people have watched clips of her football moves on YouTube, and she was invited to watch the Super Bowl by the NFL's head honcho. Guardian readers were torn over Brent's piece. For the record, we asked him to write about whether women should be able to play football, especially in the pro leagues. As you might expect, Brent cited his daughter's experiences frequently in the article. Some Guardian readers, especially from Europe, thought it was too much. Commented StVitusGerulaitis:
"Reading this is like listening to those awful parents whose only source of conversation is how brilliant their little darlings are. It makes me hate them and their overachieving offspring."
Others, often American readers, felt that the daughter's experiences were so incredible that Brent had some right to boast. I side with my fellow Americans on this one: Brent's daughter made some amazing plays on the sporting field. No, she probably won't play in the NFL, but Brent admitted that in his article. Even more impressively, Sam Gordon handled herself with far more poise than, say, Justin Bieber, when she was in the national spotlight. Her case is a lot different than the parent who brags that their toddler is going to be a ballet star because the kid likes to point his toes a lot. Brent is entitled to some proud-pappa moments. If we can't celebrate others' achievements, that says a lot about our own self-esteem.
But I'm also waking up to the fact that people are "all over the map," literally, on what's acceptable boasting and what isn't. Dr Fran Walfish, a child and family psychologist and author of The Self-Aware Parent, says, "The British feel it is poor taste to brag, but on the flip side, the Middle Eastern cultures (especially Persian) brag up to the ceiling and sky."
Of course, most parents believe they are doing the best for their child. American parents are told that complimenting their children helps build little Johnny's self-esteem. Dr Elinor Ochs, an anthropology professor at UCLA, says it's part of a Dr Spock-era ideology that many US parents still subscribe to. It's become so extreme that North America teachers are told to avoid giving students a zero mark if at all possible in order to keep students from feeling like compete failures.
It couldn't be more different in Asian cultures. Parents go out of their way to criticize the child in order to motivate them to do better. It's the approach Yale Law School professor Amy Chua preached in her controversial parenting book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, which promotes Asian child-rearing techniques as the best method to get a kid into an Ivy League university.
For me, the line on what's acceptable bragging comes down to this: is the parent doing it mostly to promote himself?
We have a real problem in America with parents over-programming their children. They enroll the kids in multiple activities to build their resumes and supposedly make their child more likely to succeed – in college and beyond. But what's really going on is parents trying to live through their kids or see them as some sort of 12-step program.
"Middle class parents see their children as a project. They engage in 'concerted cultivation'," says Dr Annette Lareau, professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, who spent years studying middle and lower class US families and how they treat their children. She found that the children's activities dominate middle class family life, becoming everyone's main focal point. These parents believe they are helping their children develop their talents, but it comes with intense micromanaging. Notes Dr Lareau:
"There's even a public hierarchy of activities: is the child on the A team or B team for sports. Is the child in the choir that's going to sing in Europe or the one that stays home."
If bragging is coming from that "I'm here to one up you" vein because I've got the perfect parenting formula, then we have every right to tell the parent to stuff it. But if a kid is genuinely enjoying what they are doing and largely accomplishing something on their own and remarkably well – like Sam Gordon on the football field – then it should be acceptable to give them a high five and, yes, give their parents a minute to gloat. Reported by guardian.co.uk 12 hours ago.
We've all been there. That moment when a parent won't shut up about how great their kid is. Their three-year-old who knows her ABCs is destined to write the next bestseller. Their 10-year-old who plays too many video games is surely going to found the next Facebook. Their 25-year-old who's an unpaid intern is secretly running New York City.
It's become so bad that there are actually medical articles recommending how to respond to parental boasting. Apparently, if you want to remain friends with the bragger, the best response is "That's great". Then change the subject. You can roll your eyes later.
But where exactly is that cut-off point for over-the-top bragging? Better yet, should you keep in mind that different cultures treat this very differently?
Consider the Guardian commentary last week from Brent Gordon, the father of a 10-year-old girl named Sam who plays American football in her local boys league. She's not just doing something unusual, she's doing it incredibly well. So well, in fact, that millions of people have watched clips of her football moves on YouTube, and she was invited to watch the Super Bowl by the NFL's head honcho. Guardian readers were torn over Brent's piece. For the record, we asked him to write about whether women should be able to play football, especially in the pro leagues. As you might expect, Brent cited his daughter's experiences frequently in the article. Some Guardian readers, especially from Europe, thought it was too much. Commented StVitusGerulaitis:
"Reading this is like listening to those awful parents whose only source of conversation is how brilliant their little darlings are. It makes me hate them and their overachieving offspring."
Others, often American readers, felt that the daughter's experiences were so incredible that Brent had some right to boast. I side with my fellow Americans on this one: Brent's daughter made some amazing plays on the sporting field. No, she probably won't play in the NFL, but Brent admitted that in his article. Even more impressively, Sam Gordon handled herself with far more poise than, say, Justin Bieber, when she was in the national spotlight. Her case is a lot different than the parent who brags that their toddler is going to be a ballet star because the kid likes to point his toes a lot. Brent is entitled to some proud-pappa moments. If we can't celebrate others' achievements, that says a lot about our own self-esteem.
But I'm also waking up to the fact that people are "all over the map," literally, on what's acceptable boasting and what isn't. Dr Fran Walfish, a child and family psychologist and author of The Self-Aware Parent, says, "The British feel it is poor taste to brag, but on the flip side, the Middle Eastern cultures (especially Persian) brag up to the ceiling and sky."
Of course, most parents believe they are doing the best for their child. American parents are told that complimenting their children helps build little Johnny's self-esteem. Dr Elinor Ochs, an anthropology professor at UCLA, says it's part of a Dr Spock-era ideology that many US parents still subscribe to. It's become so extreme that North America teachers are told to avoid giving students a zero mark if at all possible in order to keep students from feeling like compete failures.
It couldn't be more different in Asian cultures. Parents go out of their way to criticize the child in order to motivate them to do better. It's the approach Yale Law School professor Amy Chua preached in her controversial parenting book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, which promotes Asian child-rearing techniques as the best method to get a kid into an Ivy League university.
For me, the line on what's acceptable bragging comes down to this: is the parent doing it mostly to promote himself?
We have a real problem in America with parents over-programming their children. They enroll the kids in multiple activities to build their resumes and supposedly make their child more likely to succeed – in college and beyond. But what's really going on is parents trying to live through their kids or see them as some sort of 12-step program.
"Middle class parents see their children as a project. They engage in 'concerted cultivation'," says Dr Annette Lareau, professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, who spent years studying middle and lower class US families and how they treat their children. She found that the children's activities dominate middle class family life, becoming everyone's main focal point. These parents believe they are helping their children develop their talents, but it comes with intense micromanaging. Notes Dr Lareau:
"There's even a public hierarchy of activities: is the child on the A team or B team for sports. Is the child in the choir that's going to sing in Europe or the one that stays home."
If bragging is coming from that "I'm here to one up you" vein because I've got the perfect parenting formula, then we have every right to tell the parent to stuff it. But if a kid is genuinely enjoying what they are doing and largely accomplishing something on their own and remarkably well – like Sam Gordon on the football field – then it should be acceptable to give them a high five and, yes, give their parents a minute to gloat. Reported by guardian.co.uk 12 hours ago.