The Birth of A Tiger Dad

I had a Tiger Mom before anyone knew such a thing existed. Growing up, my mom’s sole purpose in life was to make sure I excelled in academics. I could be picked last for the t-ball team or my cello playing could make birds drop dead and fall out of the sky, but I sure as hell couldn’t bring home any B’s. Only A’s. The pristine kind, too. None of those inferior A’s with the “minus” tattooed next to them. It wasn’t so much the grades themselves, but what they signified.

Good grades separated me from all the riffraff, which in turn separated my mom from all the parents of the riffraff. To her, life was a competition, and I had to best all of my adversaries. I was too young and naive to know this, so she took care of all the Machiavellian aspects like making sure I got the best teachers and not that semi-retired dullard with one foot out the door. My only job was to obey her commands and study hard, which meant going to after school classes where I got additional homework because American schools are soft and don’t push kids hard enough. She hovered over me and made sure I completed both sets of homework and scrutinized my report cards like an IRS auditor. And of course, she made sure to gloat (politely) to all her friends when I brought home straight A’s.

Needless to say, having a Tiger Mom made my childhood miserable at times. I remember sitting around the kitchen table as my mom savagely marked up my essays. “You going turn this in? So bad! You think Stephanie Matsuda do this bad!?” (My mom had designated Stephanie as my arch nemesis even though I thought she was pretty cool). English wasn’t my mom’s native language, but she knew my essays weren’t up to snuff. Some even brought her to literal tears. I admit I’d taken some liberties with grammar and punctuation, but in my defense I was still learning the craft as a third grader. My mom and I fought. We cried. We carried on like nothing happened. The turmoil and chaos became the natural rhythm of life but I vowed to never be like my mom. If I ever had a kid, I was going to be the chill parent who didn’t harass his kids.

And then a funny thing happened —I had a kid.

I’ve been thinking a lot about my vow to be a chill parent now that Dmitri has started going to baby gym. He and my wife go to this local play gym for babies where the instructors put the babies through their paces. I’ve started to get a bit nervous because my wife reports back that Dmitri is a little behind some of the other kids his age. The biggest difference is they can already crawl whereas Dmitri hasn’t shown the slightest interest in crawling. He doesn’t even like being on his tummy so, you know, OH MY GOD OUR BABY IS INFERIOR TO THE OTHER BABIES AND WILL NEVER CATCH UP AND HE’LL BE SELLING HIS BODY FOR MONEY AND THIS IS THE END OF THE WORLD AND I’M THE WORST DAD EVER.

My wife says not to worry since Dmitri is only seven months old. Still, it’s hard not to worry when little Emeril is crawling around the baby gym like a machine. I hate to think that Dmitri is behind. Worse yet, I hate to think he’s behind because of my crap parenting. If I’d pushed him more to be independent, he might not be in this situation. Instead, all my chill parenting has made him into a non-crawling mush baby. This shall not pass! Dmitri is going to crawl, damnit! Better and faster and more elegantly than Emeril or any other baby on the planet.

It’s crazy how I never thought I’d turn into my mom, but here I am. I always thought I’d be the cool parent who lets his kid grow organically without pressing him too hard for perfection. “The important thing is that you tried!” WRONG. The important thing is that you best all your competitors and that starts with crawling. I want my son to be the best. I mean, he IS the best, but I want the whole world to know it through easily quantifiable metrics like SAT scores and how much money he makes.

So there you have it — Ronan Takagi: Tiger Dad. Well, at least some of the time. Because as much as I’m turning into my mom, at the core I’m still the chill person I’ve always been — Ronan Takagi: Parent Who Doesn’t Worry Too Much. The problem is the two Ronans are constantly fighting, which can be a bit stressful. I’m waiting for a third Ronan to come and instill peace — Ronan Takagi: Parent Who Finally Figures Out The Right Balance. Hopefully the third Ronan comes before I’ve inflicted too much psychological damage on little Dmitri and he needs to process it all thirty years down the road in his virtual reality blog.

But I’ll tell you what, it’ll be the best damned virtual reality blog ever written.