Grrr! Tiger Mums drive me (and their kids) crackers

Tiger mothers are in the headlines, with the Prime Minister heaping praise on their pushy, proactive approach to parenting.

He says children thrive on high expectations and suggests all mums and dads should attend parenting classes on how to discipline their children.

i’m afraid that if i were to attend one of these classes, i’d soon find myself sitting on the naughty step in a dunce’s cap. i certainly wouldn’t make the grade as one of these fabled tiger mums — not because i’m incapable of pushing my children hard, but because i don’t believe in it.

in fact, i think it’s counterproductive, producing intolerable, precocious children and smug, arrogant adults. i’m also convinced it leads to anxiety and dysfunctional behaviour in later life.

Most of all, though, i dislike the principles of tiger parenting — ‘work, try hard, believe you can succeed, get up and try again’, as the Prime Minister put it — because it seems to me that they are not so much designed to equip the child for life as to glorify the efforts of the parent.

Tiger parenting is vanity parenting, espoused by people who see their children not as individuals with independent hearts and minds, but vessels for their own, perhaps thwarted, ambitions — and vehicles for their own self-aggrandisement.

i have no intention whatsoever of doing that to my own children. i suppose you could describe me as more of a pussycat mum.

i like to sit back and watch. i’ll teach them right from wrong, of course, how to hold a knife and fork, keep them out of mischief, punish, reward and all the rest.

BUT it’s not for me to tell them who or what to be. They are children, not performing seals. Besides, autonomy of thought can lead to interesting and unexpected outcomes. For example, despite my husband and i possessing about as much sporting prowess as Jabba the Hutt, our son is a keen footballer.

Likewise, our daughter has lately developed a passion for science. She lives in a house full of paintings, novels and history books, and all she cares about is the periodic table.

These obsessions may pass, of course. But the point is that if my children are any good at the things they love, it will be their passions, their ideas, their achievements we celebrate, not mine or my husband’s.

That’s where tiger parenting goes wrong. You kid yourself you’re doing your child a favour by turning them into a chess/tennis/maths champion; in fact, you’re just being an awful bully. Bullying can toughen up a child, but it can also destroy their confidence and tie their egos in lasting psychological knots that can take years to unravel.

i know someone who, aged 14, could play Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto by heart.

He was brilliant at chess and tennis, too. And yet he is not now, nor i suspect will he ever be, capable of lasting peace of mind.

in his case, it was a tiger father (because it’s not just mothers who can have claws) who did the damage.

A father who thought he had the lad’s best interests at heart, but never once made him feel as if he had done well enough.

The bar was always being raised, higher and higher, until eventually it became insurmountable.

He gave up the one thing he really loved — music — because he realised he would never be good enough. And it almost destroyed him.

growing up is as much about learning to fail as it is about striving to succeed. And that’s the case whether your children are aiming for eton on a scholarship or a vocational training college.

The most important thing to remember is that it’s their life, not yours. it’s your job as a parent to teach them to fly, not do it for them.

TRACEY ULLMAN’S return to British TV after a 30-year absence was a triumph. Her caricature of Dame Judi Dench was genuinely funny and almost indistinguishable from the real thing. She’s certainly achieved a rare feat: slipped a sketch show past the BBC management that doesn’t rely on lame political satire and the usual cast of tired old comedians.