The Battle Hymn of The Kitten Mom

Yale Professor Amy Chua’s recently published book The Battle Hymn of The Tiger Mother about raising children ‘the Chinese way’ now has a yang to its yin: The Battle Hymn of The Kitten Mom by American homemaker Sheila Burblang.

Burblang, the mother of three children ages eleven, nine and five, lives in Alemeda, California and became incensed when she saw Chua on a talk show discussing her book.

“Here was this Asian lady talking about not letting her kids have sleepovers, watch TV, play video games or do nothing but study hard, play pianos and violins and get straight A’s in school, said Burblang. “That may be the Chinese way, but it’s time someone stood up to raising kids the American way. So I wrote my book.”

Here are some excerpts.

“Poor Jimmy is bummed. All his friends are getting PS3’s and we still have an Xbox. ‘I’m tired of the crappy graphics on this dinosaur!’ Jimmy shouted while we were having dinner the other night. ‘Why can’t I ever get anything good?!’ I talked it over with my husband and it looks like someone will be getting an early birthday present!”

“Lisa woke up this morning and didn’t feel like going to school. ‘What’s wrong, precious angel?’ I asked. ‘The teacher keeps trying to make us learn really hard stuff,’ she began sobbing. ‘Well, honey, it will get easier, you’ll see. You just have to do your best and make mommy and daddy very proud!’ She began crying hard and shouting that she had the worst life ever! Then, she threw a book at my head. I felt so badly for her that I told her it might be a good sick day for her. I called the school and explained that she was ill. I’m looking into getting a tutor for the poor little thing– I don’t want our five year old to feel defeated!”

“Thomas is really upset with his baseball coach, and I can’t say that I blame him. The man is an overbearing tyrant!!! At yesterday’s game, Thomas hit a pop-up toward the first baseman. Thomas figured it was an easy out so he dropped his bat and went back to the dugout swearing because he felt the pitcher cheated him by throwing the ball where Thomas wasn’t expecting it. Anyway, the kid playing first base dropped the ball, then tripped on his shoes on the way to first, stepped on the base and then dropped the ball again but the catcher ran up and got the ball and stepped on first base so Thomas was out. WELL, the coach was upset at Thomas because he thought that if Thomas had run out the hit, he would have had an easy single since the clumsy first baseman dropped the ball. Well, Thomas got really angry because he said that the coach had been trying to crush his spirit ever since Thomas came on the team and Thomas wasn’t going to allow some washed-up adult wannabe-athlete bruise his ego and self confidence with his never- ending criticism and riding his butt over tiny things like having to do stupid things like run out every hit. Thomas threw a bat at the coach and stormed out of the dugout. I felt so sorry for Thomas, we stopped at Dairy Queen on the ride home and got him a big banana split and onion rings!!! Tomorrow I’m going to complain to the league commissioner about that mean coach and see if I can’t get him fired! I’m also going to stop by the trophy shop and see if I can just buy Thomas a big baseball trophy so he doesn’t have to deal with all this hyper-competitive crap!”

“Jimmy brought home his report card today. He got one B, three C’s and two D’s. I told him we were very proud of his B and that the C’s prove he’s an average kid– although we think he’s WAY ABOVE AVERAGE!!! But then I asked him to kindly PLEASE see if he couldn’t do something about raising those two D’s a little bit. Well, Jimmy got furious and threw his new PS3 controller at me. It broke into pieces so now we’re going to have to get a new one… plus, I had to get six stitches in my forehead and goodness knows how much the insurance is going to cover!!! Jeesh, parenting spirited children in a tough job…”