22 January 2011

Tiger Dad

I haven't been posting as much lately because I've been devoting myself to tiger parenting. Not apex predator husbandry or creating a cereal flake mascot, but good old let's-all-be-as-awesome-as-China child rearin'! Look, the bar is high and I have installed a performance-based culture in my household. Weekly peer reviews determine the daily minutes I allocate to rigorous beatings. I have a set of KPIs as well as some additional metrics that allow me to precisely adjust the amount of verbal abuse I hurl on them. If they miss their SLAs repeatedly I have predefined escalation procedures. This provides clear structure for expectations, accountability, and consequences.

It's quite time-consuming. For example, my oldest was not consistently top of the league tables while playing Call of Duty so I escalated his morning punishment from kneeling on rice to a caning. I also force him to practice Call of Duty in single-player mode for 4 hours per night. This will continue until he is the BEST. It is clear to both of us that I will accept no less. This may seem harsh but you should see how gratifying the moment will be when he goes on a triumphant gibbing streak and turns to me with pride of achievement glowing in his eyes.

In the meantime, I'm writing a book to help you, too, be as awesome as me.

2 comments:

  1. Rice? Have you tried broken glass instead?

    I listened to the stupid Tiger Mom story the first time NPR mentioned it, and shook my head in disgust. The 2nd time, when a different NPR program covered it, I listened to 30 seconds of it, before turning off the radio. Now, whenever I hear anything about Tiger Mo... ...that's about as far as I get. =)

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  2. It's probably too late for you to retroactively tiger-parent. Maybe you can tiger-garden? I suspect you are far too lenient with your cacti.

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