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By Sandra Leong
When a gaggle of hyperactive children trips you up at a shopping centre, do you smack one of them and yell "kids these days" or chide them gently and gush "kids will be kids"?
If you did the former, chances are that you are a "traditional" parent who feels children should be seen and not heard.
If you gushed, you probably believe that children should be seen and heard.
Whatever option you chose, it shows a tug-of-war over different parenting styles in Singapore family life today.
As self-professed New Age parents adopt new child-rearing methods (such as positive parenting, with the use of non-physical punishments and encouragement over threats), others wonder: What is wrong with the disciplinary methods of yore, when spankings, scoldings and simply doing as you were told were par for the course?
And more critically, if parents are becoming "softer", will tomorrow's kids grow up to be a generation of spoilt brats?
With such debates already swirling around Internet forums, Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong last month commented that bubble-wrapped young people today risk becoming "fragile like strawberries".
Despite these touchy concerns, more young families here are eschewing the old for the new. A growing brigade of enlightened mums and dads are attending parenting courses and reading self-help books. Think Supernanny rather than say, Madam Tan, the cane-wielding Asian matriach.
But how different are parenting styles now and say, back in 1970?
Ms Patricia Koh, principal of Pat's Schoolhouse, says: "In the past, children were told to keep very quiet and obey instructions almost immediately. They were seen as not being able to understand anything, were expected to respect elders and be in agreement all the time."
Conversely, parents these days allow children more freedom and spend more time reasoning with them rather than use the "just do it" approach, she adds.
Take mother-of-three Melanie Chan, whose seven-year-old daughter Emma came home one day and announced she wanted to be vegetarian. The 36-year-old child pyschologist says: "Emma made the connection between meat and the animal it had come from."
Despite the rest of the family being meat-lovers, Mrs Chan says she supports her daughter's decision and has ordered a vegetarian meal for her on an upcoming flight to Canada.
"I want to raise her for what she believes in. It's not so much of a big deal as there are other foods she can eat."
Similarly open-minded is network marketer Alvin Yong, 44, who plans to take his only child, 12-year-old Robyn, out of school after her PSLE this year to travel the world together with him and his wife.
He says this is "experiential parenting". "Until you actually do something, you cannot know what you think you know. Going around the world will allow her to get in contact with the rich, the poor, the homeless... you can't know poverty from a storybook."
As for thoughts on the much debated issue of physical punishment, blogger Elaine Lau (thenewageparents.com) says that her two children, Ashton, four, and Ashlyn, two, have never been caned.
Rather, the 32-year-old believes in motivating them to make their own decisions. Daughter Ashlyn, for instance, gets to choose what she wants to wear to school or where she wants go on family excursions, within reason of course.
"It's not an open decision," says Madam Lau. "I ask her what she would like but whichever choice she makes is the outcome I want."
The idea is to encourage children to have a say, rather than have them merely follow instructions without understanding them, she says. "If you encourage them, they recognise it and are motivated to do well. The more you scold them, the more they don't want to listen."
Last year, she started an online website Today's Motherhood to encourage discussion on parenting topics. It is for "modern mothers, modern methods", she says.
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