“Tiger” parents may drive kids’ brains to overreact to errors.In an age when the formula for success seems infinitely regressive—when having a good career means going to a good college, which requires acing your way through a top high school, middle school and even preschool—the onus is on the parent to push, push, push. We want our children to get a foot in the door before they even know how to tie the shoe that’s on it. But should we encourage our children through tender praise, or do we embrace the “tiger mom” strategy of punishment and criticism?
New research suggests that parents who stoke their children with harsh scolding may also be saddling them with anxieties that last a lifetime. In a survey published last November, researchers collected childhood memories from more than 4,000 adults of all ages and correlated them with the participants’ self-reported mental health. The findings suggest that children with authoritarian parents will have a harder time adapting to adversity later in life. To read more from Morgen E. Peck, click here.