The Sloth Mom Manifesto

Originally published May 5, 2011

So, Tiger Mom’s daughter made it into Harvard. And it made the national news, and Tiger Mom has a best-selling book.

If, indeed, this is what Tiger Cub wants, then I say, good for her. There was a lot of hard work involved, and she deserves it.

But really, here’s the question: How the hell could she possibly know what she wants? 

One of my friends pointed out, reasonably, that it’s not exactly a BAD thing to force your kid to go to Harvard. 

When they graduate, he pointed out, they can decide they want something else and go be a firefighter or an artist or a writer.

But I don’t think they will. 

I think that by the time you’re done with Harvard, or MIT, or Yale, you’re so entrenched in “excellence” as a lifestyle that it has seeped into every pore, and I mean excellence as the literal word: To excel in every thing.

To what purpose? 

Really, truly, and without prejudice or cynicism: Why?

If excelling is the goal, when is it reached? Where’s the finish line?

Be the best you can be at everything, beat everyone at everything, and then die?

I don’t believe for one second that Tiger Mom or Harvard is about getting a good education: Education in the sense of being able to understand the world, appreciate art and literature and music, love logic and good conversation and know where you fit in, and be trained in a specific, rigorous discipline of your choice so you can follow a profession. I do believe that Harvard will give you that, and more. 

But I don’t believe that’s why people go there: It’s about, to quote Charlie Sheen, “Winning.”

About being the best. About having no slack in your world, no room for second place. No room for Bs.

And I reject that paradigm. 

Sure, there’s a part of me that wishes I’d gone to Harvard. I had the brains for it. Had the SAT scores for it. 

It represented everything I wanted: Someone to push me in the right direction. A tangible way to show that I was someone, that I was smart, that I was one of the “right” people.

But twenty years later, despite rational, reasoned input from the same friend, I’m not buying it. (I went to high school with this friend -- we were both whip smart and should have gone to good colleges and kicked ass. Neither of us made it. He, however, now has a PhD. I have a chip on my shoulder and a blog.) 

To continue the Tiger Mother concept: Who the hell wants to be a Tiger? You have to EAT SOMEONE to exist.

You have to hunt, every day, simply to stay alive. And you have to teach your children that in this world, you hit the ground running every morning, get up at dawn, and go kick some unsuspecting creature’s ass or you starve. Go get ‘em, tiger. Sharpen those claws. If someone’s intestines aren’t all over the ground, you have not succeeded.

Nope.

I’m going for the Sloth Mom concept. The rules are different for sloths. No one has to get eaten, as long as you’re careful.  

The world’s a good place, and you have a home here. Watch out for the bad guys (especially those damned tigers,) and you’ll be fine. There’s a lot to learn, but you have time. That’s all we have: Time to learn, and to play, and to look around. Sometimes things are upside down. Sometimes things aren’t.

And by Sloth Mom, well, it’s sort of a joke, because all homeschoolers know that you can’t be lazy and homeschool. We’re talking Sloths here, not slugs.

Hell, if you’re lazy, and want to be Slug Mom, send your kids to school so you can take a nap.

Here’s a peek at schooling a baby Sloth, instead of a Tiger cub:

Violin: Yep, my kids take violin.

And they practice. 

And they suck. 

Quite badly. 

Sawyer’s been taking violin since he was three. He’s now turning 11. We’re talking $20 a week for 52 weeks a year for eight years. That’s 400 lessons, and we practice about ten minutes to twenty minutes a day at home. 

That’s $8,000, in case you’re counting, and he knows six songs. Maybe seven. 

Yes, folks, that’s $1,000 per song, for a bad rendition of Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.

But I think violin is good for him, and I’m a Sloth Mom, not a Slug Mom, and I think that violin (and all that comes from learning to play and enjoy music) is a good skill for a sloth to have. 

And so despite his occasional tears, he’s still going to learn to play. 

Just not, as the Tiger Mom suggests, with threats and humiliation. Instead, he will learn that some things just suck until you get good at them, and it’s hard to learn a new skill, and maybe violin isn’t your thing, but you need to try anyway.

Reading: Sawyer couldn’t read until he was almost nine. He’s an odd, quirky child. 

I knew he was bright, I knew he loved words and stories, and we read together every night. For hours and hours and hours. And then one day he sat down and could read. 

And now he reads two or three books a day, and has a book he’s reading while he has another book on CD going in the background.

History: Sawyer has never been to “school,” where most kids think history is boring. He’s never taken history as a subject. And yet he can tell you the parallels between the Star Wars saga and the American Revolution, using the British Empire as the Death Star, Yorktown as the secret spot that would unravel everything, George III as Darth Vader and George Washington as a very old, ugly Luke Skywalker. 

But I have no idea if he could pass a standardized test about the Revolution. He can, however, re-enact the battle of Cowpens, which I’d never even heard of.

The really important stuff:

The critical, vital stuff to raising happy Sloths isn’t in school. It’s what happens when they’re NOT scheduled. And Tiger cubs are scheduled all day long, from the early morning rise until bed after all homework is done. 

Because SlothWorld is slow, there’s time for stuff. 

There’s time to hang out, and read, and listen to books, and read books, and color. One of the most important tools I know of is boredom. I love when my kids are bored -- that’s when the creativity starts.

We have rabbits, and we play with them (and no, we don’t eat them after pouncing.)

My kids both know how to cook scrambled eggs, and omelettes, and pancakes. Sawyer can make bean soup, gluten-free cake, awesome smoothies and chicken-fried steak. He cooks dinner at least one night a week. 

You know what else my ten-year-old son does?

He mows the lawn.

Changes the cat box. 

Does all of his own laundry. 

Keeps up with his own room and clothes. 

Cleans out the chicken coop, collects eggs and feeds chickens every day. Cleans out the rabbit cage and composts all the waste. 

Takes care of his section of the garden, and is in charge of weeding and watering and mulch.

He can change a diaper (yes, even a poopy one,) and put an outfit on a wiggling baby. 

He can make a baby laugh, and knows when to yell for help when she won’t. 

He is never sullen, or stressed, or put-upon. 

He wakes up eager to start his day, can’t wait to get to the middle of his new book, and loves to ponder politics, religion, a new video game or who’s going to win The Amazing Race.

He’s hurt by the injustice in the world, and terrified by the tsunami in Japan. He can clean out the car, vacuum the play room, put all of they toys where they belong and sweep the kitchen. Both boys love to get wet rags and scrub the kitchen floor -- it’s their favorite part of Saturday morning.

They have no idea what any of the top 40 songs are (neither do, I though, so that’s not a shock.) 

They love to go camping and fishing and to the kid’s museum and their absolute favorite thing is to go to Barton Springs, an amazing swimming hole in Austin, with their dad and spend the day there.

They can do all of these things because I don’t care one bit if Sawyer is the best at math. Better than who? What’s the yardstick? He’s in fourth grade, for Pete’s sake. 

I guess, after all this, my point is this: The philosophy of a Tiger Mom seems to be that life is Nasty, Brutish and Short, and you’d better be on the top of the food chain.

I think that Sloth Moms can raise happy, healthy, amazing kids, and no one has to sharpen their teeth.