The CT School Shooting Talk with Our Son (By Anshu Basnyat, LCPC)

     We are deeply saddened beyond words about the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting in Newtown, CT. Our hearts and prayers go out to the beautiful children and wonderful adult victims and to their loved ones. The Basnyats have been grieving ever since we learned about this horrific incident on Friday morning and the emotions are raw.  Immediately after hearing this saddest news, I emailed our 7 year old son’s school administrator requesting that they send information to all parents on how to talk to their children before the weekend. Shortly afterwards, the school Superintendent sent a mass email providing guidance on this.

     As a mental health therapist, I understand the importance of having this important conversation with our children. However, understandably many have strong feelings against having such conversations.  Some believe it will only instill unnecessary fear as my husband felt while others feel it is unnecessary altogether, as we did for our 3 year old hard of hearing child.  Yet, many want to have this conversation, but simply do not know how to.  This post is not to sway the parent one way or another, but to simply share how we talked with our son about it after giving it serious thought on Friday.

     We decided to tell him after coming to the conclusion that he will hear about it one way or another in the coming days. For example, just on Thursday, he was sharing with us that one of the older boys on his school bus was telling him that the world would be ending on December 21^st. Reportedly, our son told the boy with conviction that this was untrue and impossible. Later at home, he said that he was 99% sure that this would not happen, but there is a 1% chance that some kind of massive bomb can make it happen.  Additionally, just a few months back he heard about Joseph Kony (again on the bus), which fueled some anxiety in him. We listened to him, empathized, and comforted him as best as we could.  At the end of the day, that is all that any parent can do. This talk need not be perfect nor should the parent feel like they have to have all of the answers to their child’s questions.  Ours certainly was not perfect, but it got the job done. Here is how it transpired.

     After attuning to our own emotions all day Friday, and shielding him from any television or Internet, we decided to have the talk on Saturday morning.  I felt this would give our son time to process and ask any questions he may have before going to school on Monday and presumably hearing it there.  In other words, I did not want to have this talk before bedtime on Sunday. We distracted our 3 year old daughter with Dora the Explorer and with hearts pounding sat our son down in another room.  It was a brief conversation, but covered all of the basics.

Me: “Honey, your dad and I want to talk about something important with you. Do you have any idea what it may be about?”

Son: “No.”

Me: “Yesterday, something very terrible and sad happened where someone shot people in a school and several people died. This is not something that happens often, so people will be talking about it everywhere like at your school, tv, and the Internet. This is why we were extra careful about you not using the Internet and watching the tv yesterday.  We do not want you to worry or be scared, but it is okay if you are. How do you feel about all of this?”

Son: “I don’t know.”

Husband: “It’s ok to feel scared because we don’t know what is going to happen in the future. It’s unpredictable.”  (Mommy the Therapist intervenes here.)

Me: “It’s true that things can get unpredictable sometimes, but we will do everything we can to keep you and your sister safe.  There are lots of things we have control over in life, but there are some things we cannot control, but we will do everything within our control to keep us safe ok (he nods). Do you know what you need to do to keep yourself safe in school?”

Son: “Yes, go talk to my teacher.” 

Me: “What if your teacher is not there? Is there another adult you trust?”

Son: “I can go to the teacher who is closest to me.” (Good sign, he feels comfortable with all of the teachers.)

Husband: “Do you know our phone numbers?”

Son: “Yes.” (He repeats our home and my husband’s cell number.)

Me: “That’s great! Your school has our numbers too so you don’t have to worry too much about it.”

Husband: “We can put our numbers in your book bag too.”

Me: “Is there any questions you have right now? You can always ask later too.”

Son: “Yes, can I use your iPad now?” (End of conversation...for now).

     I would like to add that we never watch news in front of the children and actually manage our own information intake so shielding him from this type of exposure was not an issue, but felt the talk need to be had. The goal of this conversation was to set up an open communication path and take a proactive approach in reducing worry and anxiety, which I felt was appropriate in this case.  Now, when he is scheduled to get a shot at the doctor’s, he doesn’t get much advanced notice because this only increases anxiety in my kid. The funny thing about fear/worry/anxiety is that too little or too much information can ignite and fuel it. 

     Every parent knows their child the best, so they have to do what feels comfortable and appropriate to them.  I hope this was helpful to those needing some guidance as this is a tough issue to tackle.  I encourage everyone affected by this to first reach out to your family and friends to offer and seek support.  If this does not help, and if you or your child is experiencing extreme anxiety or depression, then it would be worthwhile to seek a mental health professional.  Like I always say, everyone needs a therapist at some point in their lives!      

  

        

  

     

Yoga and Parenting (By Anshu Basnyat, LCPC)

     Yoga is everywhere these days! When someone says “yoga,” images of various postures like the tree, downward dog, lotus, child poses pop up in our minds right? Well, according to an interview I had with two yoga instructors of SoilSound (http://www.soilsound.com), Valencia Wood and Joseph Murray, yoga is more than postures. Valencia and Joseph not only explained the history of yoga, but also how it can help in parenting!

     For more than 5,000 years, yoga has been practiced by many and currently, approximately 11 million Americans are enjoying its health benefits. Yoga started as a meditation practice and now in the Western world, it has become more posture-focused. Valencia and Joseph practice  Nāda yoga, which has its roots in India, and is based on the premise that all things that exist in the universe are interconnected and consists of sound vibrations, called nāda.  It essentially uses sound and vibrations, as in music, to engage in mindfulness as well as in various poses to reap the health benefits ranging from relaxation to weight and cholesterol control.

     Both Joseph and Valencia shared their personal stories of how yoga helped them in adjusting to life’s challenges. For Joseph, yoga played a major role in battling a malignant cancer of the kidneys called Wilms tumor, which involved him getting a grueling 7 months of chemotherapy and radiation treatment.  Valencia turned to yoga when she lost her mother and sister in 2000 and 2008, respectively. The emotional difficulties of losing her loved ones impacted her negatively and with time came to realize “I’ve got to do something!” She stated that yoga not only helped her cope with her losses, but also gain perspective, tolerance, and patience with people who she would have previously considered to be “rude.” Today, both Joseph and Valencia are healthy people who radiate with positive energy! They are working hard to promote yoga in our daily lives, especially for folks living in urban areas where fast pace is the rule rather than the exception. When you are around these two, one cannot help but want to give them big hugs!

     After discussing the many health benefits, we also talked about how yoga can help in parenting. My favorite topic of course! Joseph has three teenage kids so he had lots to say! To sum it up, he feels yoga helps the parents in mindfulness, guides them when disciplining, promote patience and empathy in the parent.  This reminded of many instances when therapists teach calming techniques to children when they are angry. Children are often instructed to count to ten to help them calm down during an anger outburst. Therapy and yoga have many things in common and this is an example of how mindfulness can be utilized to get the child to focus on something else that reduces the stress or anger.  A simple, but very powerful strategy indeed!

     Of course, above all we know that our children learn from watching their parents so yoga will ultimately help the kids learn effective coping strategies when they witness their parents use it! In fact, for this reason alone I signed up my 7 year old son for a summer camp that included yoga taught by Valencia and Joseph. Later, we both signed up for their family yoga sessions along with another friend of mine with her son.  I really wanted my son to learn how to relax and be mindful rather than being constantly stimulated, which I know can create much stress later in life. Undoubtedly, this will be an interesting process for a 7 year old as well as rich learning experience! Namaste!

Great News Alert! (By Anshu Basnyat, LCPC)

     Hope everyone had a wonderful holiday celebrations! Firstly, please allow me to apologize and explain for my absence in writing. I know it has been too long because one of my dearest friends sends me email reminders to update my blog and she has already sent me multiple notes! I have been incredibly busy with my family responsibilities, our Nepali Hindu holidays (Dasain and Tihar), American Thanksgiving, and not to mention two exciting projects I have been working on!

     The first one is an all volunteers community service project called Next Chapter (NC).  NC launched in October 7, 2012 with a group of highly-motivated and dynamic Nepalese mentors from various professional backgrounds who are providing life mentoring on their own time to new Nepalese-Bhutanese refugee high school students in the Baltimore, MD area. This project is a partnership with the Baltimore City Community College Refugee Youth Project, who work closely with the International Rescue Committee (IRC). The mission is to help these new immigrants learn about the American culture so they can succeed in their life goals in this great nation!  We use the Best of Both Worlds Approach in our mentoring and help students manage the differences between the Nepalese and American cultures in a positive way.  

     In our NC bi-weekly mentoring sessions, we cover a number of different topics such as acculturation issues, college preparation, financial literacy, using and managing resources, health and wellness, etc. To give you a clearer picture of our work, two examples of NC activities include: a mentoring session focused on helping these students understand the high school graduating requirements such as understanding the differences between what a "credit" and "GPA" is on a report card and the other is when some mentors took a group of soccer fans to play soccer an hour away from their home, had lunch afterwards, and transported them back to their homes in Baltimore.  We are having a blast building relationships and providing support for these awesome students with untapped talents! We hope by engaging in such activities, we will be doing something little in making our Nepalese community stronger and in growing our valuable contributors to the American society.

     The second project that has been keeping me busy is my home private practice!  Happy to announce that the construction is almost complete and cannot wait to get started with seeing clients! Although I will continue to do my part-time consulting work, I will now expand by adding parenting coaching and various therapies to my list of services in the comfort of my own home. I will admit that this was not the easiest decision to make, but surely the right one, since this will allow me to be there for my family, give me the perks of being my own boss, and give clients a private and comfortable space to voice and problem-solve their life's difficulties! More on this later…

     Enough about me and now let’s get back to the blog posts! As always, thank you for your readership and continued support in my work!

The Tiger Mother and a Common South Asian Parenting Practice (By Anshu R. Basnyat, LCPC)

A Cultural Difference
      Every culture has a certain way of doing things when it comes to parenting a child. It is neither right nor wrong.  It is neither superior nor inferior. It is just different.  As a Nepalese-American who has been living in the States for nearly 30 years and some stays abroad, a parent of two kids with special needs, and a licensed clinical professional counselor, I am inexplicably intrigued by the differences that exist across cultures.  This is true especially when it comes to parenting.   From my personal and professional experiences, the starkest difference I observe between the East and the West is how South Asian parents use social comparison as a parenting technique to motivate their child to “succeed.”   Usually, success is very much achievement oriented whether it be in academics, careers, or extracurricular activities like playing the violin or piano.  

    This cultural difference could not be more obvious than in Amy Chua’s 2011 book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother when she constantly compares her younger daughter, Lulu, to her older daughter, Sophia, in her Chinese parenting as a motivational strategy.   Sure, social comparison occurs in every culture, but from my experiences, it is most prevalent in South Asian (SA) households where academic achievement tends to be the driving force.  Simply “doing your best” is not good enough. “Being the best” is the ultimate goal.  This drive for competition does not come from a bad place. 
   
    I applaud parents who want their children to do well and have instilled great values in them. However, the problem with social comparison is that everyone cannot be number one!  There will always be someone who is better off than you and someone who is worse off than you. It is a life lesson that parents need to teach their children in a thoughtful and gentle way.  Otherwise, it will be a risky strategy. Besides, children will sooner or later learn this life lesson.  South Asian parents need to teach this valuable lesson to their children or it may be a painful one later on.  Collectively, South Asians tend to be very protective when it comes to their children so they are well-equipped to teach this important life lesson.  However, it is still worthwhile to quickly review the process involved in social comparison.

Social Comparison Theory
    According to Leon Festinger, who coined the term “social comparison” in 1954, stated that people naturally tend to evaluate themselves, including their opinions and desires, by comparing themselves to others. The process includes two types of social comparison: upward and downward.  Upward social comparison occurs when someone compares themselves to another person who is “better off” (intellectually, financially, physically, etc.) in an effort to be part of the elite and have a more positive view of themselves.

    In contrast, downward social comparison is when you compare yourself to someone who is “worse off” than you to make yourself feel happier.  For example, a diabetic patient who only needs medication for treatment may see himself better off than another diabetic patient who has lost vision due to diabetes.  The result of this downward social comparison makes one feel better. This process seems pretty natural and harmless right?

Tiger Mother and Social Comparison
    Now consider this. In Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, Sophia is presented as a calm, collected and compliant elder daughter.  She performs well academically, listens to her parents, and plays the piano exceptionally.   Sophia is the perfect child that every South Asian parent dreams of.  Lulu, on the other hand, is spunky, challenges authority figures, and is an independent thinker from the get-go.  She is also a bright and talented person in her own rights as a violinist and later as a tennis player although her academic performance is unclear. What is clear throughout this story is Lulu’s rebellious nature.  

     One cannot forget the very first example of extreme parenting when tiger mom puts her three year old out in the freezing cold to teach her a lesson that you need to respect and listen to your parent.  We learn that Lulu does not give in, even on the wintry cold day with only her house clothes on.  Therefore, it is no wonder that Lulu puts up a fight every time Amy compares her to Sophia or whenever Amy tries to motivate her to play the piano or violin.  The tiger mother’s use of social comparison in her parenting suggests three areas of human dynamics that are negatively impacted.

The Impact on Human Interaction
    First, a South Asian parent who heavily relies on social comparison should consider the negative impact it will have on the relationship between siblings and/or peers.   A psychologically-minded reader must wonder if Lulu has some kind of resentment towards her sister.  Or, does Sophia have a sense of superiority since she is being presented as the “good kid.”

     I can relate to this because growing up in a Nepali household and surrounded by other Nepalese, I was constantly compared with other Nepali friends and/or relatives and vice versa.  With Nepali adults, whether it be our own parents or other kids’ parents, social comparison is a common practice.  From what I gather, this is also true in other South Asian communities. Essentially, they are pitting us against each other. The competition was fierce. It still is.

    All I knew then was that it did not feel good to be compared to others regardless of whether it favored me or not. Therefore, I have vowed not to socially compare my kids in that detrimental manner.  From anecdotal experiences, my peers who are now adults or parents themselves, also feel the same way I do.  This made me wonder: how many good relationships were lost or never formed due to parents socially comparing us? We will never know because you cannot turn back the clock. 

    Second, social comparison negatively impacts the parent-child relationship. Emotional connectedness between the parent and child is stifled.  Remember the scene at GUM café in Russia when Lulu shouts painful words every parent wishes they never, ever hear from their child? “I HATE my life. I HATE you, and I HATE this family!”  Amy tries to reconnect with Lulu by having special events like the garage sale, which both enjoy, but does not fix the emotional breakage between the tiger mother and her cub.

    Lastly, social comparison is just not effective. It fosters rebellion, especially if you are parenting in the West.  This is mainly so because self-identity is an important part of we are as individuals in the Western culture and when South Asian parents engage in social comparison, this challenges that belief system.  The child feels threatened and rebels to assert their individualism.  All of the time, effort, and money Amy put into training Lulu for the violin went to waste.  Lulu essentially rejected the violin and chose tennis.  One is left to wonder had the tiger mother not used such extreme social comparisons, would Lulu have continued with the violin and achieved even higher standings than Carnegie Hall? We will never know because she decided to pursue tennis instead. 

    In conclusion, South Asian parents who engage in social comparison as a way to motivate their children to do better are compromising a number of social-emotional issues that are critical to a child’s healthy development.   As a South Asian parent of two and a licensed mental health professional who has worked with many children and families, I highly discourage social comparison as a parenting strategy.  If you are not convinced, then please consider how it might feel if your child compares you to their friends’ parents in hopes that you become a better parent.  The risks simply outweigh the benefits when it comes to your child’s well-being. There are far better parenting strategies than social comparison to motivate your child!

7 Tips to Resist the Urge to Make Social Comparison:
1.    Gain awareness about your habit to socially compare your child to others. Awareness is the first step in solving any problem. Does it usually happen when talking about academics, extracurricular activities, personality traits, etc.? This will help the South Asian parent to acknowledge and change their negative behavior.
2.    Ask your child how it feels when you engage in social comparison. This will open up communication pathways and facilitate a close parent-child relationship.
3.    Adjust your expectations of your child according to his or her abilities and wishes. Many South Asian parents love and want what is best for their children, but this may not always be what your child feels is best for themselves. Compromise when appropriate.
4.    Respect your child.  In Eastern cultures, respect is a one-way street whereas in the West, it goes both ways.  A bridge between the two cultures will be necessary if South Asian parents are raising children in the Western world otherwise it will be a long battle.
5.    Communicate with words and actions that you unconditionally love your child.  When children are socially compared to their peers, they tend to feel that parents do not love them for who they are, when in actuality this is not true.  South Asian parents love their children unconditionally like any other parent, but emotional connectedness in a parent-child relationship tends to be the exception rather than the rule.
6.    Praise your child.  All children crave positive attention, especially from their parents. From my clinical observations, South Asian parents tend to refrain from praising their child in fear that their good performance or behavior will go down. Opposite is true. However, be genuine when praising.
7.    Go easy on yourself.  Often, when people are highly critical of others, they also tend to be highly critical of themselves.  South Asian parents tend to put extreme burden on themselves to know all of the answers all of the times when it comes to their children. This extreme pressure is unhealthy and counterproductive. Everyone makes mistakes, even the best of parents!
  

   
 

More Homework, Please! (By Anshu Basnyat, LCPC)

   For many, the first week of school is coming to an end and this means many parents are probably wondering about the H word: homework.   Some parents are hoping there will not be too much homework for various reasons while others are saying “Bring it on!” In terms of research, the jury is still out.  There are staunch supporters on both sides.  For me, however, I was on the fence but now I say “More homework, please!” So, why the switch?

   Well, I had an epiphany this summer.  Last year, my son’s Math teacher gave him a little booklet called “The Math Whiz” and you are supposed to play a magic game with it.  It is basically six pages stapled together with numbers written all over on five of them. The game goes like this: He would ask someone to pick a number on the first page and told them to keep it a secret. Then, he would turn each page and ask if the secret number was on that page until he got to the last page. Meanwhile he is doing some kind of computation in his head and magically arrives at your secret number! He would repeatedly play this game with our family and friends.  He was completely indulged by their reactions. “Wow, how did you do that?!” or “You are so smart!” He would flash a big smile, and not reveal the magic, but instead told you to pick another secret number. There begins another round of the game. Well, just a few days ago while we were cleaning his homework area, he came across The Math Whiz! Of course, he wanted to play the game again.  Guess what happened this time?

    Yes, you got it! My math whiz struggled with the game. Although he arrived at the correct answer, he kept getting confused when doing the mental computations.  Of course, this was a great teachable moment and I certainly seized it by letting him know that we easily forget what we learn if we do not practice it regularly. You can look at any dementia or Alzheimer's research and find this conclusive evidence. It also helped that my husband chimed in at this point. I will not chant “Practice makes perfect” because I feel this is not a realistic goal parents ought to be promoting and given my child’s personality, this will only provoke anxiety in him and negatively impact his academic performance. However, I will happily say “Practice makes you sharper!” and that alone is enough for me to chant “More homework, please!”

    Of course, there are other bonuses too: when doing their homework, they are away from the tv, computer,  and video games.  Moreover, they cannot get into mischief or trouble if they are busy doing their homework.  Also, homework is a concrete way to beautifully connect the school to home life, which research conclusively states is key in a child’s academic achievement.  As always, parents are the most important role models for their kids so below are ten strategies to use when encouraging good homework habits.
 
10 Strategies for Homework Help
  
1.    Model a positive attitude about homework and education, in general.
2.    Have a designated homework area with minimal distractions and good lighting. 
3.    Make sure materials/supplies are readily available.
4.    Give your child a healthy snack before starting homework.
5.    Use planners or agenda books to help organize their materials and time for homework.
6.    Encourage your child to do the easier assignments first so a feeling of accomplishment is experienced rather than frustration with harder homework. Some education experts advocate for the reverse order so the child is not exhausted and frustrated by the time they get to the more difficult homework.  Ideally, if you have multiple assignments, you can do the easy-hard-easy order. You be the judge of which order works best for your child.
7.    Be available and look for opportunities to praise your child.
8.    Engage in “homework-like” activities such as reading a book or balancing a checkbook/online accounts while your child does homework.
9.    If your child needs help, provide guidance rather than giving your child the answers.
10.  Give your child breaks if necessary, especially when frustrated. If your child regularly gets frustrated then consult with his teacher about any potential, academic difficulties. 

Best wishes for a wonderful school year!

Advocating for Your Child with Special Needs (By Anshu Basnyat, LCPC)

    Many students across the United States will start their new school year next week. It is a time of full of excitement to meet new teachers, make new friends, and learn new things! While this may also be true for parents with children who have special needs, but it is also intertwined with feelings of fear and anxiety about what the new school year will bring for their children.  This is doubly true for me since I now have two children with special needs.

    My regular, blog readers know that I have a three year old daughter who was born a micro preemie with many health complications. She is also hard of hearing and has been wearing hearing aids since she was one year old.  Well now, my seven years old son was diagnosed as being deaf in his left ear over the summer. Advocating is not a new thing for us. However, advocating for a second grader looks quite different than for a toddler.

    One or more accommodations in the classroom will be necessary for children with special needs. An example may be of what educators call “preferential seating,” which my son will undoubtedly need in the classroom.  This is not a big deal for my toddler daughter because the class sizes are smaller and more staff is available in the classroom to assist with whatever is necessary.  However, preferential seating will be a challenge to implement for my son.  On paper, preferential seating seems like an easy accommodation to make after you figure out the location of the seating (left front for my son). Practically, this is much harder to implement and this is why: a dynamic and effective teacher is constantly moving around the classroom!

    Advocating for the accommodations and making sure they will be implemented will be challenging, but the most significant difference when advocating for a toddler versus a school-age child is the support system that is available.  With the very young, there is a team of professionals who are working with you in your home, school, and in the community to guide you along your child’s development. For our daughter, this meant we had the support and expertise of the speech and language therapists, special education teachers, ASL teachers,occupational therapists, physical therapists, audiologists, just to name a few.  Once they reach school-age, the parent is pretty much on their own to get the advocacy ball rolling and staying afloat along the way.  The parent has to be the driving force and the child’s strongest advocate.  There will be high points and there will be low points along this journey. Below are strategies to keep in mind when advocating for your child with special needs.  I will use my son’s hearing problem as an example to illustrate the points.

7 Strategies When Advocating for Your Child

1. Take referrals seriously.  There are a number of ways a concern about your child’s development can be raised. For our son, he was the one who initially raised the issue and soon after he failed his hearing screen at school. The school nurse sent a referral note and we immediately contacted the appropriate professionals. We could have easily ignored the note and gone about our business, especially considering that he had been doing extremely well academically. Instead, we took the referral seriously.

2. Identify the special needs.  Once a referral is made, there will be a series of tests or evaluations that need to take place in order to properly diagnose a special need.  The nurse sending a referral note that he failed the hearing screen for his left ear is not enough.  I say this because the identification process is time consuming, tiring, and frustrating.  It will become so easy to give up and not follow-through with subsequent recommendations.  You might even have to seek second opinions if things do not sound right to you.  Without completing this identification process, you cannot move forward in the advocacy.

3. Gather pertinent documents. As a trained clinician, we have this mantra we follow that says “if it’s not written, it didn’t happen.”  Make a file for your child’s medical record of all the referrals, test results, and recommendations.  If possible, have electronic copies of them which will come in handy later on in the advocacy process. Organizational skills will come in handy at this point.

4. Contact the school principal in writing.  After you’ve gathered all of the pertinent information from the professionals, you are now ready to contact the principal.  The correspondence should be in writing and you should include the medical documentation (this is why the electronic copy becomes convenient). This will speed up the process and you will have a "paper" trail to refer back to.

Also, keep in mind that timing is important.  This is just my opinion, but I do feel that sometimes contacting the principal too early may not necessarily work in your favor.  For example, if you contact the school too early, let’s say early in the summer, you might not get the response you want right away. Moreover, if the timing is off you might actually risk getting the attention you deserve.  In other words, sometimes “the early bird does not always get the worm.”  For my son, I had all of the documents ready about a month ago, but it did not feel like the right time to contact the principal then.  Even though my super-organized, early bird husband insisted I do.

This week was back to school for staff so I figured this is a good time to shoot an email to the principal. Sure enough, in less than an hour the assistant principal calls me to address of my concerns and schedule a meeting to discuss what kind of accommodations would be warranted for our son.  Of course I did not gloat about this to my husband! 

5. Be prepared for the meeting with the school.  Make sure you and your partner discuss the talking points in advance and write them down.  Those meetings can easily get sidetracked and become emotionally charged so it is crucial you have a visual reminder to keep you on track.  You want to be able to identify the special need and ask for concrete accommodations.  Advance research will be key. Also, take at least two copies of the documents you emailed earlier for convenience, just in case they do not have them at hand. 

6. Advocacy does not have to be adversarial.  Really, you can effectively advocate for your child without having to get into an emotionally charged battle! Keep in mind that the teachers and  the staff also want what is best for your child.  If you are not convinced then consider how the school would look in terms of reputation if their students do not perform well.  Working within the system is a much better and effective approach than working against them.  This will create a much better working relationship with the school and at the end of the day will benefit your child.  However, again worth mentioning that, we as the parents, have to be the best and strongest advocates for our kids.

7. Teach your child self-advocacy.  We have talked with our son about self-advocacy and what that means. However, we also explain to him whenever we advocate for him so he can learn from our examples not only to self-advocate, but also to be proud of whom he is no matter what challenges he may encounter.  The look on his face was priceless when I told him that his assistant principal had called!

A South Asian Parenting Dilemma: Push or Foster? (By Anshu Basnyat, LCPC)

    In the Basnyat household, whether to push or to foster our children’s development is a constant topic of discussion. My husband, who has an interesting background of spending a good chunk of his formative years in the United States (former diplomat’s kid) but also spent much of his childhood in Nepal, and then came to the US for college. He decided to hang out here ever since, get married and raise a family. The whole nine yards! He plays for the Push Team.
  
    I, as a Nepali-American who primarily grew up in America and not to mention with an extensive Psychology background, am playing for the Foster Team.  We both want our children to do well academically, have good social relationships, and lead healthy and happy lives. However, by no means am a Tiger Mom and he a Wolf Dad.  Physical punishment and scolding are out of the question for us, but praise is a favorite strategy.  We truly want to take the Best of Both Worlds Approach (BBWA) in our parenting.  To the best of my knowledge, this is not an actual theoretical paradigm, but this is how we describe our multicultural parenting style.

    The BBWA is also the reason why we have this parenting dilemma. Had we simply chosen one path (Eastern or Western) to parenting, we would not have to debate so much.  Given our personalities, ambitions, and professional backgrounds, there is no end in sight for these debates. Every time he says something to the effect of “we have to push the kids to reach their potential” I quickly offer a myriad of word choices like foster, cultivate, support, encourage, etc. to replace “push.”  This is how our discussion may sound like.

The Academics

Husband: “I think it is important for him to do practice work (Math, Reading, etc.) outside of his homework.  The kid is really smart and we need to push his limits to see how far he can go.”

Me: “Yes, he is smart and I also want him to excel, but I don’t feel pushing is the best way to accomplish this.  He is so young and at this point, learning should be fun and enjoyable so he would want to do it more rather than get frustrated and avoid it.” Sometimes, I may pull one of these stunts. “At this developmental stage, it should be about the process of learning not so much the product.” I mean, really, who could argue with a point like that?

The Sport

Me: “I am really concerned about the time he is spending in soccer.  He seems too tired to do his homework or get any down time.”

Husband: “He loves playing soccer and he needs all the practice he can get to be better at it. He has so much potential.”

Me: “He does love to play and he is good at it.  How about we stick to one sport at a time so it’s not too much for him or for us?” My husband agrees. It does not always work this way.

The Musical Instrument

Husband: “Shouldn’t he be playing an instrument like a violin or clarinet by now? You used to play the violin.”

Me: “They start in third or fourth grade. He’s only in the first. I started in the third grade and there was too much pressure so I gave it up in junior high. I really don’t think that kind of pressure is good for him.”

Son: “I don’t want to play anything I have to blow, it’s too hard (he's asthmatic). I want to play the violin or the drums.”

Husband and Me: “No drums! Maybe a violin or guitar, we’ll see.”  To be continued...

    So, you can see from above how the Push vs. Foster discussion may transpire in a parenting conversation. I feel we do not have to “push” our kids into anything and thereby run a high risk of this pushing backfiring on us.  If you are skeptical, try this experiment at home: have your significant other stand in front of you and you push him or her from the back.  What happens? Although Physics was never a strong suit of mine, but I believe this is called Resistance.  In Psychology, we call it Rebellion.  This usually is not a pretty phase and I will use all the strategies in my parenting toolbox to avoid this parent-child dynamic.   

Do you believe in pushing or fostering your child to reach their potential?