My Reflections on Parenting: Let the Young Eagles Fly on Their Own

Humanity has progressed largely because the younger generation does not always listen to the older one.

— a recent viral quote on the internet

From the time my son entered kindergarten, I have been instilling in him this idea: parents and teachers are not always right; you do not have to obey us unquestioningly; on every matter you must think for yourself.

My wife is a teacher. Every time she heard me educate our child this way, her head ached a little; she worried I was raising an utterly rebellious child. Fortunately, however, she was my classmate back in middle school, knows my past inside out, witnessed the brilliant academic record I achieved in my student days, and originally began dating me out of admiration. So she did not interfere too much with this way of raising our child that many parents would consider reckless—after all, most Chinese parents want obedient children.

When he was small, my son loved adventure. When we went out, he always liked to take the unusual path. Every time he asked me, "Dad, can I take that little path?" I would answer, "Yes, as long as you take responsibility for the consequences of your choice. If you fall, you may not cry."

In winter he liked to walk on the ice; twice he broke through and fell into an ice hole. In summer he liked to climb trees; once he was cut by a branch until he was covered in blood. I was right beside him but did not help him tend the wound; I simply handed him some tissues and let him deal with it himself. I was roundly scolded by an elderly lady nearby, who had a warm heart and felt that I was being an utterly irresponsible father. This did not actually affect our father-son relationship. The child kept his promise and "paid the price" for each of his own choices, neither blaming others nor throwing tantrums.

After junior high school he became mature beyond his years, meticulous in thought, and far more cautious than the average child. Children who have been overprotected by their parents often grow up not knowing how to protect themselves. My philosophy of parenting is simple: from the time he was small I told my son that every young eagle must learn to fly on its own, and every young lion must learn to hunt on its own. I would only provide him limited help and protection; he had to think, judge, and choose for himself, and learn to protect himself.

Human beings are born with free will. We have only to observe infants closely to see that even a toddler taking its first steps wants to control its own actions. Schopenhauer said that the most painful thing in life is having one's will controlled by others. The most painful thing for children is likewise having their freedom interfered with by their parents. Many of the conflicts between parents and children in this world ultimately amount to nothing more than each side wanting to control the other's will. If we adjust our mindset from the child's earliest years and decide not to control our children's will in this lifetime, the parent-child relationship will never deteriorate beyond repair. Moreover, the child's sense of independence can be cultivated from a very early age.

Similarly, I have firmly refused to sweep away every obstacle in my child's path, even though some of those obstacles would have cost me no effort at all to remove. I still stood by and watched. Once a teacher took a strong dislike to my son; my wife wanted to give the teacher a gift to win favor, but I flatly refused. My wife worried the teacher's dislike would affect the boy's learning and growth, but I saw it differently. I believe that human beings are essentially biological creatures; coming into this world, they inevitably encounter countless environmental events, and only by developing a strong ability to adapt can they walk through this tumultuous life as if on flat ground. Such obstacles should be resolved by the child himself, not by us on his behalf. In the process of resolving them, his social skills and psychological resilience improve greatly. Throughout my own life I have made the greatest progress amid difficulties, because only difficulties make me aware of my shortcomings and drive me to improve; every time I overcome a difficulty, my confidence doubles and my satisfaction with life rises considerably. So sometimes what looks like helping a child solve a problem is actually just robbing him of the opportunity and the joy of growth.

I have also firmly opposed sending the child to after-school tutoring classes. Many friends around me told me that the knowledge learned in class alone is far from enough, and they predicted that I would bitterly regret it once the child reached high school. Under the influence of the general atmosphere, my wife's resolve was not that firm, so on a few occasions she tried to arrange tutoring for the boy, but my son and I joined forces to oppose it, and those plans were abandoned halfway.

I have read the literature on brain science and know that the human brain does not reach full learning capacity until late adolescence—the high school years. Excessively early forced growth inevitably robs children of time to enjoy life. Even children are fully entitled to enjoy life: to play the games they like, to read the "childish" comic books they enjoy, to develop their own hobbies without interference, and even to be fickle and grow bored with the old in favor of the new. To us adults the world may hold little novelty, but for children there is still a great deal that is new. What we should least do is make decisions for the children using adult ways of thinking, help them "avoid detours," and cultivate their "concentration." Every detour in this world is far more valuable than a shortcut; it is precisely these detours that train our judgment. It is only that most of us are too short-sighted to see this.

Children who have fully enjoyed the pleasures of life in childhood mostly grow up to be positive optimists, whereas those who have been over-disciplined by their parents often grow up melancholy, unable to find meaning in life, and losing the will to live. I am deeply grateful that my parents never interfered with my growth, which left me rarely shattered by hardship.

If I must say I made any "effort" in educating my child, it was the handful of stories I made up and told him every night when he was very small. I recall that for more than two years we kept telling the same story; it was called "Joy Mountain." On a mountain called Joy Mountain lived a group of comical animals who were always generating laughs and matching wits with one another. The story so captivated my son that when he was in primary school, for a while he badly wanted to learn comic drawing and asked me to write out this long serial story while he drew the pictures. But I had neither the time nor the patience for it; I had no wish and no energy to become a children's literature writer, for there were many patients who needed me to save them.

I may have, deliberately or not, taught while entertaining during the storytelling, teaching the child how to calculate, how to analyze the plot, and how to anticipate how events would unfold. This was hardly some lofty undertaking; I simply wove in simple arithmetic word problems from time to time and made him work them out. Or, after finishing the day's story, I would ask him to guess what might happen next on Joy Mountain, and the next day I would spin a new story along the direction he had guessed.

I have always kept in mind the saying that "the trouble of a person lies in his love of playing the teacher." Not only do I dislike putting on the airs of a schoolmaster in front of others, I am reluctant to wear a pedagogue's face even before my own son. I find directing others' lives to be an utterly obnoxious habit, so in matters of my child's study I have almost never lectured him with a stern face. I have not even discussed study methods with him; I trust biological instinct and believe he can figure out the methods best suited to himself without eating my leftovers. Moreover, the study methods he works out for himself are bound to be more reliable than the ones I teach him; he can learn the common study methods at school and from his peers, so why should I go out of my way? Besides, figuring out study methods is itself one of the most important learning processes; why should parents rob children of this learning opportunity?

Being a parent whom the child does not resent is extraordinarily difficult. The difficulty lies in the adult's giving up his own will, relinquishing his desire for control over the child, acknowledging and accepting the child, and viewing the child's life from a child's rather than an adult's perspective.

I have almost never set exam targets for my son. Only when he reached high school did the advantages of being raised with free-range parenting irresistibly reveal themselves: in the four most recent national and Beijing municipal competitions he won three first prizes and one second prize, and his scores have been steadily rising. His growth has made me a firm believer in the findings of brain scientists: as long as we wait calmly for the flowers to bloom, no child will disappoint his parents.

Life has propagated on Earth for four billion years and survived countless crises to evolve into what it is today. Almost all living things are born with the instinct to make a living and settle down. Our human genome is so powerful that we have reached the top of the food chain. Apart from the tiny number of fellow humans with genetic defects whom nature will eliminate, most people need not worry about their own or their descendants' future. Anxious parents are merely destroying the joy of life for both their children and themselves.