Make your own pizza sleepovers
REALCUISINE | Julianne Glatz
Even if you’re not involved or interested in childrearing, chances are you’ve heard about Yale law professor Amy Chua’s book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, and the firestorm of controversy it’s ignited.
Although I haven’t read the book, I’ve seen reviews and articles, and heard Chua interviewed. She espouses exceptionally strict parenting that seems repressive to many. It’s a style used by her Chinese immigrant parents, one that she’s used with her two daughters. Chua says that Chinese parents assume strength, not fragility, in their children. (Ironically, China’s onechildperfamily policy is changing that tradition; it’s becoming a nation of indulged only children.)
“The solution to substandard performance is to always excoriate, punish and shame the child,” Chua writes. One anecdote in the book describes her throwing a birthday card back at the daughter who had made it, because Chua thought she should have put more care and thought into it: “I deserve better than this, so I reject this!” Chua made her daughters practice piano or violin six hours a day. Play dates and sleepovers weren’t allowed. As young as seven, the girls were denied food and bathroom breaks until music pieces were perfected. The girls “were never allowed….not to be the #1 student in every subject except gym and drama.”
Whew!! Though I think some parents and teachers overdo building children’s selfesteem by telling them everything they do is great, regardless of how it actually is, Chua swings the pendulum way too far in the other direction. It’s possible to let kids know that what they’ve done is incorrect or inadequate without humiliating them.
Surprisingly, one of things that most upset people about Chua’s childrearing is her not permitting sleepovers. A recent callin show on NYC’s AM NPR station dealt exclusively with Chua’s nosleepover policy. To me, however, that was far less awful than not letting a child go to the bathroom until she plays a piece of music perfectly.
Which is not to say I’m against sleepovers. I encouraged my kids to have friends stay over. It provided a wonderful way to see how they and their friends interacted, and to get a sense of what their friends were like. The only absolute rule was that threesomes were not allowed – before the night was over, it would always end up two against one.
From the beginning, sleepovers at our house always included makeyourown pizzas. The dough is easy and very forgiving – and even when the finished product was lumpy and uneven, the kids still loved them because they’d made them themselves. Pizzamaking also provided insights into the kids’ varying personalities. There were those who carefully and precisely formed their dough into exact rounds, placing toppings with geometric precision. In contrast were those who made amoebalike freeforms with wildly scattered toppings. Some used toppings sparingly, others piled them on with abandon.
Makeyourown pizzas remained a beloved part of Glatz sleepovers even after the kids grew into teenagers and my supervision wasn’t really necessary. But by then they’d grown used to me being in the kitchen with them, and I still took the opportunity to observe and listen. Chua would undoubtedly think my childrearing tactics inadequate. But my three adult children are all intelligent, productive, loving and have strong work ethics, so I’m more than satisfied with how they turned out.
Contact Julianne Glatz at realcuisine.jg@gmail.com.
