Strict

One thing the K-folks have always struggled with is the fine line between appropriate sternness and discipline -- to hopefully engender in the kids a healthy respect for authority and boundaries -- and overly authoritarian "traditional" Asian parenting that might "clip their wings."

Of course, according to K-Mum, given the sometimes unbounded sassyness on display in the house from time to time, that's one balancing act that K-Pop need not worry himself about.

Over this past year a specific area that K-Pop has wrestled with is the enforcement of piano practice. K-bao has progressed remarkably quickly in her first real year of piano playing, but it has not come without some, um, "struggles" along the way. Given both K-Pop's and K-Mum's own childhood experiences, the irony of some of our impositions today have not escaped us. And it should be clarified that the piano proposition is really K-Mum's brainchild, though of course music education is something that K-Pop wholeheartedly supports.

However, little notes like the below, which K-Pop received from K-bao after one particularly challenging practice session, reassure K-Pop to grit through it.

(By the way, having just completed Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, K-Pop can rest assured that he is but a marshmallow in the greater tradition of Asian parenting)