Let’s admit it: Tiger Moms are both intimidating and impressive. Impressive because they take their children to great heights; intimidating because many feel they can never live up to the same drive, energy, and standards that Tiger Moms expect.

Interestingly, Plutarch had a thing or two to say about Tiger Parenting. Based on his advice, does it seem like parents should beware of demanding too much from their children?

“Moreover, I have seen some parents whose too much love to their children has occasioned, in truth, their not loving them at all. I will give light to this assertion by an example, to those who ask what it means. It is this: while they are over-hasty to advance their children in all sorts of learning beyond their equals, they set them too hard and laborious tasks, whereby they fall under discouragement; and this, with other inconveniences accompanying it, cause them in the issue to be ill-affected to learning itself. For as plants by moderate watering are nourished, but with over-much moisture are glutted, so is the spirit improved by moderate labors, but overwhelmed by such as are excessive. We ought therefore to give children some time to take breath from their constant labors, considering that all human life is divided betwixt business and relaxation.”– Plutarch, The Training of Children, 110 A.D.

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