Moms Talk: Beware the Bobcat Mom

In this edition of Moms Talk, a local mom offers a unique take on the oft-debated subject of Amy Chua and her book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother.

I am the polar opposite of the Tiger Mom: a kitten mom. My kids don’t get straight A's, play concert piano or quarterback the football team. But when they do manage to ace an exam, play an earsplitting rendition of Hot Cross Buns, or score a touchdown, we praise them as if they’ve just won a Pulitzer prize. We are one of those families that celebrates mediocrity. 

But I respect Amy Chua's honesty, not to mention tenacity. I'm not going to lambast the woman. I prefer to focus my ire on the third type of mom. These are the moms that want their child to compete with the Tiger children, but prefer to take short cuts. I call them the bobcat moms. You know the type. The ones that want their child to succeed so badly that they’re willing to lie, cheat, or step on anyone or anything that gets in way. 

Bobcat moms are sneaky. They pretend to be kittens, perhaps to lull the competition into complacency. Then they secretly hire a baseball “tutor” to perfect the child’s swing right before little league tryouts. They'll claim their child did the entire science project on her own, but instead enlisted the help of a LEED-certified architect to help Johnny build his energy-efficient smart home diorama. 

When my kid turns in his admittedly inferior but completely self-constructed science project, he feels like a big, fat, failure. When I come to the open house and see how his work compares to the work of all the bobcat moms, I want to skewer them all.

I used to think that every parent taught the same lessons at home that I did. Play by the rules, treat your peers with respect, take the moral high road. I try to imagine what those bobcats must talk about around their dinner tables. How does a parent come to the conclusion that it’s okay to send Timmy to school with invitations to a party where only select kids are invited? Does the bobcat mom say, “Well, Timmy, if the kids that aren’t invited see you handing out these invites, it will just inspire them to try to be more socially engaging in the future.”  Or does she say, “I realize the school discourages handing out party invitations to children unless the whole class is invited, but, of course, the rules don’t apply to us.”

In the end, no matter how you parent, when your kids are full grown, they’re gonna claim you screwed them up. I can live with that. But if someone is going to screw up my kid, it better be me. When your parenting style starts to affect my kid, well, that’s a problem. All I’m asking for is a little honesty. That way even if we don’t see eye-to-eye, we won’t go head-to-head. Because if you bobcats push too far, we kittens have claws of our own.