Chinese ‘tiger mum’ makes her son, aged 9, study for 16 hours every day
Boy’s daunting schedule sparks wide debate after being shared on social media, but his mother says ‘it’s not problematic as long as it’s good for the child’
A Chinese “tiger mum” has been making her nine-year-old son study 16 hours every day, including after-school lessons and weekend classes in piano, calligraphy, swimming and mathematics, mainland media reports.
The boy, from the city of Chongqing in the southwest of the country, must follow a detailed schedule – copies of which sparked huge debate after being widely shared on mainland social media.
She makes him wake up at 5am and he starts his extra studies by 6am. He is allowed to stop studying only at 10pm, before going to bed at 11pm, the Chongqing Times reported.
During weekdays, the mother, a graduate of China’s prestigious Peking University – who said she had been brought up the same way by her father – makes her son take extra English classes in addition to having to do his homework after school.
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Her son’s weekends are spent taking extra classes in subjects including piano practice, calligraphy, swimming and working through exercises for the World Championship Mathematics Competition, known as the International Mathematical Olympiad.
The mother, identified in the report only by her surname, Liu, told the newspaper that she had not expected the schedule of her son’s extra curriculum studies to have sparked such a huge debate.