i said this, not professor amy chua. i think some of the reason you are getting pushed back on this is that so many parents these days are failing their kids. i said it and i mean it. i have a lot of friends. we have these debates all the time. i see my friends, who for a lot of reasons are failing their kids. they give them too much. they are too lenient with them. in communities of color, those of us who grew up with nothing do not want our kids to have nothing. i think for a lot of reasons parents are failing their kids. i wonder whether or not you think, having put my own point of view up there, that some of the push back you are getting has to do with some parents who are working longer hours and concerned about their own careers who do not want to look in the mirror about how they are not doing as good a job as they could do. the last thing they want is chinese -- some chinese woman telling them how to raise their kids. >> i have been kind of hurt. i feel like i was honest with my book. i put the most extreme cases

when tiger mom amy chua got attacked on the blogs about her take no prisoners parenting style, her teen daughters were the first to rush to her defense. that makes us want to hear more about the kids who are subject of all of these experiences of parenting and have them weigh in on the question, is there a right way to raise successful kids? juju put that question to highly accomplished teens. these students were raised in very different styles. >> i think what the intensity of the tiger mom debate showed us is that understandably parents are passionate about parenting. parents are arguing and blogging, pining away at what's the best way to raise kids. whether you be hard core or laissez-faire. but we sat down with the kids themselves who had some surprising insights. >> reporter: three highly successful teens raised in three wildly different ways. what makes them tick? shani lee was raised by a tiger mom. a straight "a" student headed to the ivy leagues to study engineering. columbia's giving her a full scholarship. did your mom let you play sports? >> no. >> reporter: did she let you

middle class mothers because, you know, i see a lot of hostility to helicopter parents now or the amy chuas of the world. and even though i have to say personally it kind of drives me crazy, i can also see that this sort of scapegoating of parents has its counterpart in parents who are not working class. so there seems to be a movement to kind of redefine poverty as a deficit of parenting. so there's a counterpart. and i'm just wondering, you know, given the experience of having, you know, looked at what happened in the '60s, do you see any parallels with things going on today, and also, you know, how do you, how do you explain that connection? because there is a connection between the things that happen to people in the middle class and the way it works itself out through society. >> okay. there's a lot of issues there. one big difference with the 1960s is that we feel much more compelled to spend much more time interacting with our kids. in fact, studies show that parents today spend -- mothers as well as fathers, fathers spend exponentially more time with their kids than they did in the

i would guess that amy chua's children are successful not because she made them take lessons.ey grew up in. kids want to be like their parents. they model themselves after their parents. what you do in your own life, how you behave is a lot more influential on your child. >> when you get a signal from your kids that they like something, like painting the piano, whatever, encourage it. >> absolutely. one of the things we forget in the crazy rush to make children turn out a certain way, is one of the most powerful characteristics is your interest in things. what you love to do. what you'll be good at. that's what will make you happy. that's what will help you develop a happy life. and parents would do better to pay attention to what kind of child they have, rather than move them in a different direction. >> you say worry about the red herrings. but there are some red flags. >> there are some red flags. usually, it's not an incident. it's a sequence of incidents that comes up again and again. a kid who has trouble controlling their impulses over and over again. can't control thei

many of you heard about this new book written by a asian-american professor at yale by the name of amy chua, but i imagine more than a few of you have watched. she was on oprah,-one of oprah's favorite books. it's called "the battle hymn of the tiger mother." and the book talks about how she was raised in this incredibly strict chinese environment, and she made the decision to raise her two daughters the same way. here's what she says, quote: i see my upbringing as a great success story. by disciplining me, my parents inculcated self-discipline. by restricting my choices as a child, they gave me so many more choices in my life as an adult. because of what they did, i now get to do what i want to do, and i get to do the work that i love. now, to many of us in this room listening to that we think, that ain't no traditional asian upbringing. that's how my mamma and daddy raised us. [laughter] that's how our grandparents raised us. and i have kids now, and i love watching my friends when they go ask their kids where do you want to go, i just wish -- [laughter] i would have liked to have seen on