Tiger Mom: I'm a Paper Tiger When It Comes to College

You can all relax. Tiger mom Amy Chua isn't driving her first-born daughter nuts haranguing her to study and barring sleepovers and TV now that she's in college (Harvard, of course). The fiercely strict mom is "probably the most hands-off" college parent, Chua writes in the Wall Street Journal. "We never ask Sophia what she's going to major in or what she does at night, and we accidentally forgot about parents' weekend," she adds. "When we got a few stressed text messages from her about finals, we told her to relax."

Has Chua finally seen the light? Nope. It's still all part of the Tiger Mom strategy. "Here's the key to tiger parenting, which a lot of people miss: It's really only about very early child-rearing, and it's most effective when your kids are between the ages of, say, 5 and 12," Chua, a Yale law professor, explains. Tiger parenting does not create "robots and automatons," but rather strong, independent young adults who can be trusted to do the right thing, she adds. Tiger parenting is "ultimately not about achievement. It's about teaching your kids if they don't give up, don't make excuses and hold themselves to high standards, they can do anything they want in life, break through any barrier and never have to care what other people think." (More Tiger Mom stories.)