", Did she ever consider family therapy? He said, 'Look, this is your book. So Chua stopped making all the decisions for Lulu, allowing her to leave the orchestra and take up tennis instead, allowing her to practise the violin only when she felt like it. I added a big sour face. 'I want a better one – one that you've put some thought and effort into. How do they produce all those maths whizzes and musical prodigies? How could she be such a mother?

'I want a better one – one that you've put some thought and effort into. With missionary zeal, Chua spurned the permissive style of "western parents" (she uses the term loosely), the tendency to underplay academic achievement (no rote learning!) I won’t let her indulge her own inner doubts.”  According to Chua, Chinese parents “assume strength, not fragility, and as a result they believe very differently.”. Now among my western friends it provokes extremely intense reactions in all directions.

Love, Lulu' was scrawled in crayon above another happy face. But for Chua, everything she does is for a bigger picture. Photograph: Lorenzo Ciniglio/Polaris, my Chua was in a restaurant, celebrating her birthday with her husband and daughters, Sophia, seven, and Lulu, four. What kind of a mother throws her four-year-old daughter's homemade birthday cards back at them? First, Lulu hacks off her hair with a pair of scissors; then, on a family holiday to Moscow, she and Chua get into a public argument that culminates in Lulu smashing a glass in a cafe, screaming, "I'm not what you want – I'm not Chinese! “My goal as a parent is to prepare you for the future – not to make you like me,” Chua writes, which is hard for a Western parent like me to read. Amy Chua, Yale law professor and self-proclaimed “Tiger Mom,” caused controversy when her article detailing her strict parenting style came out in the Wall Street Journal in 2011. A little bit rash. 'I don't want this,' I said. Sitting opposite me sipping water in Norwood, an arts club in Chelsea, in a black sweater and miniskirt with silver hoops in her ears, she is petite and pretty and much softer looking than in her book-jacket photograph ("She doesn't look very mean," my son said.)

Then one daughter declared war ... Amy Chua with her daughters Lulu, 14, and Sophia, 18. “The truth is I’m not good at enjoying life. And my best example is that my younger sister has Down's syndrome and I know for a fact that my mother applied Chinese parenting with her. When Lulu turns in a poor practice session on the piano, Chua hauls her doll's house to the car and tells her she'll donate it to the Salvation Army piece by piece if she doesn't have The Little White Donkey mastered by the next day. When Sophia does the same, she screams: "If the next time's not perfect, I'm going to take all your stuffed animals and burn them.". Don’t forget to like Parenting by the Book on Facebook for updates on blog posts.