Confessions of a Reformed Tiger Mum (I Spent HK$3,000 on Practice Books Last Year)

Let me tell you about the Tuesday night I cried in the bathroom because my P3 son couldn't do long division.

It was 9:47pm. We'd been at the dining table since 7:15. His younger sister was already asleep. My husband had retreated to the bedroom with his phone — a move I now recognise as self-preservation. And there I was, hunched over a worksheet, pointing at the same question for the fourth time, saying "just bring the number down" in a voice that was getting louder with every attempt.

He started crying first. Then I went to the bathroom, locked the door, and joined him.

I'm not proud of this. But I know I'm not the only one.

The WhatsApp Group That Ruined My Sleep

It started, as most Hong Kong parenting disasters do, in a WhatsApp group.

Someone's kid got 98 in maths. Another mum shared a photo of her daughter's perfect dictation — 100 marks, the teacher's red tick practically glowing. Then came the humble brags: "Aiya, my son only got 95 this time, he was so upset." Only 95. My kid got 72 and told me he was "pretty happy about it."

I panicked. Clearly I was failing as a mother.

So I did what any rational Hong Kong parent would do: I went to Sham Shui Po and bought every practice book I could find. 黃岡數學. 奧數精練. English grammar workbooks. Supplementary Chinese comprehension. I spent close to HK$3,000 in a single shopping trip. My husband looked at the stack of books and said nothing, which somehow felt worse than if he'd said something.

The 補習 Arms Race

By October, my son was doing homework from 4pm to 8pm on school days. That's not counting the 補習 class on Saturday mornings — which I'd enrolled him in because Jason's mum said it was "the one that all the Band 1 kids go to."

Here's what nobody tells you about the 補習 arms race: there's no finish line. You sign up for one class, then you hear about another. You buy ten practice books, then someone recommends five more. Every time you think you've done enough, the WhatsApp group reminds you that you haven't.

My son went from being a happy kid who liked drawing robots to a tired kid who hated maths. And his grades? They barely moved.

The Turning Point (a.k.a. The Night My Mother-in-Law Was Right)

Chinese New Year dinner. My mother-in-law — a retired P5 teacher — watched my son pick at his food, silent and exhausted.

"You know," she said, pouring tea with the calm authority of someone who has seen a thousand tiger mums, "when I was teaching, the children who struggled most weren't the ones who practised least. They were the ones who practised wrong things over and over."

I wanted to argue. I really did. But she had 30 years of classroom experience and I had a bathroom crying habit, so I shut up and listened.

She explained something that seems obvious now but blew my mind at the time: my son kept making the same three mistakes because nobody had actually explained why he was getting them wrong. He was doing hundreds of questions, but he was rehearsing his errors. More practice was making him worse, not better.

I felt sick. All those books. All those evenings. All that money. I'd been running him on a hamster wheel.

What Actually Changed

I wish I could tell you I had a clean overnight transformation. I didn't. Old habits die hard, especially when your cousin's kid just got into a Band 1 school and your auntie won't stop talking about it at every family dinner.

But I did make three changes that actually worked:

First, I stopped comparing. I muted the WhatsApp group. Not left — I'm not that brave — but muted. The notifications were literally raising my blood pressure. If Karen's daughter got 100 in dictation, good for Karen's daughter. My kid needed something different.

Second, I focused on understanding, not volume. Instead of ten pages of practice, we did one page slowly. When he got something wrong, we talked about why. "Why did you write 7 here?" turned out to be a much more useful question than "the answer is 4, try again."

Third, I found a tool that could actually explain mistakes to him. This is where I'll be honest — I started using Tutor Wong because I was exhausted. It was 10pm, I had my own work to finish, and I physically could not sit at that dining table for another minute. But what actually kept me using it was that it showed me exactly where my son's thinking was going wrong. Not just "this is incorrect" but "he's confusing place value with quantity" — the kind of insight I didn't have the maths training to see myself.

Within a month, his marks went from low 70s to mid-80s. Not because he was doing more work, but because he'd finally stopped practising the wrong things.

What I'd Tell Last Year's Me

If I could WhatsApp myself twelve months ago, here's what I'd say:

Your child is not his marks. I know you know this intellectually. I know you'd say it at a dinner party. But you don't believe it at 9pm on a Tuesday when he can't do long division. Start believing it.

The practice books aren't helping. Put them down. I know you spent HK$3,000. Consider it a donation to the educational publishing industry. Move on.

Stop looking at other people's children. You don't know their full story. You don't know that Jason does three hours of 補習 every night and has started biting his nails. You're seeing a highlight reel and comparing it to your behind-the-scenes.

Find what actually works for your kid, not what makes you feel like a good parent. Sometimes those are different things. Buying twelve workbooks made me feel productive. Sitting quietly and asking "why did you do it that way?" actually helped.

I still have tiger mum moments. Last week I caught myself calculating how many marks my daughter needs in her next dictation to bring her average up. Old habits. But I'm better now. And more importantly, my kids are better now.

That stack of practice books? It's holding up a wobbly shelf in the living room. Best use they've ever been put to.