Mothers like Chua believe they know what's best for their children in almost every aspect of their lives. Between school and extracurricular activities, in the Chinese parenting method, decisions are usually made by the mother and not the child. Western parents would much prefer to refrain from making every decision, instead teaching the child to make his own decisions and weigh the consequences. Even in Chinese parenting, mothers believe that it is better to be harsh on the child than to nurture him throughout his development. Western mothers, on the other hand, will take a different route and always keep the child's feelings in mind when carrying out punishment. Both methods are correct in some respects, but sometimes it takes more than a simple compromise between the two to achieve this