Original ‘Tiger Mom’ regrets harsh parenting style: ‘I made a lot of mistakes’

She’s got regrrrrets.

Amy Chua, the “tiger mom” who grabbed headlines over a decade ago by chronicling her strict parenting style in “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother,” is expressing remorse for her cruel treatment of her daughters, Sophia and Lulu.

This included threatening to burn their toys and calling Sophia “garbage” for not showing enough discipline to keep straight A’s and practice the violin or piano for 6 hours a day while living in Connecticut.

After a nearly lethal case of diverticulitis five years ago, Chua had sort of an Ebenezer Scrooge moment about her parenting methods.

“Oh my God, if I had really died in the hospital, there were all these things I should have said to my daughters that I hadn’t,” Chua, 60, told the Daily Mail in an interview published Sunday.

“Things like: I’m so proud of you, and I hope you realize that even though I tend to err on the side of criticism and finding fault, you are so much more talented and brilliant than I ever was. You exceeded my wildest expectations,’” she added.

The Post reached out to Chua’s reps for comment.

She does feel that her intense approach yielded some positives.

Sophia, 30, is a Yale law school grad working with the military as a lawyer, while Lulu, 27, graduated with distinction from Harvard and took on two judicial clerkships in Miami.

“I look around and see kids of 25, 28 and some of them still live at home and don’t have jobs,” Chua said.

“That makes me think that there’s a trade-off. I would say that the one upside of my kids not having quite as much fun as everybody else when they were little means that they have a lot of opportunities now. They’re confident, self-sufficient, earn their own keep and pay their own rent.”

With her daughters grown and successful, Chua says their bond has grown.

“I do have a great relationship with my daughters now,” she said. “I’m actually hands-off to the point where they say to me, ‘Why don’t you call me? Why don’t you return my texts?’ But now they’ll call me for advice on work and boyfriend stuff, and it’s great.”

But upon reflection, Lulu has mixed feelings about her upbringing.

While it led to success, it also siphoned her happiness.

“I lost that childhood innocence, that sense of joy and wonder, and I definitely felt a lot of stress,” she said.

“I do think the good outweighs the bad, and I’m proud of my parents and myself now. But I definitely think things could have been different,” Lulu added of her mother and father, Yale law professor Jed Rubenfeld.

Many things haunted her at the time, she explained.

“I felt there were so many burdens on me, [and it did] impact my mood and emotional stability, which were probably of secondary concern to my mom,” Lulu shared.

Those are the things, among other earned stripes, that have the tiger mom licking her wounds.

“I still believe achieving excellence can bring a lot of benefits, and I’m glad I instilled a sense of grit in my kids. But the things I regret more are the harsh things I said to them and losing my temper,” Chua said.  

“I made a lot of mistakes and went to the brink. At a certain point I was fighting with Lulu so much I ended up writing the book purely because we were at such a crisis point. I thought: ‘Oh God, if I don’t change, she’s going to hate me forever, and I’m going to lose her,’ so I stepped back.”