Living Up to Our Parents' Expectations

Living Up to Our Parents Expectations 01-12-2007

We are literally made through the love of our parents and ever since the day we are born, we have been treated as an object beyond preciousness. As we grow from an incomprehensible infant to a wandering toddler, we abide ourselves to our parents and became dependent towards them. It then became an obligation for us to respect them and obey them. Parents generally have an expectation for us to achieve to be “successful” in their own various definitions. The predicament that always occurs is that we failed to be on that spotlight.

Firstly, let us point out that we are biologically from our parents and that they have the power to reign upon our lives; literally. We are their projects in life. Like us doing homework and projects, we want it to be the best as it can be; they also want to form us to be the best as we can be. But being children of the younger generation, we tend to be more spoiled than our parents due to innovative facilities. We have game consoles, internet games, malls and so many more things we are able to do besides homework. Not to mention the fact that standards are getting higher as the human mind is more developed, we as children of the younger generation tends to get lazier and spoiled.

Some parents are just stubborn in not wanting to accept the reality that their child is incapable of doing some things, causing them to forcefully drive their child to work even harder through numerous tuitions thus causing the poor child to suffer. A commonplace exemplary of this issue is given by Pak Wir. He mentioned that in national schools, children would eventually be required to choose to major in science or humanities and being in Indonesia, a bias approach transpires in being a science student. They consider those who took science to be a regular challenged student as those who take humanities to be shameful beings. With that, parents are somewhat ashamed in having a child with a humanities tendency. Pak Wir correlated this issue towards Mathematics HL where he mentioned that we should not take Higher Level Mathematics to provide the happiness for our parents as we suffer going through the subject and if we just cannot cope with the studies, just remark our parents saying that we are incapable and drop to Math Standards. We reflect our parents pride and parents have sometimes abused it in trying to make us even better than who we really are.

We surely do not want our parents to be ashamed of their child, nor do we want to suffer in doing things we are incapable of. Therefore, a balance is needed. This article has a bias approach in a perspective to those who consider themselves trying to live up your parents’ expectations. But we also have issues where we go beyond what our parents expects us. There are cases where parents are considerate enough in persuading their child to drop subjects they cannot cope with and let the children choose easier subjects for a better lifestyle; no stress.

In my case, I was brought up in a family with very melancholic parents. Not melancholic in a way that they are sad, tearful beings, but perfectionists. Since I was a cute young boy, I was exceptionally always forced by my father to do better in my school than I was capable of. In comparison to him, I was not much of a success. Last time I came across his university grades as I was cleaning up things in the storage room, yes, it’s a craze where he got all A’s except for English (Yes, his English is quite weak for his first language is actually Chinese, then Indonesian then English). But what really infuriates me is the fact that he wanted me to be much better than him. He wanted me to achieve great grades, be able to speak, read and write Chinese properly and of course, wanted me to be more successful. But it is just too much, won’t one think so?

In the end, we should remind our parents that we are also imperfect beings that cannot accomplish everything that parents dreamed of and apologize. They also should be considerate in knowing that there are some things in life that no matter our children go through, there is a limit in their capability and should also be grateful for other things.

P.S. : Today is Ms. Jessica's Birthday!!! Being 27 and still a jolly immature child at heart :) Let a new resolution be achieved, grow closer with God, and be more generous in giving grades. May you have a wonderful 27th year.