Well no message board thread can do those things–or, maybe, even any single thing in that grandiose list. Maybe more importantly, a message board of untrained random strangers can’t be a substitute for therapy.
@citymama9 - suicide in China and Korea is a problem, but it’s often associated with pressures on the young, which is misleading–in both countries, suicide rates are highest among the elderly. In China, suicide rates are high among women, but among men they’re actually lower than among men in the US. So it turns out statistics matter.
Also worth noting that suicide rates in China have plummeted in recent years (even as academic pressure has mounted), which goes against the threadbare popular narrative.
@inthegarden - fine, but for all your “maybes” we actually have an answer: the OP itself, which isn’t asking for those things and is instead a fairly exhausted springboard into reductive cultural comparison and essentialism, venting, and stereotyping.
@inthegarden @marvin100 The reason I posted this on the parent chat is so I can gain insight from a different perspective. I can vent to a crowd of high schoolers with similar backgrounds and I’ll surely find more comfort there. We’ll all probably come to a conclusion that Asian parents are evil and that an Ivy League acceptance is our only escape from this wrath. However, that is not what I want. I want to hear from adults. I want to know if other parents are aware of this, and if there is some way to put an end to this cultural practice. Are parents guilty of such methods blind to this?
As one poster mentioned, there are good and bad tiger parents as well as the opposite. It sounds like, this young man is finding it difficult to deal with the strategy his parents have chosen. My only advice would be, it will get better. You will be going off to college soon where the pressure you face will be very different. When you come back on breaks etc, just try to not blow up at your parents. Just remember they did this for your benefit regardless of the emotional issues it has caused. The time spent with your parents will be shorter and shorter. While you can’t imagine treasuring that time, most likely someday, you will. You will eventually learn that you need to be proud for yourself and not for your parents.
I honestly can’t say what has driven your parents to act in this manner. It seems like the only area to criticize would be that they haven’t chosen to deal with the emotional challenges you have faced. Other than that there are far too many unknowns about you or your parents to say anything else.
Painting ALL of any group is pretty unhelpful, imho. I also think a lot depends how n conditions where said individuals came from, how long they’ve lived in the US and whom they’d peer group is.
Do your folks look up to anyone that you can talk to about the stress and pressure? Maybe they can help your parents learn to ease up a bit and not be so fixated on prestige and only one way. That seems like a strategy that might be more worthwhile than venting to strangers.
I am not sure that there is any thing new to say in this thread, but I might summarize a couple of points that have come up in other threads.
First of all, a large number of US high school students are suffering from an amount of stress that is not healthy. This is not limited to Asian students. You have to do the best that you can, understand that things will get better, and try to stay “okay”. Soon you will be at university and will at least have an understood and accepted task in front of you. Your parents want to do what is best for you, but as you said they did not got to university and are not originally from this country. Many parents who did go to university and did grow up in the USA can still get a bit off track from time to time. Also, “picking university” time (the last half of senior year in high school) is a stressful time for parents and students alike.
You don’t need to go to an ivy league or top university (MIT, Stanford) to succeed in the USA. I actually did graduate from two top universities (BSc. at MIT, MSc. at Stanford) and have worked my entire life almost always for boss’s who went to lesser known universities. One of the best bosses that I ever had went to a university that I had never heard of. Another went to university in Canada. The worst software engineer that I ever worked with had a degree from Harvard. The best software engineer that I ever worked with has a degree from a state university. This last person has been very successful, and is very well known and well regarded in his industry and is quite well off. Going to his in-state university was perfect for him.
As a parent I can relate to wanting my children to do well. It is sometimes difficult to understand that within certain limits (like avoiding physical injury, and sticking to financial constraints) I need to let my children make their own choices (which don’t always turn out to be mistakes after all).
Yes, no, sometimes. Also important: the vast majority of teenagers resent their parents at least sometimes, and while they’re sometimes right–parents aren’t perfect and some are genuinely awful!–it’s a pretty well established fact that teenagers don’t have the best judgment either.
@Marvin100, we are all strangers in this random group, offering what we have to give …whether that is information, opinions, empathy, humor, some kind of analysis, etc…based on how we perceive the needs of any given OP, and filtered through who we are. None of us can supply credentials for any of it…whether facts, opinions or emotional support seems to be called for. Do we withhold factual information about colleges that we think may be helpful to an OP, just because we are not (or cannot prove ourselves to be) professional college consultants, professors or administrators? Why the sneering about “therapy” ? Some posters want facts, others lively discussion, others reassurance or support. Most of us do our best to try to intuit the needs of the situation. Everyone’s take is a little different. Why the contempt?
I don’t consider my response on this thread as engaging in therapy, just my particular take (correct or not)on the OP’s question and my sense that you cut him down too sharply in your certainty of where he was going with the thread. You are no less of a stranger, in this collection of strangers, but you also appear to me to feel justified in offering some kind of professional expertise to analyze/critique motives and serve as gatekeeper…how do we know you are professionally qualified to do that, any more than anyone knows whether or not I am qualified to engage in my response (therapeutic or not) ; or anyone else, their offerings?
As a relative newbie, I was not aware that CC has rules stating that responses must be devoid of empathetic or “grandiose” thoughts, in order to avoid any appearance of engaging in fake therapy. In fact, I would argue, if that were the case, CC should also restrict attempts of critical analysis, or the giving out of factual intormation, as well, to avoid any appearance of untrained random strangers offering professional services along those lines.
You may hold as much contempt as you will for my thoughts and my writing style (which is no more extreme than your rather esoteric one, IMO) but as long as I am not deliberately hurtful to an OP, and not deemed inappropriate by a moderator ( who I will defer to) I will participate here on CC., pedantically “grandiose” or not.
…^ And even if OP IS guilty of asking for a “fairly exhausted springboard into reductive cultural comparison, essentialism, venting and stereotyping” why can’t he do that? He’s a kid! He’s trying to find a way to think about his own life and culture. Adults shutting down the conversation, creating a taboo, slapping his fingers isn’t going to help him frame his thoughts. If he’s guilty of stereotyping, he’s doing so regarding his own culture. Maybe someone could steer him to consider other perspectives, if they don’t agree with his. But unless a moderator shuts the topic down, I would think OP and any responders could participate…or not.
I hate to say it this way, but in the current system, what you are going through is what it takes, with a little luck thrown in. It’s sad that it’s so brutal and in the end more arbitrary than we would expect.
Also, it isn’t only Asian parents, though they may be particularly pure in their ambition for their children. It’s more about the American educational system and how it has evolved over the last 45 years - hyper-competitive, insanely expensive, with murky “connections” that confer unfair advantages.
Here is my suggestion. Write your parents a long and careful letter in which you acknowledge their desire fore your success, all they have done to contribute to it, and your fears of disappointing them. In writing this letter, you will putting the ball in their court, asking them to own the pressure and take responsibility for monitoring their disappointments (if there are any). I do not know your parents, but since they care about your success, I expect that they care about your emotional states (if only as an aid to succeeding). You might want to ask them about how they understand success in your life and theirs.Writing a letter will help you set out your worries accurately and it will help them respond carefully.
As a parent of an obnoxiously driven college student and a relaxed HS kid, I know that success and its definition is always under negotiation in many families. I am just happy we are not including sports in our family negotiations.
I know this is the hardest time as the last acceptances come in. A year from now, whatever happens, will feel very different. Hugs!
Singling out Asian parents isn’t fair to them. US could be the most tutored nation on earth, on sports, music, etc. in addition to acamedics. Asians and other immigrants do focus more on academics however.
Ask your patents, gently, why they didn’t go to college, and if they had a chance would they get into any Korean Ivy. Then they may realize that hard work alone cannot take you to the top, smart and luck play a big role. If they still think you’re the smartest kid in town at this age then it’s all on you.
Read @DadTwoGirls post #26 to them. Better yet, find stories where a DadTwoGirls and the state school boss were high school classmates.
@guamboy
Thank you for this very helpful reply.
I agree. Nevertheless, it is a significant population that is apparently duplicated outside of my encounters. Since I work in this field, it is prevalent. I do encounter, and others do encounter, variations from the “norm” I experience, but for them, too, those are seldom. I meet some parents who understand the US system – have made it their business to learn about it, even when/if they are recent arrivals. I have met other parents who are calm and non-controlling about the entire process. All of these, though, are exceptions to the unfortunate dominant theme.
@guamboy I don’t know that I have any particularly helpful insight about your situation to offer, but since you asked, and this is an open forum, I thought I would take a moment to respond.
You wrote that your anxiety “does not root from my fear of failure, but rather from my failure of disappointing my parents.” While it does not apply equally to everyone, there seems to be a common human anxiety about “disappointing” one’s parents (or one’s friends, or teachers, or teammates, etc). Whether this is something innate/biological or cultural or both, I don’t know.
I have always emphasized to my own children that what I want from them is NOT a particular outcome, but for them to give their best effort. I also have spent quite a bit of effort stressing character (especially being honest). So, even though I would not be disappointed about whether they were admitted to this or that “prestigious” school, I am sure my children feel anxiety about disappointing me (and others) with respect to expectations that have been set. Perhaps a certain amount of that is unavoidable in life.
A key difference for you is that the expectation from your parents is about something over which you don’t have much control. No matter how hard you work, how high your test scores, how much effort you put into your extra-curricular activities, the odds of getting into the most selective schools are still quite low, which perhaps makes the situation even more stressful.
You will need to learn and come to grips with the fact that you have your own life to live and cannot live it based on meeting the expectations of others. You will need to develop your own expectations for your self and work to live up to those. You will also need to learn how to “live with” others’ expectations for you and how to deal with those. You can reflect on those expectations, you can adopt some, you can reject some.
As you note, your parents do not have a direct knowledge of the educational system in which you have been raised, but that may or may not have much bearing on the situation. Plenty of parents have gone through the US educational system and still emphasize the value of getting into this or that school as a measure of success. Yes, perhaps this is a little more extreme among certain sub-cultures, and you may be dealing with a direct consequence of that. I obviously don’t know whether your parents desire this particular outcome (admission to top school) out of a possibly misguided understanding of wanting what is best for your success, or whether they want this outcome as a means of validating the sacrifices and efforts that they have made on your behalf, or whether they want this outcome so that they feel they can justifiably hold their heads up a little higher in their community because their son “made it”. Or perhaps it is a complicated combination of these and other factors.
You asked “how can we put an end to Asian parents’ madness?” though I would extend this to all parents who may be pushing their children in ways that are not especially conducive to the well-being of their children (Note: I am not claiming that any particular path is or isn’t conducive to well-being here). Changing a culture or a sub-culture or even the behavior of a single individual is not easy to do. The only advice I could offer you about changing “madness” is to start be addressing your particular situation. You don’t need to “fix” Asian parents or any other parents, but you might benefit by trying to talk to your parents honestly about what you think, feel and observe about the situation. You can tell them that you feel anxiety about disappointing them. You can try to explain to them how you view success or the course through which you think you can find it. It’s not easy, and maybe it will even feel like it makes the situation worse (whether or not it is helping). But I personally feel that bridging understanding between people is usually a benefit in the long run.
You observe that “Every time my parents talk to me about colleges, the distance between us grows further. I don’t remember the last time I had a conversation without my dad throwing a message about college.” Unfortunately, this is quite common in families during senior year, regardless of expectations. We have many, many conversations at our home that often come around to college. It can be a difficult topic to escape, and I am as guilty as the next parent about failing to “give it a rest.” Perhaps the problem is less about pressuring children than it is about the difficulty of dealing with our children separating from us, not just physically but also emotionally. We might have more difficulty relating to each other and so we fall back on the banal or “easy” topics. Perhaps your parents are struggling with the growing distance between you, just as your are struggling with it, and neither of you really has a good understanding how to connect.
To answer your question, “Does any student/parent relate to this?” I can only say that I relate to it in part, though our situations and circumstances may be somewhat different. Try to be sympathetic towards your parents while being true to yourself. You will need to make decisions in life and sometimes those decisions will disappoint others. Sometimes people will be disappointed in us through no fault of our own, but you will need to learn how to manage that, too.
Good luck to you on your continued journey into adulthood and into the rest of your life. It sounds as if you have a pretty good head start.
I think the crazy will stop with the current young generation. They can work on negating the negative prestige pressure by saying in front of relatives how they need to be sure their accepted colleges fit their personalities. Start planting the seed of the idea that students do best where they are happy. In college join activities that speak to your interests. Point out leaders that attended non ivy schools.
As your results come in, respond to parental pleasure or dismay with “You know Mom, either way, I am still a good person with value”
Learn from you and your friends experiences and make a pact that this does not continue for any more generations.
So sorry you had such a tough time.
@guamboy -
This is a generational issue. Many Asian immigrants were accepted into the US because of their educational accomplishments, and they tend to push education as part of their culture. It will take one or two generations after the original family immigrated here for that culture to change.
“Much2learn wrote:
there is no job that you can get to from an Ivy League school that you can’t get to from a Big Ten University (for example)”
@marvin100 This thread really can’t turn into (yet another) proxy fight about whether selective colleges are “worth it,” but let’s not forget that Big Ten schools are also selective and there are many jobs you can get to from an Ivy League or Big 10 school that you can’t get from a community college.
I am not commenting here about the value of selective colleges. My two points in the previous post were that 1.) there are many roads to success that do not pass through Cambridge, New Haven, Princeton, Philly, NYC, Providence, Hanover, or Ithaca, and 2.) that choosing a major wisely have a larger impact on future success for most students than where they attended college.
My objective in making those two points is to highlight that a student who is rejected from Ivies and attends a slightly less competitive school still has an excellent opportunity to be a success. In many cases a particular student may have a better chance of being a success where they are admitted than they would have had at an Ivy because the pace may be a bit more appropriate for them.
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Do you know an adult or two that your folks respect that you can talk to? Seriously that can really make a difference if you have that person as your ally and they can work with you to help your parents understand. Maybe a successful uncle or cousin?