Disclosure: This story is a sum up of what I learnt from Vietnamese parents whom I have encountered in my life, not to generalize all Vietnamese parents.
I got invited to a reunion party where there were more parents than kids, and it was a tight knit Vietnamese community living in the U.S. It was such a joy for me to meet my neighbors who used to live near my house in Vietnam, after so long. However, as we started chatting, the conversation got too much on the surface around what you do, where you went to school, and how good you are. It triggered me to compare with others internally, the past wounds are now bleeding again.
Every parents in the world want their kids to be happy and successful, yet, Vietnamese parents particularly tend to have expectations about how their kids should be successful and happy. They expect their kids to do well at school, and to gain big titles later on, then to climb a conventional path of graduating, of getting married, and of having children. It would be very tough for someone to fall out of the path, his or her parents will not have things to share with the neighbors, or to be proud of per se.
Ironically, kids grow up and have different exposure than their parents, their mindset will change accordingly. From the learning in different environments, they start cultivating their own definitions for success, which might not be similar to what their parents set out initially. However, instead of getting support from their families, they have to deal with unnecessary tensions which originates from the mismatch between their expectations for themselves and their parents’ expectations for them. Getting their parents to be on the same page with them takes a lot of effort. Some people are not even able to resolve their relationships with parents during the course of their life, how sad?
Vietnamese parents can sometimes put pressure on kids to achieve, rather than to step back and to embrace them as who they are. A toxic expectation such as “you need to be smarter”, “you are not enough”, “you need to get higher grades”, and “you need to go to piano class” can damage their kids’ inner voice, which resonates who they truly are and what they truly are capable of. The expectation just gives kids a false motivation to keep up while at some point they might be uncertain about where they are heading toward. Life is not a race but an experience. A good education can give kids better opportunities. A good job can guarantee you money to do everything you want. But, they are not everything.
Most importantly, anything comes with a cost. What if kids have to beat themselves really hard to get through the study, what if they are depressed and lonely sometimes, and what if they do not even enjoy what they are studying or learning. Not to mention, there are so much more characteristics and attributes that are good for kids to build up such as how to care for others, how to be kind, how to empathize with others, how to seek for help and to offer help, how to speak up, how to be vulnerable, etc. There are potentials inherited in every kid too that parents must really pay attention to unlock them.
Worse, some parents want their kids to do what they could not do in their youth time. They embed their dreams on their kids without even knowing if the dreams align with what their kids want to do. They might perceive their kids should be the better versions of themselves. Apparently, parents have total rights to teach and shape kids to grow the way they want, yet, if their ways do not support their kids, they need to take a step back. Being a parent is hard and is such a tough job, you need to be both hard and soft, both resilient and firm. Nevertheless, it is one of the most important jobs since it is to create a better generation for the future. Good things pass on, so does not good things.
Going forward, I think the best way to be a parent is to be your kids’ friends. Talk to them, listen to them, feel what they are going through are the best things that parents can offer, besides food and education. It would be so great if kids can just run to their parents to tell them anythings, and to seek for their advices. It should be a two sided relationship in which both kids and parents are growing together. Thanks to that, the world will be a better place.
