Practical advices to help your parents to LOWER their expections?

Parent Cafe
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The author of this article seems to have been suffering by having an overnearing parent when she was growing up and wrote this.

Do you think she has a point or this article is too negative / controversial?

"Tip #1 – Practice Saying “No” to the Following:

When a parent asks, “What are you going to be when you grow up? A Doctor? Lawyer? Engineer?” (assuming your passion is to do something else. [ I have edited this slightly. ]

Tip #2 – Practice Saying “Yes” to the Following:

When a parent asks, “Don’t you know how much we have sacrificed for you?” (especially if your answer is the silent retreat to guilt)

When a parent says, “Are you out to …break my heart / give your mother a heart attack?” (especially if your answer is the silent retreat to guilt)

Tip #3 – Practice Saying “I don’t know” to the Following:

When a parent asks, “How are you going to make a living doing that?” (even if you do know and are dying to justify the question with your answer)

When a parent asks, “How can you waste all those years we / you invested in your education by doing something completely unrelated?”

Bonus Tip – Practice Agreeing to the Following:

“Why can’t you be more like {someone else’s name, usually an annoying sibling or relative}?” (bite your tongue from responding with, “because I’ve got parents like you.”)

“If I had known you’d turn out like this, I’d have never brought you to America / given birth to you!” (remember, your empathy is very important for this agreement, therefore, show empathy)

There you have it. Practical advice to help your parents lower their expectations, give up on you as a means to live their unfulfilled dreams, thereby freeing you to explore what you really want out of your own life.

Now, go live the life you want to live."

This author, who seems to be graduated from Cornell, also provided a link to an old article:

http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/2006/04/health-expert-explains-asian-students-unique-pressures-succeed

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Is there a link to this article?

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I bumped into that article by chance.

Not sure whether it is a blog or not, I just copied some of that article instead of posting the link. I do not have that particular link at this moment. But the author is Jane Chin, who seems to be in the field of clinical psychology (depression, etc.)

If you google:

jane’s mental health source page

You may find some of her articles. (I might have read two of her short articles only.)

Although our child has been a grown-up, I sometimes wonder how many “wrong” buttons we have pushed or whether we have passed to him some “wrong” kinds of “behavior inheritance”. It seems this author wrote that even though she has been well into her adulthood (married and having her own young kid), she’s still occasionally suffering depression and is trying to recover from it. (But it may also have something to do with her line of job though.)

About the author of this article: (so what she’s “selling” is the topics about depression and emotional abuse, I think.)

Jane Y. Chin, Ph.D. grew up in 3 continents spanning the East, Middle East, and the West. Jane leads the global healthcare initiative with Mike Haynes & Associates. Chin was founder and President of Medical Science Liaison (MSL) Institute, and founding publisher of MSL Quarterly, the first MSL management journal. Jane is creator of “Jane’s Mental Health Source Page”, one of the internet’s oldest personal websites on depression and emotional abuse. Jane has a Bachelor of Science degree in microbiology from Cornell University (Ithaca, New York) and a doctorate degree in biochemistry from University of Buffalo at Roswell Park Cancer Institute (Buffalo, New York). She lives in Los Angeles, California with her husband, son, and an old royal ball python named Budette.

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Well, here is the page:

http://chinspirations.com/mhsourcepage/an-asian-adult-childs-guide-to-reclaiming-your-self-from-tiger-mothers

The site has lots of other pages about tiger parenting, depression, etc… Not sure why you are reluctant to post any links to it.

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It was because I had a lingering concern that it is a blog and it may not be good to post a link to a blog.

However, the difference between a blog and a non-blog could sometimes be not clear (say, both names may be ended with .com.) Frankly, I do not fully understand the rules.

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I’d practice going to college far from home, finding an opportunity to work or research on campus for the summer, and job hunting and living far from home after graduation.

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I think you’re not going to find the discussion you’d like, because for those of us raised in more mainstream American culture, we just never experienced the things that the article references.

As for me personally, my parents were supportive and proud of my academic pursuits but didn’t push me (I was internally motivated) and really didn’t get involved in my choice of major or career other than maybe a suggestion here or there that I was free to listen to or not listen to.

In mainstream American culture, statements like “You are an embarrassment to the __ family” or “If I’d known you’d turn out like this, I’d have never given birth to you” are considered horrible things to say to someone – and in the case of the latter, emotionally abusive / cruel.

So does the author have a point? Well, yeah, maybe for other cultures - but for those of us in mainstream American culture, we can’t really react any way.

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Bonus tip hit more of a chord than I would like it to. I am second generation American of european descent. Raised in the mainstream, blue collar. I clearly recognized the above early, did what @intparent talked about. What is important to me from this article is that one recognizes what the article talks about and do not repeat it in the next generation.