Bao Nguyen

Professor: Alton Rose

Paper 2.1 (draft)
Topic: In some cultures, parents compare their childrens grades with others throughout
school. After high school, the parents move on to the comparison of their childrens
jobs, boyfriends or girlfriends, and husband or wives, thus creating a stressful
environment for the children involved.
Critically evaluate this way of thinking and your agreement or disagreement with this
approach. In addition, please state your preferred approach and reason for it.

Going with the increasing of the economy, people need to build up good standing in
the society, and, in parallel, it is growing up greed in the soul of each person. The comparison
children with children in terms of education, jobs, and relationships becomes more popular in
present: parents always want their children to be the best or at least in the top students. From
the daily conversations with the complaint or scolding words, parents usually add more
comparisons between their children and other parents children. Some people think that it is
need for children to have a competitive environment which will support them increase their
grades rapidly; in addition, it will increase their rate of having jobs with high salaries, and
worthy lover. Personally, I believe that the parents attitude of comparing their children with
others will make negative consequences and, in the other word, that comparison will make
bad effects to the new generation because children will have high stress after a significant
time of having their educational life compared by their parents; moreover, children, who have
low achievements, tend to separate themselves from others; furthermore, children feel
compelled to try and achieve their parents wishes.

Firstly, children feel having more bulky pressures, which are invisible and extremely
complicated to solve, after each time their parents ask and compare them. The burden
unceasingly increases adding with having no way to solve disorientates them. A bodybuilder
practices with continuously doubling both sides of the barbell, at one point, he cannot lift that
barbell anymore and maybe get damage. As a result, adding lots of pressures on childrens
shoulders creates serious problems: the most thoughtful trouble is that affect their selfesteem. According to an article named The story on self-esteem (kidshealth.org), a kid will
have low self-esteem if his mother or father doesn't encourage him enough or if there is a lot
of yelling at home. In addition, a kid also can be hurt their self-esteem in the around
environment. The person who has low self-esteem will appear some strange actions:
scowling, non-emotion with anything, or even protesting against their parents. Moreover,
children who have lots of bulky pressures, in some circumstances that they cannot restrain
themselves and fall into a state of despair, will suicide as a final solution. There are many
articles each day talking about suicidal students. In the news in an internet newspaper
(nld.com.vn), a Chinese teen girl fell down from the seventh floor because of homework.
Parents think that comparing their children with others children will factorize them, but they
are totally wrong. Children develop at different rates. They should get more encouragements
instead of getting any pressures. Furthermore, the comparison is also the beginning of a
number of hassles.
The comparing children with children is the worst thing which can decrease young
talents and increase more many other harmful effects. Children tend to evade things that they
are hard to solve or incapable of solving the troubles by themselves. Without the
encouragements, children will accept themselves the fact that they are dumb and that they are
pieces of kerbstone of other children who are the opponents in the comparisons. Children are
like young plants: if parents planters do not spend their time to take care of saplings and

even trample on those little trees, they will die soon; if the planters sit beside the plants most
of the days, irrigate and fertilize them, trees will rapidly grow up, boughs have luxuriant leafs
and shade around. Children who separate themselves from others will highly get autism
disease which is more popular at this moment. According to Center for Disease Control and
Prevention (cdc.gov), in 2000, About 1 in 150 eight-year-old children has been identified
with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), and, in 2010, that number increases about 1 in 68
(more than twice). Not only that, ASD is almost 5 times more common among boys (1 in 42)
than among girls (1 in 189). As a result, the world economy and social work will quickly
decline. Moreover, more important issue, children highly have tickets for mental illness if the
problems happen for a significant time. Parents think that children should spend most time of
day staying in a chair and finish mountains of homework. Study, study more, study forever,
children need to stay in the house so parents can manage and ask them to do homework. That
is a huge mistake. Children should make friends and join in outside activities: go to churches,
take part in sport teams and go for picnics. Adolescence is the time that a person need to open
their mind to watching, trying new and strange things in the wonder world. Remind the
sentence wrote in the last paragraph, children develop at different rates, so that let them have
their own freedom and then they can fly in the immense sky. Parents should help their
children integrate with the community to strengthen childrens talents and to raise childrens
experiences and knowledge about the around environment.
Thirdly, childrens self-esteem seriously decreases after a significant time under their
parents pressures about completing parents wishes. Some parents see their children as
extensions of themselves, rather than as separate people with their own hopes and dreams,
said co-author Brad Bushman, a professor of psychology at Ohio State University
(researchnews.osu.edu). Parents may be most likely to want their children to achieve the
dreams that they themselves have not achieved. For example, in the movie The Namesake,

Gogol, after a significant time, left his girlfriend, whose name is Maxine, listened to his
parents to get married with Moshumi, a Indian woman and also the daughter of family
friends. He tried to make his mother happy, but his dream family cannot be true. Moshumi
fell in love with a French man, Dimitri. The result is Gogol listened to his parents and got a
broken life. His sister, Sonia, chose different way from him: she got a happy ending with
marrying an American named Ben. Another example, in the movie Coming to America,
Lisa McDowell, because of the homogamy, got a high pressure from her father. Her father
wants her get married to Darryl Jenks who has a rich background. She fought against herself
and her father to make a relationship with Akeem Joffer, the crown prince to the throne of the
wealthy African nation of Zamunda but she did not know till the end of the movie. The main
idea of the movie shows people that homogamy should disappear from modern society. Lots
of parents want to protect their positions in society, or greedier, they want to improve their
situations in the higher place to get pride of family, friends, and other people. Oppositely, that
idea completely imprisons their children like birds are kept in cages. To sum up, each people
has already experienced childhood, so that parents are the ones who clearly know what they
want and what their children want as a child. Freedom is the dream of every children:
freedom in the study, freedom in the job, and freedom in the relationship.
In conclusion, parents should change their thinking of children. Children are the new
future generation. Things adults teach them are the thing children profound remember and
that they will decide the way that children will step on. Every comparisons between their
children and other parents children about education, jobs and relationships should disappear
from modern society should change into advices and supports to help children integrate and
shine as a sun in the society.

Bibliography:
1. Michelle New, The story on self-esteem, April 2012.
Website: kidshealth.org
2. H.Bnh, Trung Quc: B gi nhy lu t t v ... bi tp v nh, 04/01/2015.
Website: nld.com.vn
3. Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), February 26, 2015.
Website: cdc.gov
4. Jeff Grabmeier, Some Parents Want Their Child to Redeem Their Broken Dreams,
06/19/2013
Website: researchnews.osu.edu
5. Jhumpa Lahiri (author), The Namesake (book), September, 2003.
6. John Landis (director), Coming to America (movie), June 29, 1988.