ENGL 1711 03

Ramona Awuah posted Jun 24, 2021 12:29

Reading this essay, I’ve been hit with the realization that I’ve seen my mother transform from a “Chinese mom” to a “Western mom”. Being a first gen immigrant my mother’s parenting skills were very much stuck in the ways of her culture. Growing up my mother always pushed me to do my best and beyond, I wasn’t an athletic child so she made sure that I excelled in academics and the arts. I was often told to not waste my time on frivolous after school clubs and was instead put into piano and flute lessons as well as creative writing workshops. As a child I always wondered why my mom would take my “failures” as hard as she did. It became oh so clear to me in my older years, she knew I had the ability to perform at a higher rate than my peers and she thought my failures were a reflection of her parenting skills. That being said in grade school I was always placed in honor, AP, or GT classes. Although I’m grateful for this way of parenting it made finding out who I am and what I’m really interested in very difficult. Also, it left me in denial of a lot of things although I was very intelligent, I often had a very hard time focusing and my mind was always moving a mile a minute. At parent teacher conferences that would always be my sole area of improvement or focus when the possibility of attention disorder would come up in these conversations my mother would shut those allegations down and instead say that I need to focus more or that I was scatter brained. Thinking of the track of my college career I switched majors’ countless times, although I could grasp the subject matter and perform well the thought of making a career out of each major made me extremely miserable. Later on, I was actually diagnosed with ADHD and getting the proper treatment my work ethic and organizational skills improved drastically. As I started ending my high school journey my mother became less strict in terms of academics and started guiding me to different avenues for self-expression. 

 

While reading the segment of the essay where Amy was drilling Lulu on the piano piece made me very sad, I understood and agreed to an extent. Although I’m not the biggest advocate of tough love I do agree that sometimes to reach a goal some people do need to reach their breaking point. Amy thought she was pushing her child to greatness but in reality, she was breaking Lulu. There comes a period of time after your breaking point that your emotions go numb and you can solely focus on the task at hand, in the end you either find another method to reach your goal or you realize you were overthinking it can accomplish it with ease. I feel that if Amy had pulled a “Western mom” tactic and eased up on Lulu when she communicated her frustration, Lulu would have felt relieved at first but then felt as though her mother signaled to her that she gave up in her because she believed that her daughter couldn’t perform the piece.