The Forest, the Music, and the Arts………the Children in Europe and America are Happy Living as Themselves

A comparison of how students in the western societies versus here, from the Front Page Sections, a discussion sparked up by the suicide of the first-year female high school student, from the Front Page Sections, translated…

A while ago, the first year female high school student who started in the Taipei’s First All-Girls’ High School felt pressured, that living is too tiresome, she’d leapt off the building and took her own life.  The parents and older sister of this young woman who’d died, were classic types of gifted-and-talented students.  During her childhood and adolescent years, she was made, to follow the stricter rules of her parents, trained for excellence; she’d originally wanted to go to the high school of Taiwan’s Teacher’s University, but instead, started her high school years in Taipei’s First All-Girls’ High School.

Children now have a huge pool to draw their knowledge from, what they’d wanted, may not be what the former generations expected of them.  If the parents zoomed in on the beliefs of elitism, forced their young on that road they’d assigned them to get on, it would be hard on the younger generations.

Surely, there are success stories from the tiger moms and wolf dads, but, there were, more children who’d suffered the dire consequences for their parents’ demanding excellence from them.  There was a doctor who’d received his medical doctorate degree from a prestigious university in California, he’d invited his parents to his graduation, and just as his parent’s plane landed, he’d taken the leap to his death from the lab building of his school, his final note said, that in order to please his parents, he’d gotten the highest scores since he was growing up, and entered into their first choice of high school for him, and entered into the medical undergraduate program of a namely university, and became a physician already, but his parents still wanted him to earn a medical doctorate degree, he’d done it too, but now, he’s tired, and wanted to take a break.

As members of the family all go to famous schools, and you don’t want to march on that same path, or couldn’t, then, that unseen pressure is felt from day and night of your life, and, those days and years spent, living under that sort of nightmare is heartfelt.  If the parents could let go of their prejudices, then, maybe, it can all be resolved on its own.

The education in Europe revolved around the forests, the rivers, music, arts, and they’d built the younger years on a happier environment, had their children learned through play, to interact with others; and as children get older, they’d learned to decide for themselves, and the parents would respect their children’s decisions too, and only when needed, would the parents offer their aid or support to their young.

The information is constantly changing in the 21^st Century, a lot of the values are shifting now, the Asian culture of wanting their young to exceed the parents in their levels of success, although it may be helpful, turning children into successful people but, in itself, the values of ignoring what children want became, a norm.  Not knowing when to let go, it’d caused heart wrenching consequences for children who are headstrong and couldn’t take as much heat.

As parents, we need to focus on our children’s characters, and how they treated others in the world with respect, and not zoom in on the grade performances, pay attention to the emotional ups and downs of the children, guide them to find their areas of interests, allow them to choose their own lifepaths.

So, the Asian parents don’t know how to let go, and a lot of them forced their own younger unfulfilled dreams onto their young, or that they’re already successful, and want and expect their young to be just as outstanding if not more, and, all that would be fine, if the child is willing to accept whatever the parents throw at her/him, but, it won’t be fine, if the kid doesn’t take whatever the parents are handing to her/him, like how that young woman committed suicide, because she had successful siblings, and she couldn’t choose a less stressful environment to go to school.