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May 14/15: Stop Telling Your Kids What To Do…ALL the Time!
Maybe this is an inherent problem amongst South Asian parents, but they don’t seem to know when to stop telling their kids what to do. Sure, parents know what’s best for their kids…until a certain age. But when your kid is an adult, a grown adult in their 30s+, you really gotta let it go.
This is not just a problem for adults, this is a problem for children too. South Asian parents become so protective of their offsprings that in an attempt to do what’s best for them, they don’t allow their kids to stand up for themselves. If you never let your kid have an individualized thought, desire of their own to act on, how will they learn? Mistakes are an integral part of growing up and you cannot protect your child from making any mistakes in life. Instead, let them be. Be there for them when they fall, but allow them to fall. Without falling, you can’t learn to get up.
As a 34 year old woman, I still struggle with my parents telling me what to do. And I don’t mean it with regards to big life decisions. No, I mean they tell me when I should go to bed, how long it’s OK for me to stay up, how many layers of clothing to wear based on the weather outside, how late I’m allowed to stay out. Seriously, it’s ABSURD.
Obviously, all of the above is not true for everyone, but it is for a good majority. It’s a cultural problem and maybe (hopefully) it’s a generation problem. I don’t have any kids (nor any inkling for them), but if I were to have kids, I would imagine I would not bring them up with the same over protectiveness my parents brought my brothers and I up with. But then again, I am not a parent so it’s all here say.
So my two cents: Stop Telling Your Kids What To Do, ALL the time! Because you’re going to inevitably make yourself ineffective to them.
Happy…Parenting!
"You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unlessyou live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default." - J.K. Rowling
What I Think I Say 
Oh crap. We held back expressing our feelings about our daughter’s BF for six years (he wasn’t horrible . . .just arrogant and a touch narcissistic . . .) but when he recently called off there destination wedding leaving us holding 5 non-refundable tickets to a place we never wanted to go and failed to apologize. . . AND she is still with him . . .well I let the skunk out of the bag. I told her she was worth better treatment and a better man. Did NOT go well. Dang it. To speak or not to speak? And if we speak when? Tricky! This is a bit raw.
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