Many students say the high expectations their parents place on them cause stress and other mental health issues. I believe these complaints are unreasonable.
We live in the Bay Area, so many of our parents work in the tech industry. Many parents expect their children to go into either the technology field for this reason, or the medical field because parents want their kids to have a decent paying job, and they see these two industries as the most lucrative. Parents only want what’s best for their children. They want us to be able to earn a good living so that we can enjoy life and provide for our families just as they have provided for us.
In addition, many students that go to MHS are immigrants, or their parents immigrated to the U.S. for the promise of more opportunities and a better life. They don’t want to see their hard work to give you your opportunity go to waste, and that is why they have high expectations.
I understand that parental expectations put a lot of pressure on students, and they might feel as if they will never be able to reach their parents’ expectations. High expectations are a way to encourage students to strive for loftier goals and achieve more. It is not like your parents want you to suffer; they want you to lead a fulfilling life and one better than theirs.
Parents also like to put emphasis on grades. Let’s say you got a C on your math test, like I did last semester. Your parents are going to see that and question you. Why didn’t you get a higher score? Why did your friends do better than you? Why can’t you be like them? These are the sort of questions that make my blood boil, so I can see how others might become angry too. However, students are going to encounter these sorts of problems and adversity in their lives, and they need to learn how to deal with them. For example, your boss might get mad at you for what he says is a bad project, and you’re not going to be able to just avoid that criticism; you’ll have to learn how to deal with it in a constructive way.
A sizable amount of my friends also talk about overwork and how parents don’t seem to understand that they need a break to relax. I love hearing about the stories my friends tell me, their parents’ “back in my day” stories about how life is so much easier nowadays, such as “I used to walk 10 miles to school everyday,” and “Back in my day, we had to actually go to the library to do research for our projects; we didn’t get to search it up on Google.” However, most of these stories are true, and life today is actually easier than it was in the past. Your parents had their own challenges, and so do you now. They had to work, and probably had to work much more than you do. The reason your parents tell you these stories is to get you to recognize that the problems you face are conquerable, and you need to conquer them.