Most parents expect their children to follow the traditional path of getting a degree than a job. Sometimes to their detriment. Eastern cultures love fancy titles. They incite a lovely picture that garners a lot of prestige in society.” My son is a doctor, my daughter is an engineer.” People would nod in approval and secretly envy us.
A good parent would uphold their child’s best interest at all times. Above social expectations, above unsollicited opinions and ill-informed critiques. You share a DNA with the feral creature you are trying to turn into an active member in society.
The problem is as follows: Generational gap in developing countries is even more palpable when parents are not highly educated, from a wealthy socio-economic background and on the older side. Millenials would get this the most since we had to teach our parents to use the desktop lap top, how to use a mobile phone, some simply refuse to switch to smartphones and only got Facebook to exchange niceties with relatives.
Kids come in flavors. They are stubborn, hyperactive, sporty, sociable. The quiet and shy ones are vanilla, the ones everyone seems to enjoy teasing. The two types who suffered the most in the pre-internet era were the hyperactive boys and shy girls. The other way around if need be. Hyperactivity still falls in the extroverted traits spectrum, a trait that is highly valuable in collectivist societies. Bubbly and energetic kids would “do well with people, and that is the most important skill to have!”.
The quiet shy kids have a rough path ahead. They get picked on by the other kids early on, for being liked by teachers, for following the rules, for actually liking school, for just “being”. Hyperactive kids are not liked by school systems, they are unruly and all attempts to tame them turn to punishments. That is not even the worst part. Any areas showing promise at an early age risk being dubbed as the defining pillar of your future, any fluctuations or later attempts at changing that are quickly shut down, discouraged and repressed. Your future depends on it.
No one knew could even anticipate the subsequent revolutions ahead. A political shift, a technological wave, followed by a global pandemic. The smart and creative kids could not even catch a break. Who cares? There are milestones to achieve.
