Helicopter Parents

rptastic · 2017-02-20T17:53:46+00:00

I didn't even get past the first sentence and thought "You sound [south] asian". Confirmed.

At 16, with Indian parents, you probably don't have a ton of options; unless you have some means to support yourself and go the nuke option of emancipation (if you're in the US), you're still living in someone else's house and eating someone else's food. Suck it up. Yeah it will suck for a while, but unless today's your birthday, it's less than two years away

(yeah, when you're 16, that's 12.5% of your total life so far, so it seems like forever, but it will go by faster than you think)

Anyway, part of life is being able to see things from others' perspectives: Your parents are being dicks, but but they want the best for you & your / their family. Their goal is to get you into a good school, a good job (probably Dr / Lawyer / Tech ).

Seeing things from their perspective means you know how to motivate them:

Convince them with evidence and otherwise, that it is very competitive to get into the best schools as an Indian (whether US or even in India), and that one of the things that helps you stand out is extracurricular activities like going to the gym. (You can find research to cite that shows a positive correlation with learning as well).

You'll have to be somewhat subtle about this, but your job is to convince them that you're on the same page; you don't want the bad things (whatever they are) to happen, and that you find you are better able to study with a brief gym break.

If you are successful, you may be able to apply that to other areas. Don't go 'hang out with friends'. Have a 'study group to prepare for an exam'.

But really, two years. Count the time down like a prisoner, and just make the most of it in every way you can...(Hey...free rent! Free food!)

2435734098 · 2017-02-20T19:18:59+00:00

Ignore them, don't be combative. You should take up on meditation. Keep going to the gym as much as you can and just dismiss when they talk shit about it. You're the one getting angry over it and they ignore you, sounds like you have trouble keeping frame.

RunawayGrain · 2017-02-20T19:44:20+00:00

I was in college level academia for a long time. Most of the time when I saw this with immigrant parents it was because they had a sort of culture shock. The same thing happened with a lot of the home schooled students we had. Basically the parents in question, for one reason or another, did not approve of many facets of the culture we find ourselves in. The response they had was to try to keep their kids isolated from it as long as possible.

Realize a couple of things:

1.) They do actually care about you, they are just going about it in a ham-fisted manner. From another of your posts, they are trying to shoe-horn you into medicine. In their eyes, medicine is a 'safe' bet for success.

2.) Yeah, they are fucking you up. In my experience when most of the kids I mentioned above got away from mom and dad, they went wild. They had cloistered lives, were exposed to new things and new concepts, and wanted to try a little of it all. Drugs? Sure! Alcohol? Sure! Most of these kids wound up really messed up, a few killed themselves.

3.) They are so dead set driven on this, it's going to take someone in authority that they respect to get any movement from them. The only time I was able to crack one of these was at a sit down with dad and kid, where I genuinely spelled it out for dad. Kid went on to be a CPA and that was something I was really proud of.

4.) The nastiest part of this is that it damages your social skills. Maybe 90% of the kids I had to deal with could easily write papers and pass tests, but could barely navigate social interactions with professors or students. Ask dear old dad if he's ever been to a doctor that couldn't look him in the eye when they spoke, or acted out and fidgeted while trying to take his pulse. How much confidence did he have in that doctor? Social interaction is a must for most people to function normally in society.

5.) You're mostly ahead of the kids I had to deal with. For many of them, the trip over to our campus was probably the farthest they had ever been from home, and definitely the farthest they had been from mom and dad. You've got an inkling that there is more out there though, so you are one up on them.

Keep your head down and find ways to make the most out of the situation. For example: Harvard has a good Med school. Harvard has an expensive med school. Could dad afford it? If he can't is he going to admit it, or is he going to quietly try to steer you elsewhere? My guess is he won't admit it, and that's the point at which you can begin steering things, subtly. It's not so much about blatantly standing up to them as steering these concepts the way you want it to go, while letting them think it's their idea. That's how many of my Asian students actually dealt with their helicopter parents. Either that, or they just burned out. Don't burn out.

vandaalen · 2017-02-20T17:31:28+00:00

How old?

Title	Helicopter Parents
Author	AlphaK1
Upvotes	1
Comments	7
Date	February 20, 2017 5:29 PM UTC (9 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/askTRP
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/asktrp/comments/5v5ut2/helicopter_parents/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/askTRP/helicopter-parents.82932 https://theredarchive.com/post/82932

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