For someone raised under the western parenting style this is something completely absurd, since this is not letting the kid have a “normal childhood”. The kid does not have the opportunity to do what he finds interesting and he does not enjoy his childhood to the fullest. If we define a good mother as someone who wants their child to be happy, Amy would be considered a horrible mother. Ever since Amy and Sophia were young they were forced by their mother to play an instrument. Most kids, rather play a sport or go outside and hang out with their friends but in this case they were had to practice the piano/violin so they could become the best of the best.
Through this metaphor Harwood insinuates that all of the woman’s passion has been lost through her obligation to household chores such as scouring out crusted milk. Another notable inclusion in the poem is two children that the woman has no control over as she is too busy chasing lost dreams. Her performances are not even worth listening to according to Rubinstein, presumably one of the children. In fact her performances are so mundane that they would rather “caper round a sprung mousetrap” than listen to her perform. As she wraps the dead mouse in a paper we are notified of the words “Tasty dishes from stale bread”, symbolic of her vain attempts to resurrect something that is already lost.
“Four Directions” Essay In “Four Directions,” Waverly is crippled by her mother Lindo’s criticism. Waverly cannot follow her desires because she is under the impression that her mother is trying to cause her harm. However, Waverly soon realizes that it is not because of her mother that she cannot follow her desires, but because of Waverly’s own lack of self-confidence and direction. When one lacks self-confidence, one is vulnerable to criticism and therefore loses one’s direction, becoming unable to follow one’s desires and to control one’s destiny. Without self-confidence, one is defenseless in the face of criticism, causing one to lose one’s direction.
Kat is a very strong, independant and opinionated person who never lets her opinions go to waste, whether they are aimed at her teachers or her fellow peers. She is against dating and often "sneers at the idiocy of teenage social life". She is cynical about many things, and does not believe that she needs to be like most teenagers that she is surrounded by. She says, “You forget I don’t care what other people think”, which directly shows us that she doesn't care for others opinions on her. She strongly dislikes her sister’s eagerness to fit in at school and tells Bianca, “You don’t always have to be what other people want you to be”, which shows us that she thinks Bianca should be herself and not follow in the path that her fellow school mates take.
She had no confidence in her mother growing up, and saw her as a “limit” and an “embarrassment”. Later in Tan’s life, she found several surveys which led her to realize that she was not alone; there were other Asian-Americans who may have shared the same struggles as her. Tan creates a symbolic diction through the use of words like “broken”, “limited”, and “fractured”. She is very repetitive with her use of these words, although she explains how she hated when people described her mother’s english that way. Although Tan knows that the way her and her mother converse is not grammatically correct, she has grown to love it.
As she refuses to talk to anybody, the child created her own imaginary world being unwilling to look at the reality: “Why couldn't he understand that if he kept quiet, if all of them kept quiet, her parents would hear her and come to take her home?” (47). Through the story, her illusion state changes and tend to become a realistic one. Step by step she has no choice but to find in herself enough courage to accept and to surpass the situation. Nandana can be considered a hero because, as it painful, she finally accepts and begins to talk. Secondly, there's Nirmala, Nandana's grandmother, who was binged back to reality.
For most parents and their little girls it is just good fun. They do not take the beauty pageants seriously. For a few parents the beauty pageants become an obsession. This is when beauty pageants for children can suddenly become very harmful. “Critics of the industry warn that the stresses of competition, coupled with an extreme focus on physical appearance, can have a negative effect long before these girls will be eligible for Miss America.” (Triggs, West and Aradillas 160-168) The loss of self-esteem, the inability to show a full range of emotions, the fear of failure, the extreme focus on physical image, and the discord with or fear of parents are a few of the symptoms those little girls will suffer from.
However, because reader are learning all of the information from her, reader never truly understand why the mother is pushing her daughter so hard to be something she clearly does not want to be. Readers are given very little information about her life or culture in China before she came to the United States. Therefore, the mother comes across as harsh and cruel. When the mother says, "Only one kind of daughter can live in this house. Obedient daughter," the mother seems inflexible, stubborn and even a bit abusive.
She never leaves her house, mostly because her husband is afraid of the way people talk. It really is not her fault she was the way she was; it is mostly Torvald's fault for spoiling her. Nora relies on Torvald for everything much like a puppet that is dependent on its puppet master for all of its actions. The beginning of the story depicts Nora as a woman who is totally submissive and subservient to her husband. She seems too fragile and weak to make any decisions on her own.
Also, Sammy’s parents keep nagged and complained but did not concern about why she had unsatisfactory results on academic aspect. Sammy becomes rebellious because the criticism of the parents, that had produced lots of conflicts in the family relationship. Therefore, there was a conversation problem between them, which make they not understand each other. Lack of self-understanding Sammy did not know her personal identity and what she likes. These were the symptoms that appeared in Erikson’s (1963) eight psychosocial stages, which describes the impact of social experience across the whole lifespan.