Parents just don't understand

"Some parents could do more for their children by not doing so much for them."

Coming from a Chinese family, I’ve learned at an early age just how controlling parents are. Everything is like “you can’t do this, you can’t do that!” They are the law as long as we are still under their care. I remember one time when my siblings and I (we’re five by the way) wanted to go out for dinner because we didn’t like the food at home. When my brother approached my mom to tell her about what we talked about she simply said “no” and that was it. End of story. No buts, no ifs. Just like a monopoly market where there is only one seller but many buyers, and so the buyers have to go with whatever the seller imposes.

Seeing as how we only have one set of parents (grrrrrr. We’re not adopted! Haha.), and that our closest relatives live far away and working is definitely out of the picture given our very hectic schedules, we have no other source for our allowance. This may be related to another characteristic of monopoly power where there is only one product and no good substitutes.

We all know that monopoly markets are price makers. They get to dictate how high or how low prices should be since they are the only ones who can produce the product which is considered a need by the buyers. We can relate this to the kind of education our parents want us to have. Sounds familiar? Well it should because this is the all too popular fight we all have with mom and dad. For the longest time, my sister has been confused about what to take up in college, what school to go to, etc. It doesn’t help that my parents push her to take up medicine, which she doesn’t even like and in a school she’s not even familiar with. Their control over my sister proves to be non beneficial seeing as how this would make her dependent on them and not be able to decide on her own. But since education is one of our primary needs and it entails a lot of money which she can’t produce on her own, she has no choice but to follow their wishes.

Control over a certain thing is not always bad, especially if you’re the one controlling since you get the benefits. But too much of everything is never good. For one thing, if you control someone to the point of not letting them know themselves, it may be damaging to the person’s health and they will not grow as an individual. Also, this much power does not give room for improvement. Since controllers are so used to getting their way all the time, they feel that other people’s opinions do not matter anymore and because of this, they themselves will not grow.