Whipped Friends

A lot of talk about Asian friends. I might as well chime in. -_-;;

I don't want to lay a stereotype blanket on Asians, but when I was at university, about 75% of my friends were Asian, and I was saddened when they would get calls on their cell phones from their PARENTS, asking them what they're doing and telling them that they should go study instead. It was that extreme with many of them, but others carried on their study habits without their parents there, and were very introverted and anti-social because they were constantly cramming.

I tend to think that those who have so much work and responsibility at a young age tend to rebel as teens, but I think the same people will do better for their kids and try to give them a childhood. Then there are those that just stick with it and don't know what they're missing.

Being an asian as described, I thought I'd say something. In my own personal case it's not really the parents forcing me to stay home or anything. Sometimes I liek to stay home and eat with the family, sometimes its cool to go out and eat with friends. Its about balance for me. If you look at it from the parents view, its great the kids are getting jobs (job exp, which is hard to come by as you grow up) and great they're learning stuff, but that doesn't take up all their time. You can hang out on weekend, weeknights, after dinner etc.

But yeah, reading about your parent's friends...ouch. But really, if you try to intervene...

1.(if you do it to the parents) the parents will hate you and therefore never let you hang out around your friends. (beware of ticking off 1 asian mom...asian moms are dangerous, they band together once they have a common goal, gossip and finally take over).


A simple way of getting the parents to let go, is getting your friends to move into residence or an off-campus house. Sure, the first couple of weeks it'll be phone calls every day: oh what did you eat for lunch? what are you doing? etc. but eventually the parents learn to relax. your friends will have the freedom to choose between chilling and studying.

It's better to not have your friends snap though, one of my buddies is totally hateful towards his mom, and I feel pretty bad for her. Sympatize with the parents.
2.(if you get your friends to do it) two things can happen. Some asian parents will understand what the kid's getting at and will loosen up. Don't expect it to be completely lax but yeah. Other case is the parents will freak out and rant about how they're paying for their education but its the kid's future they're worried about etc etc. Therefore causing more conflict between parent and child and will generate tougher rules.