It All Comes Back to Childhood. There are two widely accepted tropes in…
By: Dea Wang
Tags: Life Lessons, Parenting, Family, Psychology, Immigration

It All Comes Back to Childhood

There are two widely accepted tropes in childhood upbringing. One, “I had the most loving parents who supported me through everything”. Two, “My parents were naysayers and disapproved of every decision I made”. In reality, all of our parents fall somewhere in between.

Illustration of villagers celebrating Winter Solstice to mark the start of winter.

From an outsider’s point of view, I had the ideal nuclear family. I would simply call it, a functional one. Working, responsible parents; studious, polite child. It wasn’t broken, nor reconstructed. Behind closed doors we all love to hate. I can be as critical as I want, but I’m the first one up in arms when an outsider dares to comment.

As a child, my parents instilled a lot of confidence and blind faith in me. They were ahead of the curve when it came to grooming my teachers. My mom would pass on her department store vouchers to my homeroom teacher. I didn’t know why I was selected to watch over the class on the first day of kindergarten, when the teacher briefly stepped out, but I felt special and liked for simply being me. I also had discreet enough teachers where I didn’t find out about my mother’s doings until I was much older and had already formed a self-identity.

As an adolescent, I was bestowed endless freedom. I was naturally inclined to learning, diligent in keeping up with school. As long as I gave things my best try, up until that point, it always proved to be more than enough. They stopped asking for my report cards in middle school.

To counteract the praise I received, my parents began picking imaginary battles for me. There was always some child in their social circle that exceeded in some aspect over me. I had enemies to retaliate against, and comparisons to feel less than. Endless psychology studies have shown this never works. They never came around in their thinking. The residual effects means today I like to remind myself to disengage in measuring based on competition.

As the focus on school shifted from education to job search, the criticism shifted to my personality and character. An analogy commonly used in Chinese culture for child raising, is sanding down the edges and pruning wayward branches of a stealthy tree. Outwardly, I was confident, verging on haughty, but inside my insecurities and doubts seeded themselves like never before.

I struggled because I didn’t share my struggles. I assumed I was lonesome in my unworthiness, because the pond had gotten bigger and I couldn’t keep up. It didn’t feel satisfying to move up the rungs of the social ladder. I was more terrified of losing my footing and falling off. Failure was never discussed in my household. I didn’t achieve every goal, no one does, but I never accepted it as failure. Instead, I forced myself to escape from the guttural feeling of defeat. With every new life challenge, I felt there was less to gain and more to lose.

Professional life taught me monotony. The communications with my family lessened to a few hours a week and I began filtering what I shared. I painted a version of myself for them that incited the least conflict. Subconsciously, they knew, but both parties chose to believe the imagery if it meant we can escape confrontations a little longer.

My parents’ relationship with one another is not something I try to apprehend. Personally, it looks self-destructive. It has evolved many times over the past thirty years, due to changing geographies and circumstances. If I can be certain of one thing, it is that their partnership today would look very different had they not immigrated to Canada. My viewpoint on this matter is subjective, and could be a contorted version of their true experience.

It has, however, affected me greatly in how I view familial ties, romantic ties, and friendships; basically all relationships. It has been for many years, a pointless discussion to me. They are reluctant to accept their mistakes, and my proactiveness in avoiding those same mistakes often made them feel slighted. But c’est ma vie, and regardless of the number of times my parents concur with that statement, their actions prove otherwise.