Are you building a dream or a shell for your child?

This is one of the lines that is getting viral recently through a Vietnamese movie that was screened during the last Lunar New Year, and it “accidentally” expresses the inner thoughts of most children in many modern families.

When I read the movie’s reviews, this quote from the main actress also evoked many intertwined thoughts in my heart. I thought about my childhood, my friends, my acquaintances, especially my dear daughter who is going through puberty.

My daughter once told me: “I would love to be a person like you, to be able to dress well, to talk as inspirational as you, and to help others in the same way you have been and are doing.”

When that statement came out from my girl’s mouth, you probably thought I would be very happy and satisfied because I would then have “descendants” who I could educate and impart my knowledge with, right?

To be fair, I did feel happy, but I understand that what she liked and was aiming for is just the feeling of being respected, admired, and loved by everyone. Her wish did not come from her passion and dream itself. All the acts that deep inside that little heart intended to do in the future are just simply because she likes the feeling of being admired, similar to how her mother is being treated. Furthermore, this is also one of the common mistakes of many young people: thinking that it is their real hobby and passion.

Unlike other parents, I do not long to continue pushing my child to follow my path. I only tell her that: “You will never succeed or become the person you want to be if you do not have your dreams, the discipline, and the effort to learn and improve yourself every day.”

In the movie above, the female protagonist, who is named Ngoc Nhi, is also a person who could not live by her dream. When her mother – a grumpy woman who was once betrayed, and financially burdened with the responsibility of providing for her whole family, always forbade her to love and even extinguished her daughter’s dream of becoming a ceramic artist, forcing her to follow the Finance and Banking field to which later in the future, give her a hand in running the family business. To make it worse, ever since her childhood, Nhi even could not arrange her undergarments following her preferences. Everything, from eating to studying, the youngest girl in the family must obey her mother’s arrangement.

As a result, after many petty quarrels with her mother which extended the distance between them, the girl sneaked behind her mother and got involved in a relationship with a young overseas Vietnamese who had just returned to the country, only for her to get pregnant, run away and live with her boyfriend. Since then, Nhi’s life began to be covered with bitterness, surprises, and heartbreaks that she had never been warned about.

How do you feel after hearing such a “life-expressed” story from this movie?

• Is the situation in the movie something that you or I have encountered in real life?
• Were you, at some stage in your life, used to be “Ngoc Nhi”?
• Were you, again, guiding your children to follow the path you have planned out or the path that you thought would be good for them?
• Are you so worried to the point you want to share many life experiences with your child yet each time educating them would always result in negative emotions, anger, or intense dissents?
• …

In my opinion, I would never want my children to become the exact “copy” of their parents, because I know that they always have excellent features that they can naturally shine only when they are themselves, thus not everyone can imitate those features of them. On the contrary, children may admire and love the life perspectives of their parents or a certain role model that they know, but sometimes it is doubtful that their skills – personalities, and abilities are truly suitable to “imitate” the original!

I know there are a lot of parents out there who always want their children to one day become like them, to have the same job as them, or even to have the same social status as they used to have. Many people do not even accept the fact that their child does have weaknesses!

It is truly unfair to children as they did not ask to be born, they could not choose the circumstances they are born in, nor could they choose their parents. That is why the least we can do for them is when in their younger years, children ought to be allowed to use the right of choosing their dreams, the right to do what they like, and the right of experiencing, making mistakes, and failing in new things throughout their lives!

Dear friend, we adults often think that we are the ones who have gone through, stumbled, and experienced everything before, so children must follow our instructions or desires, so they can turn out to be useful for society and be successful.

But my friend, if our children are not allowed to choose, to try things on their own, they will forever be all brawn and no brain, acting immature when encountering real life, or they will not be able to decide anything for themselves throughout their whole lives. Instead, they would rely on many other people. It will be difficult for your child to grow up, to be mature, to know how to take responsibility, and most importantly to run the life they want!

Using the name of love and understanding, the parents who often “shut their children’s dreams down”, are also the ones who build up those shells that their children snuggle up and live in their day by day, becoming an unconfident person who is isolated from the world while gradually losing relationships, close connections surrounding. Sometimes, you are not even aware of that process.

However, there was a time when I witnessed a case where the parents themselves could not accept that their child was a part of the LGBT community. They did not want him to live with his real sexual orientation, so they always tried to threaten or manipulate his thoughts about the fact that an LGBT is not accepted in this society, and LGBT is rubbish, etc. Since then, that child has had to live a truly miserable life when he could not be himself, surreptitiously living with his true nature, his true self behind his parents’ backs. Even worse, the child soon became spoiled and ended up becoming a person with distorted thoughts about intercourses.

It is pitiful if your child is in that situation, is it not?

Each of us, as parents, is only a person who is orienting our children. We cannot play the role of guiding angels to them as the path we take will be different from the path our children choose to take. The time we begin our life is different from the era of time when our children develop, the world we are experiencing is also not the same as what children nowadays are viewing through their perspectives.

Therefore, the best thing parents can do is to stand by, hold their children’s hands, listen, and encourage them to overcome the drawbacks and hard times in life. Our mission is to educate, to raise the kids, not to participate recklessly in your child’s life!

I hope that every Truly Inspired reader and client will become more aware to be able to understand and show concerns or empathy towards their children on the journey of experiencing their lives. May you always be happy and peaceful to also create peaceful and happy children!

Much love,

Truly Inspired