Shard

The fortunate thing is that as soon as behaviour stablises, the rose tinted specs fall back into place. But I know exactly what you mean by not imagining it getting any worse. We couldn't even resort to coal because, apparently, coal is good - I like coal !

Tirytory

Is that an answer for everything response?

Gozit

I agree that middle eastern/Asian kids seem to be "better behaved", but I don't agree with most Asian/ME parents parenting style. Most of those Asians/ME's are highly controlled as kids and by the time they are adults, they are still doing everything their parents tell them to so as not to "dishonour the family" or some BS like that. That's the kind of crap that most of those parents feed their kids and it fearmongers them into doing what everyone else says all the time, so by the time they are adults they don't know how to make decisions for themselves.

I can actually think of an example on this forum but won't name.

Shard

Well it's a different culture, innit. Every adult knows how to make decisions themselves, but some are just more conscientious than others.

Gozit

Yes, true, it is, but that's exactly like saying even though infant male circumcision is wrong its okay if Jews do it because "its their culture".

I wouldn't agree with you re all adults being capable of making decisions. Cultural or otherwise

Shard

Hardly the same at all. Once physical or mental abuse come into play, completely different story.

Gozit

Yes, but in this case, however miniscule, there is a mental abuse happening in some of the extreme* cases.

Case example:

Lucy isn't quite sure what she wants to do with her life. Her parents want her to go to medical school and become a doctor. She doesn't want to do that. She would rather go into something less demanding like journalism. Her parents threaten to effectively exclude her from their lives if she doesn't do as they ask. Its always been this way, be it with school, extracurricular activities, etc.

*Not all of them are like this but some are.

That was a very extreme case but I've seen on here an example of the case I described.

Shirtback

Re bolded: Yep. Yep. Yep.

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Oh, and re all those nice, well behaved Asian/ME teens? You should see some of them when they're not in the vicinity of their parents and "letting their hair down". It ain't pretty, & it's downright scary cleaning up after them .

Gozit

Yep. A strict parent only creates a sneaky child.

scrubbedexpat091

Teenagers annoy me, although as always there are exceptions. My sister was the worst teenager ever, even as a teen I could handle her attitude, I would never want to go back and live through that stage again...lol