Essay about High Expectations

I shouldn’t be alive today. Yet this opportunity of having a second chance has taught me that I have a purpose in life. After being born premature because of the car wreck my mom was in, doctors strongly believed I wouldn’t make it over night. However, they were wrong; I survived to become an athlete, I was able to conquer depression, and I have the strength to become the first college graduate in my family.

Over the past 29 plus years of working in this school district as a teacher, vice principal, STEM coach, instructional coach, and Title 1 coordinator, I would have to say my involvement in Title 1 has had the steepest learning curve. In all of my other jobs, I was able to learn how to be a teacher, coach or administrator through university coursework and classes offered for credential renewal. However, being a Title 1 coordinator this year has put me in the “shoes of a new learner,” much like my former students where I feel as though my head may explode with all of my new knowledge. I would like to pass along my new learnings about Title 1 and why it is so important to the White Pine County School District.

Parenting played a big role in shaping the two boys lives. Having a parental mentor is important because they assist and guide children to take the right decisions about their lives. The author had his two parents at the beginning of his life. Also, the author’s parents, especially his mother, tried to raise him in an effective way wanting him to know the right from wrong at an early age. “No mommy loves you, like I love you, she just wants you to do the right thing” (Moore 11). This quote was a live example of the author’s life with his parents. It reflected the different ways his parents used to teach him “the right thing.” Though his mother was upset from his action toward his sister, his father

Another situation in society today is that kids are expected to follow in their parents footsteps. Some parents that own companies expect their children to take over one day without ever asking the child’s thoughts on the idea. An example of this situation is from the movie "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer". There is an elf named Hermey. Like all other elves in the North-Pole, Hermey is expected to make toys for all the children around the world. There is one problem; Hermey doesn't want to make toys. Hermey wants to be a dentist. After hearing this, the head elf gets very angry at Hermey. Hermey is known as a misfit due to his choice and he later runs away to not have to make toys anymore and to learn more about being a dentist. It is important to always ask your children what they think of certain things and what they want in life instead of just expecting or assuming what they want without their consent. Expectations put a lot of pressure on kids and it would just be easier on them to let them make their own decisions (but still guide them in the right path).

Whether you agree with Sigmund Freud, Alfred Adler, or Erik Erickson, theoretical approaches to human nature all agree that early childhood years play a major part of our conscious and unconscious decisions we make. For instance, even though both Wes Moore’s were brought up without a father in their home, the reality is that these absences meant something different to each of them. For Wes 1 his father died an unnecessary death due to lack of training of emergency personnel. He remembered his dad as being compassionate, loving, and kind. Wes 1 always knew that if given the choice, his father would have stood by him throughout his life. Wes 2, however, is left with negative fatherly feelings. In the three times they were together, his own father acted as though he didn’t recognize him. What’s worse is that Wes 2 knew that his dad didn’t want to know him, he chose to leave. That left not only a hole where there should have been a very important role model, it left rejection in its place. When Wes 1 was visiting Wes 2 in the jail and asked about the impact his father had on his life, the second Wes said, “Your father wasn’t there because he couldn’t be, my father wasn’t there because he chose not to be. We’re going to mourn their absence in different ways” (Moore page 3). Later in the chapter Wes 1 gets emotional thinking about how he misses his father. He was left,

Creating and overseeing a decent family relationship between a parent and their children is not simple. It is the parent’s responsibility to ensure that their children grow up in a nurturing environment. Daniel Wallace’s Big Fish explores the mythical life of Edward Bloom, a great man who lacks the realistic element of sharing his history and inner thoughts. He also has an egocentric personality which urges him to pursue his dreams instead of family; resulting in his failure as a father to his only son. In Wallace’s Big Fish, it elucidates Edward’s many errors that lead him to be the explanation as to why his relationship with his son is so conflicting.

Julie Lythcott-Haims explains to us all what a perfect child is; straight A student, fabulous test scores, gets homework done without parents asking them to do it… She has the right idea, the right mindset of a parent, every parent wants their child to succeed in life. The way that parents are parenting their children is messing them up. They don’t have a chance to become themselves, they are too focused on whether they did good on that test that they were stressing about for a week, they are too worried about getting the best grade to be able to get accepted into the biggest name colleges around. The parents become too consumed with hovering over their children making sure that they are doing flawlessly in school, the parents are directing their every single move they make. The children then began to think that their parents love comes from the good grades. Then they start making this checklist; Good grades, what they want to be when they grow up, get accepted into good colleges, great SAT scores, the right GPA, the jock of the sports team.

When they are leaving, the boy’s mother waves but the boy “like Lars, simply [lifts] his hand” (1). He follows Lars’s actions and suppresses his fear indicated by his fidgets. At the same time, the boy understands his father’s urge to create an exciting hunting experience for him, but “when they [turn] back for camp, the boy [feels] only relief” (16) because he does not need to pretend anymore. This means that he suppresses his real emotions when his father feels the frustration of finding no prey in order to meet his father’s expectations of a good hunter. Therefore, he conforms to the expectations of the adults by concealing his feelings and faking his

As they grow, all of the life choices and parenting styles the parent commits to interfere with how the child will develop as a person. With that being said, the father of the child might abuse the mother in front of the child every night when he comes home drunk. Consequently, the child might grow up believing it was okay to hit women. On the other hand, the parents could be raising the child perfectly but what they experience at school could abolish every life lesson that the parents had put before them. As the African proverb states, “It takes a village to raise a child”. No matter who enters the child’s life for any given time, it will affect who the child will become. In the book The Other Wes Moore, both Moore boys grew up in a town filled with violence and drugs. Even though both boys’ mothers raised them properly and gave them every care in the world, the environment that they grew up in paid its toll on both boys. As the other Wes Moore’s mother found out about his dealing with drugs, the first thing she asked herself was, “Who is to blame for this” (74). All of the people that influenced Wes; Tony, the neighborhood, the school system, and Wes’s friends flooded through his mother’s mind at that very moment. “She put them all on trial in her mind,” Moore writes (75). It is not just the mother or the parents who are raising the child, it is the entire village.

As we grow and become aware of ourselves as being distinct from others, we start to look for approval and acceptance outside of ourselves. Our locus of evaluation shifts from being internal to becoming external. Children need positive regard from important others in their life in order to develop positive self regard. Our conceptual construction of ourselves and the world around us is made up of the experiences we have with important others, as well as the beliefs handed down through family and community. Often they impose on us conditions of worth, as for example parents who only acknowledge a child if he/she brings good grades from school. The child learns to connect its worth to successful test scores since this is what will gain the approval of parents. The more we have to strive to gain the approval of others the stronger these conditions of worth that have been imposed on us become and the more we become distrustful of our own organismic experiencing. Yet it is believed that this is counterproductive for the individual as Rogers believed that the organism will naturally move in the direction of growth and self actualization. He maintained that the greater the unconditional positive regard of parents and fewer conditions of worth a child grows up with the greater the psychological adjustment.

The father and the boy have a co-dependant relationship. The boy is dependent on his father for survival, while the father lives to ensure the survival of the boy. When the boy asks “What would you do if I died?” The father responds with, “If you died I would want to die too” (McCarthy, 11). It is clear that his love for the child is what motivates him to do everything he can to ensure the boys survival. This motivates him to teach the boy strong morals and skills to help him live as a “good guy.” After finding and humiliating the thief that stole all their belongings, the father and son

The boy and the father have strong morals demonstrating a high level of authenticity, especially in a world where morality is extremely uncommon. To be ‘authentic’ means to genuinely be yourself. Although, as presented by Existentialism, one cannot be their true self until one has defined themselves. First, one must create their authentic selves, then they must live according to that (Varga). The father and the boy have strong principles to do what is right, even when their fellow survivors have completely abandoned morality altogether. At times, the father struggles with following said principles, however, he then justifies his actions which are purely for the safety of his son. This depicts that the father will do anything and everything to assure that the boy lives. The father expresses that “He knew only that the child was his warrant. He said: If he is not the word of God God never spoke” (5). When a man holds a knife to the son's neck, the father does not hesitate to kill him. Although this is

How does a child feel when their parents conceive destructive values and manipulative connotations? To any child a parent is the person that they look up to and in most cases look for encouragement. However, some parents tend to value destruction and their own self-gain more than the life of their child. Both William Faulkner’s “As I Lay Dying” and Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye” demonstrating a principle that when parents are bound to their twisted, manipulative, and even immoral values that their children will ultimately be the ones to pay the price as they either embrace the similar hollow values themselves or set out to fulfill their own desires through often times self-destructive means.

If a child’s parents don’t give them encouragement then the child can’t achieve their potential. Kids need to be motivated and reaching their potential will be easier because they believe in themselves. If the parent gives too much praise, then the motivating won’t mean anything because they think they are good enough already. People think that parents need to motivate while not giving too much. Other people may think that praise is a thing that parents should use as often as possible because they think their kids will benefit from it more greatly than giving them a certain amount of