Welcome back, guys! Today’s topic is Parent-Child Relationships and what they should mean to everyone. Parents work hard to provide us with everything we need and the poems toward the end were a real eye-opener, such as Those Winter Sundays,about how we all treat our parents. I have a job and now that I spend my own money and such, I see how expensive everything is. Even simple things cost a lot, depending on what quality you want. I think about all the times in my childhood where I would be upset with something because I didn’t have it or I’d throw away food that could’ve been eaten by someone else. The revelation has come to me. I am/was a brat. Our parents work hard to provide us with food, shelter, and the clothes on our back and we need to understand that we need to appreciate them more for what they do. When reading about how hard some families have it and it makes me grateful for the many opportunities that I have, as well as my family.

In addition to that mini-lesson, I’d like to take a moment to reflect on a few of the short stories that I didn’t mention in my paper. I’d like to say for the record, that Tillie Olsen needed to talk to her daughter and fix things before she got a PHONE CALL about it because someone else was more concerned. It’s crazy how she couldn’t be bothered with her daughter. As someone who has bumped heads and has been distant from my mom, I know how important communication is in a parent-child relationship. These are lessons we expect older people to understand, but sometimes they don’t and many children need to realize communication is a two way street. I am sure that if the mother and daughter had more meaningful conversations, the mother wouldn’t feel so lost when being asked about hr daughter. Yes, kids take on their own lives, but the parent needs to be aware of what’s happening in most of it, as long as they are still a child. I think this is something many people can relate too. I know everyone has their own set of special issues with their parents. But, as a family, we need to learn to help or at least recognize these issues.

To wrap it up in total, there were many great lessons and even things that made me self-reflect on my relationships with each of my parents. You know the saying about how everyone is like a snowflake? Well, each parent-child relationship is like one also. They each come with their own sets of problems, but they also come with their own sets of positive things too. We just have to take the good times with the bad and make the most out of the situations. I can relate that to Two Kinds,  Jing-Mei took the bad with the good, not in the most positive way but she still did it. After having all those bad times with her mother, she found who she was and who she didn’t want to be. If her mother was absent and didn’t have her striving, she wouldn’t have failed at different things and learn different aspects and attributes about herself. Our parents are our biggest contributors to who we are and who we become, whether we realize it or not. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

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