{"id":118,"date":"2008-01-25T08:31:50","date_gmt":"2008-01-25T00:31:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chekyang.com\/musings\/?p=118"},"modified":"2010-05-17T13:04:21","modified_gmt":"2010-05-17T05:04:21","slug":"meet-the-parents","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/2008\/01\/25\/meet-the-parents\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet the Parents"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>One of the most delightful movies about marriage of recent years, and the moreso as it deals with a topic that didn\u2019t get much attention then, is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0212338\/\">Meet the Parents<\/a>, starring Robert De Niro and Ben Stiller. The story there revolves around an engaged couple with Ben Stiller starring as the nervous fiance who has to meet his fiancee\u2019s parents, and Bob De Niro playing an almost impossible-to-please potential father-in-law who just so happens to be a highly experienced if recently retired CIA agent trained in espionage.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" id=\"image438\" src=\"https:\/\/chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/01\/blog-wow.jpg\" alt=\"blog-wow.jpg\" align=\"right\" \/>Truth to tell, I\u2019m not big on meeting parents myself, and these days, it\u2019s oriented around meeting the parents of my students<a href=\"http:\/\/www.streetdirectory.com\/asia_travel\/search\/searchredirect.php?linkid=93512&amp;travel_id=16123&amp;travel_site=84135\" target=\"_blank\"><\/a>. Come to think of it, if the students had a say in it, they wouldn\u2019t want their parents to meet their teachers either! The problem typically begins when the student hasn\u2019t done too well. That\u2019s when parents ask some of the toughest questions about their kids, as it becomes  a toss-up between these two rules:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\u201cBe honest with the parents.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>\u201cBe sympathetic to the student.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>And that\u2019s where the problem lies, because while those two rules aren\u2019t mutually exclusive, it\u2019s not easy to straddle between the two, and deliver the package in as diplomatic a fashion as one can.<\/p>\n<p>I gave a lecture on gaming addiction during the recent Parents\u2019 Seminar held at my faculty last weekend, and several parents approached thereafter to follow up on further queries. Now that was quite a situation, as while the amount of hours kids can spend on say <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/World_of_warcraft\">World of Warcraft<\/a> is no laughing matter, I can on the other hand also empathize with how difficult it is to wean oneself off those games. And that\u2019s come about largely from my perspective of having established and run raiding guilds in these games. Involvement in a high-level and\/or raiding guild isn\u2019t a trivial matter, and exacting in both social and competitive expectations when it comes to participation and administration. And I\u2019m positively certain my Missouri bud, Matt, will back me up on this! The stories we could tell about running guilds over the years\u2026<\/p>\n<p>Moreover, there\u2019s also this little contradiction in terms: how do you advise parents on their kids playing games when they\u2019re studying in a course that encourages its students to play games? OK, so there\u2019s a qualifier in the latter: the course encourages students to play a <em><strong>variety<\/strong><\/em> of games. But then again, one could say that\u2019s splitting hairs.<\/p>\n<p>That said, it\u2019s easy to meet parents whose son or daughter have done well. Heck, it\u2019s immense joy even. The parents beam with pride, the kids glow, and you feel good. Like say for this girl in one of my classes who while isn\u2019t the top performer in her class, has tried very hard and done well still. One of my colleagues at the faculty, has another perspective of meeting parents, and her <a href=\"http:\/\/cherrythian.com\/a-heart-breaking-session\/\">entry<\/a> is a heartfelt read.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of the most delightful movies about marriage of recent years, and the moreso as it deals with a topic that didn\u2019t get much attention then, is Meet the Parents, starring Robert De Niro and Ben Stiller. The story there<\/p>\n<div class=\"entry-read-more\"><a class=\"read-more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/2008\/01\/25\/meet-the-parents\/\">Read More<span class=\"cleanwp-sr-only\">  Meet the Parents<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[180],"class_list":["post-118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-recipes","tag-gaming","wpcat-14-id"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=118"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}