Why do I have this problem/skill/charateristic? Let me trace back decades ago to find the answer

This post noted what I discussed with my mother when she was disappointed by my sister’s words. It seems similar to cause-effect in short-term context, but it refers to a longer-term dependence of what people experienced and what people have today! Okay, let’s go.

I have no wish to reveal any info about my family here, but I will try my best to provide the most necessary info to make my point.

The story began when my mother accidentally read my sister’s diary. My mother found a notebook in the bookshelf, and as getting bored of having nothing to do, she read through all the pages of the notebook. She soon realized that it’s my sister’s diary. Even though it’s not long (and not the main diary of my sister), it does note critical moments of her life, e.g when she started struggling to communicate with our dad and mom, or when she had a temporary conflict with my mom during the time being at home. My mother, as usual, show a deep disappointment as she thought my sister looked down to her. She questioned why my sister has such a negative view to her so-called obsession of money management, and attributed it to my sister’s education (“càng học càng láo”). She also compared my sister with other girls in neighbor area that they are gentle, caring about their parents, while my sister is more aggressive and detached from our parents.

I, standing as a little-boy arbitrator in my family, started to unveil the situation step by step to defend my sister in front of my mom. Please assume the following: 1. our characters are mainly formed during childhood and teenage, and 2. it’s very difficult to change a person’s characteristics unless the person undergoes a critical (and likely about failure) moment. That’s to say, you may argue why don’t my mom and sister learn to change their minds to better understand each other, but I would argue back that it’s very difficult. I already drew an eventuality graph to demonstrate my point. In the following paragraph, I just give more details (if any) about each of these events.

1. Why my sister seems to be aggressive (in comparing to other girls)? My mom put a lot of pressure on her at her young age, as my mom desired to raise us as good students (“nuôi dạy con học giỏi”). She was the first child of the family, thus as pointed out by theories about family, she received a lot of supervision from my parents (and more than what I received). It served as extra pressure on her. The pressure consistently lasts long, in addition, she underwent ‘sibling pressure’ as I won a lot of prizes in district- and province-level competitions (a result of my mon’s desire). Thus, she has to be aggressive to ‘survive’ in this family, i.e stands stills and find her unique value (and yes, she did it!). Nonetheless, my mom now wants her to be easy-going, but of course, nothing changes.

2. Why my sister seems detached from our parents (again, in comparing to other girls)? There are several contributing factors, including general factors like generation gap and innovation dilemma (i). But, what I want to stress on is my mother’s obsession of money management. Note that it’s different from the desire to be rich, and different from terminologies in business. My mom often talks about money, e.g doing this or that is expensive and not worthy, some people she know earn a lot of money, and especially my sister even though approaching the age of 30 but still uses money of my parents for her education. Indeed, my sister was obsessed by the attitude of my parents when she asked for money, and strived to have a job during PhD (but unfortunately she failed to do so). No wonder how pressured she feels when my mom talks about her financial problem. Also, as mentioned above, she was pressured as a first child in a family, thus she grows to be more independent than other girls. All of that makes her less attached to her family than other girls.

3. Why my mom desired to raise us as good students? To be honest, all the data that I had is that, two of my cousins who are son and daughter of the oldest uncle in the father side were good students. Thus my mom dreamed to have us study well as my cousins.

4. Why money obsesses my mom so much? It’s a sad story. The childhood of my mom is hard, she was malnourished (“đói khổ”) due to the poorness of her family. Although at that time our country just stepped out of the war and almost everyone is poor, my mom’s family was exceptionally poor, so that she - at the age of 8 - stood in front of all family members, cried, and yelled at my grandpa that if she had been the pillar of this family, she would not let them fall into starvation as happened. When she told me these stories, she cried again. I can feel how hard that time was for her, and understand her strong will of leading her family (as a child or as parent) and her obsession of money management.

5. Why my mom’s family was exceptionally poor? Now we dig deep into my family story. My grandpa, as the pillar of the family, in fact was incapable of carrying the family finance (ii). He was not decisive, thus even though sometimes he successfully raised a cattle, he could not sell it due to the opinion conflict in the family. He was also unfortunate and lacking the sense of business, so almost all of his work did not pay him back. I attribute that incapability to his childhood. He was pampered (“nuông chiều”) in the first 20 years of his life, as he was the only son in a middle-rich feudal family. That hindered his maturity, making him lack of skills and characteristics to lead a big family.

(i) Innovation dilemma: the concept termed by me. It is similar to generation gap, but it stresses on the gap due to social changes which originates from innovation. That is, our parents’ generation contributed to our country’s development and innovation, we were born in a better condition thanks to the development, but due to that, we and our parents’ generation have different perspectives. If our parents’ generation want to understand our generation, they need to spend extra effort. It is similar to kicking a ball and have to run to follow it.

(ii) The story about my grandpa was told by my mom. I have no intention to offend him, and deeply apologize him if my words unexpectedly offends him.

There are more aspects that can be discussed, more stories to tell. However, I stopped here as it already makes my point. If you read to this paragraph, you may forget what is the original event that stemmed all of this discussion. Let me recall it: my mom’s disappointment of my sister’s characteristics. Yet, what I try to say from the discussion is that my sister actually just has a little degree of freedom to control her life. Her life is shaped by thousands of events in the past which happened even far before her birth, thus, my family should sympathize with my sister’s personality and look at the positive side (same for my mom). I try to defend her in front of my mom, as I observe the causal relation. And I try to unveil that relation, as I learned this kind of observation from my sister. Ya, it’s pretty funny that if my sister is as “normal” in the eyes of my mom as other girls, she may not study family education and I may not know from her such kind of observation to connect things in the family history. Okay, that’s enough about my family. How about you and your family?