If you are from a middle-class family in Asia, the possibility of you going abroad to further your studies is huge. Oftentimes, Asian parents would ask their children, who are abroad, to combine the East with the West in all aspects of life, because, according to them, a combination as such will surely give their children a competitive edge over many others. Although I don’t disagree a bit with this opinion of the parents; however, I do think that a task as such does require the efforts of not only the children, but also the parents.

Nothing stays stagnant. If you expect the reality to be otherwise, then you are destined to be disappointed. Unfortunately, for many Asian parents, their rigidity firmly rooted in their own cultural traditions and customs sets themselves up for the inevitable disappointments and conflicts in communicating with their foreign-educated children.

The clash of opinions, habits, world views and philosophies is inevitable in the case, where the parents still treat and demand their kids to do things as if when they were babies, before being exposed to and influenced by a different way of being and living. A lack of willingness on the part of the parents to let what is considered to be traditional evolve is the first step towards creating familial estrangement, a sad yet true reality.