[Anonymous]

This is a long post, but I would truly appreciate it if you could read all of it and tell me what you think about my problem.

Some background info: I am Korean, 17 y/o, male and I was born and raised in Korea. Immigrated to the UK when I was 8 years old, and resided here ever since. I live with one older sibling who goes to uni, and my mum who was born and raised in Korea. My mum and dad are not seperate, but my dad lives in Korea even though me, my older sibling and my mum live in the UK. GCSEs - 4A*,2A,4B ; AS-lvl - 4As.

Here is the argument that I have been having with my mum over the past few months or so:

My mum is patriotic. I am not, since I am someone who feels no sense of "belonging" to a particular culture, nationality, whatever - I see patriotism as being illogical so I don't feel the same way about my biological heritage if you will, as my mum does. This is the key difference that causes us to have an argument about the following subject -

She believes that I am a lazy, ignorant, self righteous, non-motivated, lacking in knowledge and common sense about life in general, and a hopeless case due to my supposed absence of understanding about the way of life of a typical, korean teenager like myself. She claims that Korean teenagers are outright opposite to me with respect to the characteristics that she accuse me of (and rightly so, because it is indeed true that Korean students work their ****ing ass in education - Korea has the highest student suicide rate in the world, and this is mainly due to the ridiculously high pressure from society for them to perform well in school - I am also aware of the extent to which parents go to in order to make their children succeed in school).

As a result, she believes that I am nowhere near as hard-working and solemn as a typical Korean student would be, which is used as the sole reason why I have failed in my uni application this year. I am reapplying this year, and she insists that with my attitude and my supposed lack of appreciation for my "fortunate" position that I'm in, I will just inevitable fail in my uni application.

All this makes absolutely no ****ing sense whatsoever, and I genuinely feel abused by her illogical criticism of me. One of her main criticism about me is this - I am very "fortunate" to be in the UK, where she says education is much more laid-back (I actually agree with her on this. Compared to Korea's attitude to education, the UK's is laid-back). Therefore, she punishes me for only achieving 4 A*s, 2 A's and 4 B's at GCSE - I am NOT kidding here folks; but what else can you expect from a patriotic, close-minded Korean mum?

According to her, my "poor and shocking" GCSE grades are due to my attitude to life and education (WTF?) - she believes that I am hugely underestimating the difficulty of competition and the ability to obtain a quality university place.

Whenever we have this exact argument as above, she utterly believes that her patriotic values are indisputable, and if I give a counter-argument or disagree with what she is saying, she is so ****ing stupid to just immediately reject it and my retaliation will further fuel her criticism and yelling at me for such lifestyle of mine.

So my question is this - is my mum right to say things like the above about me? Is it fair that I am compared to the Korean students in terms of the education lifestyle? Is there any truth in any of the thing she accuses me of? And do you think I should be subjected to the same treatment of pressure and competitive nature that is extant in Korea's society? I should also add that my Korean is not very fluent, so this is the pivot point for further criticisms that she has of me, particularly that I am putting in nowhere near as much effort to study the Korean language as Korean students do in learning English - and believe me, she didn't push me hard to do so when I was young, so I feel that she is getting mad at me for the inadequacies of her upbringing of me.

Furthermore, I should really add that she is acting like this as she is extremely disappointed in me by her expectations because she has taken me and my sibling to study in the UK and my dad is needing to live by himself in Korea, working full-time in order to financially support the whole family. Sure, this isn't a easy thing to do, but what the hell am I suppose to do about it? It was her decision, and she is essentially taking out the frustrations on me.

I look forward to your responses - because from my point of view, everything I have wrote above makes absolutely no ****ing sense, and it isn't something that I've heard other people having problems with. This is the direct result of what occurs when a patriotic, narrow-minded parent lives with her 17 y/o son, living in a foreign country since his childhood.

[AdvanceAndVanquish]

My first question would be why she took you to the UK in the first place.

[Ned's Bastard]

Time to dust off the back of your hand bro. Sounds like she could do with one or two.

[pshewitt1]

(Original post by Anonymous)
This is a long post, but I would truly appreciate it if you could read all of it and tell me what you think about my problem.

Some background info: I am Korean, 17 y/o, male and I was born and raised in Korea. Immigrated to the UK when I was 8 years old, and resided here ever since. I live with one older sibling who goes to uni, and my mum who was born and raised in Korea. My mum and dad are not seperate, but my dad lives in Korea even though me, my older sibling and my mum live in the UK. GCSEs - 4A*,2A,4B ; AS-lvl - 4As.

Here is the argument that I have been having with my mum over the past few months or so:

My mum is patriotic. I am not, since I am someone who feels no sense of "belonging" to a particular culture, nationality, whatever - I see patriotism as being illogical so I don't feel the same way about my biological heritage if you will, as my mum does. This is the key difference that causes us to have an argument about the following subject -

She believes that I am a lazy, ignorant, self righteous, non-motivated, lacking in knowledge and common sense about life in general, and a hopeless case due to my supposed absence of understanding about the way of life of a typical, korean teenager like myself. She claims that Korean teenagers are outright opposite to me with respect to the characteristics that she accuse me of (and rightly so, because it is indeed true that Korean students work their ****ing ass in education - Korea has the highest student suicide rate in the world, and this is mainly due to the ridiculously high pressure from society for them to perform well in school - I am also aware of the extent to which parents go to in order to make their children succeed in school).

As a result, she believes that I am nowhere near as hard-working and solemn as a typical Korean student would be, which is used as the sole reason why I have failed in my uni application this year. I am reapplying this year, and she insists that with my attitude and my supposed lack of appreciation for my "fortunate" position that I'm in, I will just inevitable fail in my uni application.

All this makes absolutely no ****ing sense whatsoever, and I genuinely feel abused by her illogical criticism of me. One of her main criticism about me is this - I am very "fortunate" to be in the UK, where she says education is much more laid-back (I actually agree with her on this. Compared to Korea's attitude to education, the UK's is laid-back). Therefore, she punishes me for only achieving 4 A*s, 2 A's and 4 B's at GCSE - I am NOT kidding here folks; but what else can you expect from a patriotic, close-minded Korean mum?

According to her, my "poor and shocking" GCSE grades are due to my attitude to life and education (WTF?) - she believes that I am hugely underestimating the difficulty of competition and the ability to obtain a quality university place.

Whenever we have this exact argument as above, she utterly believes that her patriotic values are indisputable, and if I give a counter-argument or disagree with what she is saying, she is so ****ing stupid to just immediately reject it and my retaliation will further fuel her criticism and yelling at me for such lifestyle of mine.

So my question is this - is my mum right to say things like the above about me? Is it fair that I am compared to the Korean students in terms of the education lifestyle? Is there any truth in any of the thing she accuses me of? And do you think I should be subjected to the same treatment of pressure and competitive nature that is extant in Korea's society? I should also add that my Korean is not very fluent, so this is the pivot point for further criticisms that she has of me, particularly that I am putting in nowhere near as much effort to study the Korean language as Korean students do in learning English - and believe me, she didn't push me hard to do so when I was young, so I feel that she is getting mad at me for the inadequacies of her upbringing of me.

Furthermore, I should really add that she is acting like this as she is extremely disappointed in me by her expectations because she has taken me and my sibling to study in the UK and my dad is needing to live by himself in Korea, working full-time in order to financially support the whole family. Sure, this isn't a easy thing to do, but what the hell am I suppose to do about it? It was her decision, and she is essentially taking out the frustrations on me.

I look forward to your responses - because from my point of view, everything I have wrote above makes absolutely no ****ing sense, and it isn't something that I've heard other people having problems with. This is the direct result of what occurs when a patriotic, narrow-minded parent lives with her 17 y/o son, living in a foreign country since his childhood.

narcissistic asain parents, I know your pain...

http://parrishmiller.com/narcissists.html
see if she fulfils all of that

[Nutty_Psychologist]

Wow.
Your grades are very good. What are you applying for?
I know you must feel really upset and frustrated but unfortunately that is the way she has been brought up, which sounds very different to here. But don't let that get you down because you sound very intelligent and I think you maybe have to have put some effort in to have got what you have! She sounds like she is under a lot of pressure herself, does she have any support from anyone as it must be difficult for her to be away from your dad, which may be why she is also being so hard on you.
It sounds like a very similar story to that of Aisan girls when they move to the UK and they live "a western way of life" and their parents have a very Eastern mentality and they find it diffiuclt to accept that they are choosing to live the life they are. Even though we'd think it was perfectly normal.

[farrow000]

Your grades are good and you can easily succeed with them, your mum needs to realise that this isn't Korea its the UK.

If she cares about you she would support no matter what, you could always show her this thread.

[screenager2004]

(Original post by Anonymous)
so I feel that she is getting mad at me for the inadequacies of her upbringing of me.

Nailed it.

Your grades are way above average, does she realise that? I don't understand how you've got 4A's and she's disappointed in your performance. Just keep repeating that over and over and over again and ask what the hell else she expected from you.

[mabrookes]

You're 17, did you skip a year in GCSE then? All we can say is no her criticism is not reasonable at all, but there is not much we can actually do to help you. Just grin and bear it until you get your own independence which will come someday soon. Maybe try and have a serious conversation with her, but be prepared to take the higher ground and walk away if it goes wrong, she will have a hard time attacking you about anything if you keep that up.