Be it the pampering or the ones high on discipline, all parents do have one thing in common. They nurture some common expectations from their children, no matter how grown up or young they may be. They invest all their time, money and life in bringing up their kids. Having put in so much of patience and love in nurturing something, it becomes natural to expect a good result out of it. Defining the good here is not as easy a task as it seems to be. The term is all-inclusive, be it from the perspective of morals, career, academics etc. Only a parent hones the talent of actually being able to write a long descriptive essay on what s/he expects of her/his kids. However, here I would be trying to make a feeble attempt to jot down some of those quite common expectations that every parent has from his or her child.
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Clean Room
They all love clean rooms, even the living room and the dining room. The least that is expected out of you is to keep your bedroom spic and span. That would require you to keep your bookshelf, dressing table, closet, study table, bedsheets, in short anything and everything in your immediate vicinity in complete order. No matter whether it is a Sunday or you come back home on a vacation, this is one thing that would go unaltered for years and years to come.
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Cooking
Of course, they don’t expect you to cook elaborate delicacies in order to impress a guest or some relatives. But, yes they want you to learn to cook at least the simple recipes with ease so that you are able to sustain yourself when living someplace else. You have to know how to prepare simple rice and pulse, sandwiches as well as tea. These are nothing but the stepping stones to honing your life sustaining culinary skills. And the one remark that makes any kid spring up on his feet and go prepare something edible is, “Do you expect me to be around forever for that will not happen! I will die someday.” Mothers know how to pull this one.
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Academics
No child has ever been able to doge this one. Whether they came out with flying colors is all together a separate matter. What sort of parents don’t love being praised in parents-teacher meeting for having done an praise worthy job given the fact that their child is excelling in studies? It makes them feel proud and overwhelmed seeing the outstanding performance of their ward. Obviously, parents won’t entertain the fact that you flunk an exam or god forbid a complete year. There is reprimanding for everything nowadays.
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Career
Parents very lovingly invest their money in you for as long as eighteen or twenty years. They need to see you stand on your own feet, being capable enough to support yourself financially. They would do everything in their power to make you realize the value of money and start respecting it. And that becomes possible only when you get a real job and a career to look after. Their motive behind inclining you to have a promising career is not to make you earn good money but to make you realize the value and significance of money and how hard is it to earn and sustain oneself.
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Respect the elders in family
Be it a long distant cousin or some maternal uncle that you have never met before, parents do expect you to follow some code of conduct and social etiquette. The biggest element here becomes respecting every elder in the family. You are required to be soft spoken and courteous to everyone around, without hurting the sentiments of your near and dear ones. There is no way in the world that you would escape a long lecture in the light of being rude to any of the family members. Elders are always right.
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Have a good partner
Parents expect their kids to have a good life partner, after all, it would be that one person with whom their child has to spend the rest of the life with. They expect you to get settled at a decent marriageable age with someone who is comfortably settled in life and would not become a financial burden. Choosing who to marry is a decision that most parents are leaving upon their kids nowadays, finding it sensible that it is their kid’s life and she or he deserves to make the choice. But, parents still and always would hold the power to approve or disapprove of your choice.
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Avoid bad company
Parents with great efforts try and inculcate the basic yet imperative understanding of good and evil in you. Since the beginning of their parenthood, they would help their kids in understanding who is good or bad for them. They need you to make a sensible and safe choice while picking up your friends at school or becoming a part of a friend circle. It is the circle of people or the company that one lives and breathes with, which determines what sort of a person would s/he gradually become into. Also, parents have strong ability to identify our foul friends long before we are able to.
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Helping with the house chores
Sitting absolutely idle is just not an option. Mothers make sure that being a part of the household children are active contributors in helping of the daily chores. They demand of you to get yourself up from the lazy to an active mode and help with the laundry, dishes or the dusting. As long as you are breathing under her nose, you will have to succumb to that expectation of hers. There is absolutely no way out.
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To be healthy
They’d try their best to keep you healthy. The several shots that you got as an infant including the emergency visits to the doctor every time you had diarrhea or prolonged fever, is a simple sign of how much they love you and cannot stand seeing you in pain. They need you to learn to take good care of yourself so that as and when they are not around you know how to keep yourself sound.
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Happiness
The biggest and the most important thing that every parent wishes and prays deeply for is the happiness of their kids. Every tear that you shed pierces their heart and they make every possible attempt to see that gleaming smile on your face again. Even if you are a married person with kids of your own, your parents would never stop fretting over your tensions and would give incredible detailed advices to get you out of it.
Sometimes parents might be going over the top when it comes to expectations from their kids and a little relaxation in the same would not bring any harm.