Meet the Parents

One of the most delightful movies about marriage of recent years, and the moreso as it deals with a topic that didn’t get much attention then, is Meet the Parents, 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’s 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.

Truth to tell, I’m not big on meeting parents myself, and these days, it’s oriented around meeting the parents of my students. Come to think of it, if the students had a say in it, they wouldn’t want their parents to meet their teachers either! The problem typically begins when the student hasn’t done too well. That’s when parents ask some of the toughest questions about their kids, as it becomes a toss-up between these two rules:

• “Be honest with the parents.”
• “Be sympathetic to the student.”

And that’s where the problem lies, because while those two rules aren’t mutually exclusive, it’s not easy to straddle between the two, and deliver the package in as diplomatic a fashion as one can.

I gave a lecture on gaming addiction during the recent Parents’ 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 World of Warcraft 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’s 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’t a trivial matter, and exacting in both social and competitive expectations when it comes to participation and administration. And I’m positively certain my Missouri bud, Matt, will back me up on this! The stories we could tell about running guilds over the years…

Moreover, there’s also this little contradiction in terms: how do you advise parents on their kids playing games when they’re studying in a course that encourages its students to play games? OK, so there’s a qualifier in the latter: the course encourages students to play a variety of games. But then again, one could say that’s splitting hairs.

That said, it’s easy to meet parents whose son or daughter have done well. Heck, it’s 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’t 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 entry is a heartfelt read.