Graduation Speech: Immigrant Parents

A year or so ago, I sought advice from my lovely daughter about the best way to address our concerns and make positive impact on our son’s life, who is at his teen now. My daughter, heartily explained what I could do right to guide my son and where I could go wrong, as she had have experienced during her teen age. I am so glad that I had the conversation, it made me realize that we (the immigrant parents) are further apart in our upbringing than that of our first generation children, it is literally an ocean apart than one could imagine. These differences could not only stir up annoyance but can also become a major cause of frustration due to the communication gap that exists within us.
Despite being mostly assimilated into the American culture and society, as an immigrant, we are still unwittingly guarding many of our inherited culture, religion and social values that we have learned while growing up. We, the parents tend to forget that our ethnicity and identity had a profound impact on our thought process and behavior, we tend to ignore that we have brought forward our parent’s value and social norms, and subconsciously trying to pass those to our children. Our definition of achieving success and gaining financial independence often do not coincide with that of the first …show more content…
The first and the most important step toward bridging the generational and cultural gap is to recognize that we both are living in the same society but with an inherently different perspective. However, we can still pause, listen, and respond with love, despite many differences both teens and parents still can talk the talk and walk the walk together. Secondly, never ever compare, rather respect the fact that time has changed, even though the fundamental principle of growing up has