Cynthia Wong

The parent is thinking differently.

My identity as a parent is very important.

If the child succeeds, then it shows that I'm also succeeding as a parent.

But if the child fails, then it's a reflection on my parental identity in a negative manner.

It is a lot of pressure.

And I think identity drives so much of our decisions.

We have professional identities, but one of the strongest identities is this parental identity.

I mean, they're literally a part of us.

And so we view them as an extension of the self.

So it's this idea of overachievement pressure.

You need to get those straight A's.

You need to become a lawyer or a doctor.

And it's this desire to put pressure on the kids to be perfect.

And you would think that that pressure is coming from, I want my child to succeed, but often it's a self-reflection of the parent.

It's the belief that if I can monitor things, nothing bad will happen.

And if you think about it, it is driven by fear.

It's fear of chaos.

It's fear of the unknown.

And a typical behavior you see from that is that you're going to overprotect.

You're going to be constantly checking the child.