Yesterday, while taking our evening walk out in the neighborhood, my daughter and I talked about parents’ expectations of their children. Nearly everybody said something to this effect about the expectation of a relative of ours for her child — hers being too high for him. Nearly everybody is worried his/her head off about her because she works so hard to push her child up. Life’s so tough for her. It is like climbing a very steep uphill with the mother beneath the boy’s bottom, upholding the boy with all her strength so that he would not fall to the bottom.

The boy stays late till after 10 PM and gets up at 6 in the morning trying to keep up with his school work, with his mother sitting by him all the time.

I told my daughter, “We have to give tremendous credits to your auntie for the confidence, the efforts, her optimism, and the fact that she does not give up the hope and the effort. If she lost hope, gave up trying or became pessimistic, the boy would be truely hopeless. Only a mother can be so dedicated to the wellbeing of her child. I only wish she could work on getting the boy more independent.” The boy is turing 11 next month.

About expectation, I told her, “If I told you to shoot for a B or 80, you might come home with a 79. When shooting for 90, you might get 89. But if I ask you to try for 100, I will be happy if you get a few point less than that because you are still in 90s range.”

Here’s what she told me and also what I have for this wonderful Friday, “This is called shooting for the moon, even if you miss the moon, you will still land on the one of the stars. This is not from me but from what I heard of.”