Mr

Parent/Child Conflicts in ""Two Kinds""

Many conflicts occur between parents and children because parents may push the child too hard, the child may feel an urge to purposely defy the parents, and also because of the parent or child misunderstanding each other. When these problems come about parents and children have different ways of dealing with these conflicts. Some of the strategies used to deal with these conflicts such as rebellion, defiance, and not cooperating are exhibited in "Two Kinds".

In "Two Kinds" Jing-mei's mother continuously pushes Jing-mei too hard to do things she doesn't want to do and as a result Jing-mei stops cooperating with her mother. For example, in the story Jing-mei's mentions how every night at dinner Jing-mei's mother would present her with test that she got from magazines that had stories of amazing children (Tan 321). In one test there was a three year old boy who could recite all the capitals of the states and most of the European countries. So Jing-mei's mother asks Jing-mei to recite the capital of Finland (Tan 321). These tests continue on until Jing-mei became irritated with the disappointment of never being able to meet her mother's high expectations. So then Jing-mei stops cooperating and trying to answer the questions and would purposely give the wrong answers until Jing-mei's mother finally gave up.

Since Jing-mei's mother constantly pushes her daughter so hard early on, Jing-mei sets her mind not to be anything great and just be herself and in her own way defies her mother. Jing-mei's mother came up with the idea to put her daughter into piano lessons. Since Jing-mei was already tired of trying to be this great prodigy Jing-mei's mother wanted her to be, she purposely did poorly and didn't practice seriously during her piano lessons. So