As my brothers and I got older, my parents methods of handling us became stricter--as in the Vietnamese and other Asian methods of raising their kids. They became more overprotective and ruled with an iron fist. Our vacations became a miserable drag, with constant fighting between my parents and between the kids and the parents. Vacations were forced--"you're going whether you like it or not". Everytime I went on these vacations, I felt trapped everytime my parents were around. So any chance we could, my brothers and I would wander off and do our own thing (this rarely happened though and more often when we were older)

This is the point where I started realizing that my parents weren't perfect anymore. The stricter my parents got, the more my brothers and I rebelled. Most of the time, it didn't matter what my brothers and I wanted because my parents were "the parents and they were right because they knew what was best for us". I noticed that my parents started to fight a lot more often---okay, all the time. At first, they would always hide when they were fighting, but it got to the point that they didn't care if my brothers and I heard. Sometimes my brothers and I would take the heat from the tension between my parents (i.e. my parents would blow up on a miniscule issue). And now that I look at it, I'm not so angry because I realize that it was probably really hard to try to work on your marriage without getting your kids involved. But unfortunately, the consequences can be dire.

It's weird because I'm really family-oriented. I mean, our family was raised with these values--due to coming here from Vietnam, everyone had to stick together.

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