My mother was the kindest teacher in her school and the strictest parent in our house - and the gap between the woman her students adored and the woman who raised me is a distance I've been trying to measure my entire adult life - Silicon Canals

"At school, she was the counselor students lined up to see, the one they requested when they were falling apart, the teacher who somehow made teenagers believe in themselves. At home, nothing I did quite measured up. My grades were good but could be better. My room was clean but not organized correctly. I was responsible but not responsible enough."

"What I've come to understand, after years of trying to reconcile these two versions of my mother, is that her strictness at home came from the same place as her kindness at school: fear. Fear that the world would be harsh to her children, fear that she hadn't prepared us enough, fear that if she wasn't hard on us, life would be harder."

"She'd grown up with parents who believed love meant letting kids figure things out on their own. No one checked her homework. No one asked about her day. When she became a parent, she overcorrected so dramatically that our house felt like a boot camp for future success. Every moment was a teaching opportunity, every mistake a chance to build character."

A child observes their mother's stark behavioral contrast: at school, she is a compassionate guidance counselor who supports struggling students and celebrates their achievements, yet at home, she maintains rigid standards where nothing the child does measures up. The mother's strictness—criticizing grades, room organization, and responsibility levels—stems from fear that the world will be harsh and that her children aren't adequately prepared. This overcorrection originated from her own childhood with emotionally distant parents who provided minimal guidance. Consequently, her students benefit from her professional training in active listening and unconditional positive regard, while her own children experience conditional approval tied to performance and perfectionism.

Read at Silicon Canals