The Parents factor

1. Comprehension Check

1. What can keep you from enjoying your life?

2. What initiated the decline of parental status in America?

3. Why did the kids find TV parents more alluring than their real ones?

4. What sort of people lived in O’Reilly’s neighborhood? What kind of parents did they make?

5. What did the author expect from his father?

6. What do kids expect from their parents today?

7. What were the backgrounds and education of the author’s parents?

8. Why was O’Reilly’s father constantly ”afraid”?

9. What is the first promise we give ourselves when we become parents?

10. Did the author take his father’s discipline with cheerful heart?

11. Why did the guys in the author’s neighborhood despise the “Little League dads”?

12. Hoe did the author’s father react on the unexpected intrusion of Eggy’s father?

2. Discriminate between the true and false statements. Justify your choices by relevant information from the section.

1. TV brought a cheap, easy way to keep kids quiet. They only chattered at the dinner table.

2. Parents did not resist their children’s preoccupation with TV because they surrendered to its charms.

3. Kids glued to this mental bubble gum began to live in the world of illusions.

4. Because of TV influence children developed a “generational superiority” complex.

5. Nowadays good parents must have heaps of money to cater for their “nearest and dearest’s” whims.

6. O’Reilly’s parents used corporal punishment.

7. Neither O’Reilly’s parents nor their friends were wicked, abusive, cruel or unfeeling.

8. The narrator’s father preferred to play it safe rather than risk his last possession to take a chance.

9. His boldness dominated in his family relationship as well.

10. O’Reilly’s parents painstakingly built up his self-esteem and were ready to support him all his life.

11. Eddie’s father was ready to inflict a bodily harm on the boy for bullying his son.

12. The author’s father always valued high his privacy that’s why he never entered the room without knocking.

3. Fill in the gaps.

1. The ---------- of responsibility started a ------------ reaction of events that put pressure on parents to live up to a scriptwriter’s ideal.

2. Satisfying the --------of children can be ----------- task. Worse, it can ----------- parents from their -----------duties.

3. When it came to raising my sister and me, background won out over --------- education every time.

4. Growing up in the dark depths of a worldwide depression ----------- fear into them. They’d seen banks fail, families get ---------, factories close down, soup kitchen open.

5. When my father returned from the battle fronts he took a --------- accountant’s job and never moved up or left for another ---------.

6. It was not really hatred but ---------. It did not seem fair to get ---------- punishments for -----------.

7. It is courageous and ----------- to walk away without trying to ---------- the score.

8. My parents made a ------------ mistakes.

9. No one taught us how to think, how to deal effectively with ---------, or even the ----------of behaving well in polite society.

10. Surviving his ---------, brutal --------- gave me discipline and ----------, the values that have been essential to my success. My father also -------------me against fear.

4. Discussion Points

1. “Discipline is a symbol of caring to a child”. …there is no such thing as being tough with a child. ….If you have never been hated by your children you have never been a parent”. Do you agree with these statements?

2. The author believes that parental nest should be left as soon as high school is finished. Children tend to abandon their parents very early both in America and in Europe. Why is this situation different in our country? Do you attribute it only to economical reasons?

3. Not unfrequently parents interfere into their children’s relationship with their peers driven be the desire to safeguard their offspring.

4. One day your old folks become old, dependent and confused, they are no longer in command and all-knowing. Do you think that from their young days they should take into account the inevitability of this “rainy day” and be more forgiving to their kids?

5. The author considers taking care of your parents ‘a nonnegotiable obligation”. Yet there are so many old people’s home in this country. Do you find this situation controversial? Does this frame of affairs reflect the situation in our country?