What are the causes of problems in family relationship (between parents and children)?

Parents, children and their problem in relationship are mentioned as a hot topic on the newspaper, magazines, internet, even on TV programs,… very often. The problems are misunderstanding, having different lifestyle and violence in family. There are some reasons that cause the problems in family relationship, between parents and children.

The most popular reason  in family relationship is: “parents don’t have time to take care of their children”. Mom and Dad now are both very busy with their job. They try to work with all their heart to get a lot of money in order to support their family, especially their children. Very busy with their work, parents hardly have freetime to cook, eat, talk, discuss, watch TV – activities that maintain our family relationship – with their children. Of course, children are very lonely and unhappy. They have difficulty sharing something with their busy parents because when their parents go to work, they still sleep; when parents come home, they go to bed already. That is the reason why some of them hate their parents and join in some bad activities like watching black web, drinking beer and smoking when they’re very young, playing violent games because they are very lonely or because they want their parents to focus on them. In this time, parents are too busy with their work, children are also busy with their negative activities. Parents get stressed from their busy work, children are affected  by violent games. Consequently, they misunderstand each other because of lacking time living together, they are easy to be violent in family relationship: parents take off their stress into their beloved children with a small mistake. Children become a murderer who kill their parents because their parents don’t give them money to play games or stop them doing something badly. So, parents don’t have time to take care of their children can cause problems in parents and children relationship like misunderstanding and violence in family.

Generation gap is the second reason that cause the problem between children and their own parents. Children and parents both have the difference in lifestyle because of their distance in age.  My parents and I are in generation gap. My parents are 30 years older than me so that we are very different in lifestyle and in our thought. While my parents think that rock music are very crazy, I think it is interesting. While they liked me-a girl taking cooking course, I like taking the computing course last summer. I still remember how stressful we were. I did not dare to talk with my daddy anymore, it would become a big problem if I didn’t wish that I would cook every meal to train my cooking ability and listen rock music in my own room with low volume.  According to some magazines, generation gap makes many problems in familly relationship, especially between parents and teenagers or adult daughters or sons. They have different ideas in hobbies and thought like my parents and I so that they are easy to get argument and hurt each other’s feeling because all of them think that they are true. Therefore, generation gap is one of the causes to lead the problems in family relationship.

Problems between children and parents are very common nowadays because parents are too busy to earn money for their children and because of the generation gap. I think that parents have to consider of earning money and teaching children, remember that teaching our beloved children is much more important than earning money. We cannot deny generation gap but we should try to limit the difference between children and parents in order to avoid the problem in family relationship.

Comparison and Contrast Essay

My favorite food – dried chicken!!!

I enjoy eating dried chicken – one of my favorite food at home, made by my beloved mom and at KFC restaurant, made by skilled chefs. Eating dried chicken at home and at KFC restaurant, I can feel the sililarities and even the differences although they are both “dried chicken”.

The first words to describe this dish in both places is “crisp and fresh”. I am now still attracted by the crisp crust covering outside and the soft chicken inside like the first time I ate this food at home and at KFC restaurant. I really love the moment that I sink my teeth into the crust made from a very special crisp flour and listen to the brittle sound from chewing the coat and be surprised with the soft chicken inside whenever I eat it at home or at the KFC restaurant. The second similarity of fried chicken made by my mom and by KFC restaurant is that it is very, very fresh. I know that because my mom is very careful with choosing the chicken to fry, she told me it would be not good for our heath and our taste if the chicken was not fresh. With my experience in eating dried chicken, I’m sure that chickens in KFC restaurant are also chosen very carefully. Crisp  and fresh make  dried chicken at my home and at KFC delicous and it makes  dried chicken become the first and the best dish in my menu whenever I want to eat something.

Nothing is absolutely the same as others, dried chicken dish at home with dried chicken at KFC restaurant are not the same in some ways: the way to enjoy and the way to feel. I usually eat dried chicken at home with ginger sause as a appetizer to start the meals in special occations like Tet holiday or birthday parties,… because my mum is very busy with her job so that she doesn’t have much freetime often to cook this dish. While I  only enjoy dried chicken with ginger sauce at home in some special chances, I can eat this dish with the special spicy and  piquant sauce whenever I like being in the air condition and being served KFC restaurant with my close friends. And if I enjoy dried chicken as the appetizer at home, I eat this dish with some chips or hamburgers with a big glass of pepsi as a plentiful meal. Of course, eating at restaurant is much more expensive than eating at home, I have to spend almost of my savings in one week to have lunch or dinner with my favorite food- dried chicken in one time at KFC restaurant while I spend nothing to enjoy it at home.  To be honest, eating dried chicken at home is a little bit delicous than eating it at the restaurant because I can feel how caring my mom is through my favorite food: she must love us-our family so much when she spends hours to fry a big dish that is full of dried chicken beside the high temperature coming from the gasoline cooker. Moreover, I am happier to enjoy this food with my family than enjoy it alone or even enjoy with my friends at the restaurant because with me nowhere is warmer than my home, nobody is more important than my family. Although there are some differences between eating at home and at KFC restaurant, I still love both of them- the dried chicken that made by my mom and the one made by skilled KFC chefs.

I am sure with everybody that it is excellent to eat dried chicken in KFC restaurant like its slogan “Finger lickin’ good” and you can also be addicted if you try my mom’s fried chicken dish once. Athough they are both made by chicken, are both crisp and fresh, they are also enjoyed in the different ways that give me the different feeling, I love both of them.

Should parents spank their children?

   I once visited my aunt whose son is 4 years old. When I just came to the living room, I saw my aunt with the cane in her hand hitting strongly my cousin although he cried, shouted and apologised to her so much. Seeing the bowl full of soup on the table, I guessed that he must have been lazy to eat. I ran to him, hugged him tightly and asked my aunt to stop hitting him so that I would help her to feed him. After being spanked, he seemed scared to eat all the soup in just  5 minutes and fell asleep after that. Looking my innocent cousin, I wondered why parents always use spanking to punish their children like that. Don’t they know  spanking can effect to their children’s physical and mental development and even form a bad habit and bad behaviour in their children?

   Spanking is not a good way to discipline children when they make mistake because it affects not only physical development but also mental development. Children are always spanked by their parents because of being lazy to eat, to study and because of making a mess, having the bad behaviour. However, should parents always use spanking as the only way to correct their mistakes? The answer must be NO. According to some researches, spanking can affect badly to children's physical development. We all know that children are very easy to be haunted something bad happen in their life so that they will be very easy to keep everything about being spanked in their mind. And sleeping is the time to remind of these things so that children cannot sleep well at night because of scaring to be spanked. Cannot sleep at night means that children lose their chance to be taller and that is one of the reason for spanked children not to develop as good as the others in physical development. Moreover, some American scientists said that children's mental development can be worse when they are hit too often. It is proved in IQ figure: spanked children from 2 to 4 years old will have 5 marks lower than children who are not punished like that too often. That means spanking can stop children from being more intelligent, one of the sign of mental development. We all cannot deny that spanking can help parents to stop their children from doing wrong things, but it is a very high price for parents to teach their children by spanking because spanking can be too easy to limit their children in physical and mental development.

  Spanking can form bad habit and wrong behaviour in children. Children who are punished by hitting too often tend to tell lie and become more violent in their action. My cousin’s situation is an example for this opinion. I came back my aunt’s house lately and saw my cousin was eating by himself very well. Talking with my aunt, I finally recognised that she had stopped using coporal punishment with her son after taking him home from psychological hospital. She said that: “The more she hit him, the worse behaviour he get”. Spanking made him scared just at that moment, he would have done the same thing in the next time if she hadn’t reminded him of it. To be much more worse, he seemed to tell lie very often with everyone because he wanted to protect himself from being punished by physical discipline. And he didn’t want to share with her anything happening around him such as the colour he liked, the friends he played with, the activities he liked to join because he was scared of his mom’s punishment if something went wrong. He was also very violent in playing with his friends, he was easy to hit friends if someone did not do something he liked because he thought that hitting was the only thing to make other follow to him. Day by day, he became more and more violent and much more worse in behaviour, no one wanted to play with him and he fall into lonely situation and had to go to the hospital to treat his problem. My aunt also told me many different cases like my cousin in the hospital because of being spanking. Although spanking can help parents to form their children behavior in the good way, they don’t know that it can be affected in the bad side. Imagine using spanking like taking a kind of medicine, it will harm to our health if we use it too much or in the wrong way. Spanking is also form a bad habit like telling lie and the bad behaviour like being more violent for children which are opposite with the ones their parents expect.

  Spanking which affects badly in children’s physical and mental development, in their behaviour are being used too often in many families in Vietnam. Parents who use spanking as a way to train their children send a message for their children that violence is the only way to solve problems in life. And it is not a good way to teach children by violent way if we don’t want them to become a bad people who are ready to hit others without any serious reason. In conclusion, we should teach children by other ways like talking with them to show them know what they should do or not, give them  good advice to solve problems and always stand by them whenever they are in trouble to help them become a good person in life instead of using violent punishment like spanking.

The harm of watching TV

The harm of watching TV

 Television is one of the most popular entertainment of people around the world and is considered as the best friend of many families. Sitting in front of the small screen and enjoying the pleasure which comes from the TV programs make us reduce stress, forget the busy and annoyed life. However, not many of us can recognize that the more we watch TV, the more harmful we get.

Watching TV too much is very harmful for our health. It is not very difficult to find the crazy TV fans whose health is damaged by watching TV too much per day. Imagine that our day with 24 hours is a cake with 3 equal parts and we should spend one-third of this cake for sleeping, another one-third for working or studying and the last part for doing other activities and enjoying our life. However, the crazy TV fans -most of them are teenagers tend to watch TV from 6 to 8 hours a day. That means they lack of time to sleep , to do exercise, to join in some outdoor activities and that also means they don’t have time to take care of themselves. Don’t have time to sleep, to exercise, to take care of themselves is an easy way to damage their health. It is also much more serious when they spend almost of time to watch only the motion pictures from TV without thinking because it may harm their brain. Sitting in front of the TV for hours can also damage their eyes. It is the reason to explain why students today are easy to be short-sighted and seem too passive to  accept easily everything that their teachers give without asking anything about the new lessons. I wondered that why the teachers just try to find the new methods for their students to  be more active in the class or to reduce the work for them to avoid short-sighted problem but not think about asking their students’ parents to limit the time they watch TV. It is the good way for them to reduce the number of passive students. We cannot deny that watching TV is the good way to relax, reduce stress and even the best way for us to enjoy our weekend with our family. However, when we watch TV too much like the way the youth are doing, what we get are being passive in our mind, having weak eyes, lacking of time to take care of ourselves. So if we don’t want to get the harm from television for our health, we should limit the time we watch TV.

The more we spend time in front of the TV, the more addicted we turn into, the worse our behaviour is. We all know that when we like any program on TV, we are very excited about them and wait for the time that program coming. With me, when I was in high school, I loved watching film on Disney channel, especially “Hannah Montana”, I spent almost of my time to watch it although I might not finish my homework. I did not care about anything happened around me, no one could attract me to talk about any topic, I always gave them an answer that: “wait me a second” and let them wait me for hours. At that time, I was addicted to watching TV and I could only stop it when I noticed that how worse my studying became. According to many researches, when people are crazy with their favorite programs on TV like me in the past,  they don’t want to do anything, seem to forget their real life and jump into the world with unrealistic state and try to imitate everything they watch on TV. When we mimic the characters’ behaviour and attitude, of course, we can have the good behaviour like the good characters and we can be easier to do the bad things like the bad one. That is the reason why there are more murderers, more shoplifters and more people who do illegal things and the age of them are lower and lower day by day because there are more people, especially the youth to be affected by watching the violent programs on TV.   Although,  we know that from TV we can learn many lessons from life through some films, some programs but we are also damaged by watching too much violent and bad programs that can form our bad habits, our bad attitude and our bad behaviour.

TV can be very harmful for our health, our life like having the bad behaviour if we watch TV too much and if we watch the violent programs and try to do the same things like the bad characters on TV. Remember that watching TV only helps us to relax, reduce stress and enlarge our sight when we know how long we should stay in front of it. Hope we all know the best way to spend with this popular entertainment in order to make our life better.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            

THE KINDNESS OF THE STRANGER

                                                              When I was growing up, children were commonly taught: “don’t talk to the strangers, don’t care about the strangers and especially don’t believe in them because whoever is not familiar with us will not be ready to help us, they just want to cheat us to have some benifits”. That saying was always in my mind until I read my favorite book -“soul seed” with the lesson about the kindness of the stranger. That story was about the 25 year-old man who did not believe in the help of the stranger traveling by walking 6 weeks around the USA with a very little money to find out if there were the kindness from the stranger or not. Without a lot of money, he noticed that the kindness was everywhere because he could receive 2 loaves of sandwich from a 7 year-old boy selling sandwich when he was very hungry sitting in the corner of the street, the newest coat of the poor painter who just had 2 new coats a year when his coat was worn out, 2 days living and treating his stomachache in the old retired doctor’s house and countless time getting a gift and many things from the strangers during his trip. And thanks to this story, that made me believe more in life and tried to receive the help from the stranger once that I had never done before. Now I still remember everything happened in that day, the day I realised the value of life-the kindness of the stranger.

     It was a Sunday afternoon in the end of last August, I went to my friend’s house in district 1 and came back at 9 p.m, the time for the last bus I thought. Waiting at the bus station alone, listening and singing “a little love”-my favorite song, seeing the most animated district in the evening was very awsome at first. However after 15 minutes waiting, I recognised that noone except me was waiting there, I felt a little worried looking around, asked some people walking along the street and knew that the last bus was over 30 minutes before. “Oh my god! What happen? How can I come back home?...”. Many questions appeared in my mind with no answers, I became much more worried when I could not contact with my friend through my cellphone. “Is her cellphone out of work? And if I can contact with her, how can she come to district 1 from Thu duc to pick me up?”. I started cried and tears were pouring down my face and I had no idea what to do. Suddently, a very luxury red car stopped in front of me made me very scared. The man was nicely and fashionably dressed with black leather shoes, a smart suit and a suitable blue and black striped tie getting off the car and asking me if I needed any help in a gentle and warm voice: “Do you need any help, little girl? It is too late for you to stay alone in the street like this”. I could not open my mouth to say anything because of scaring the strange but nice-looking man. He reminded me about the story in “soul seed” book so that after a few minutes worried and scared, I told him the fact that I could not go home for I missed the bus and waited for his help-the help from the stranger. Immediately, he told me to get into his car and he would let me get a lift. Because I could not take the bus, because I also wanted to know that there was the kindness from the strangers or not, I stepped up his car, sat next to his seat without thinking about any danger he might give me.

           When he closed the door next to me, got into his car and continued to close his door, started the car engine, I started to worry. I did not know why I could believe in the strange man who I had never seen before, why I did not think about the danger in front of me. The cold, fresh air from the car air condition made me getting colder and colder and be worried sick about the stranger next to me. My heart beated and beated very fast as if I were having a very important and stressful exam. The strange man and I did not talk anything together so that I was startle by the ring of the phone coming from my roomate-Thanh. “Hey Mui! Have u come back yet? Too late!”, she said. “Don’t worry! I will be back soon. I am getting a lift from the kind man, girl.” I answered. “ What? A kind man? Who? Be careful! He may cheat you, Mui.”, she said. “I’m OK, see u soon, bye!”, I stopped the conversation because I did not want my friend to worry and because I wanted to be well-prepaired to protect myself in the worst situation that may happened. Looking like the strange man could read anything in my mind, he said with the warm voice: “I’m a doctor in Thu Duc hospital, I will drive you home on the way I come home, you should not be worried, I will not cheat you”. Listening every word he said, I could keep calm but was still scared until he looked at me by his bright eyes in the dark which made me feel very safe. He told me about his university life in the past and his own life as a doctor now. The stranger but very friendly gave me a piece of good advice  and made me believe more in life. After 30 minutes, his car turned right and stopped in front of the gate of my rent house. Very polite and gentle, he got off the car and opened the door for me to go out of the car. Saying good bye him in the grateful, I stood there stunned looking at his car moving very fast forward until I could not see it. Going to my room but I could not stop thinking about him- the strange but very kind man with his wholehearted help.

      Thanks to the man who was ready to let me get the lift, who made me believe in my favorite book story that there is the kindness from the stranger, who made me understand clearly the saying in the final of that book: “believe in our life because the kindness is everywhere if we open our heart to receive it”. Now I strongly believe in that and try to help the other, especially the stranger who is in need in order to prove with others that the kindness from the stranger is real, in order to join hands to make our life better.