Overbearing Parents

[DavidtheKing]

Thanks for the input guys. Even though my parents have been jerks about this, I've had lots of great teammates and friends to help me through this. And even with the meeting restrictions I still get to spend a good amount of time helping build the robot and learn skills that will help me in the future.

Unfortunately, based on your responses I don't think there's any way to solve this problem without just persevering through it and disregarding my parents. Yesterday my dad was yelling at me about my ACT scores after the meeting (I got a 34, he wants me to get a 35 or 36 when I take the school given one), and how I won't ever get into a good school with a 34. I told him that pretty much the only places that won't let you in with a 34 are Ivy Leagues and that I didn't want to go to an Ivy League school. He asked my why I was like that and called me unmotivated and lazy for saying that. At this point, I'm scared to even talk to my dad about this anymore because it always turns into a one-sided yelling session. He doesn't see any credibility in what I say because in his eyes I'm a lazy, unmotivated, disappointment of a son. My best solution at the current moment is to get my mom to drag my dad to the parent open house that our team has every year. When he's there he can see what FIRST has to offer and I can also get some of the mentors and coaches to try to talk some sense into him. When my mom came to open house for the first time last year, she began to adopt a much better attitude towards robotics. However, due to the fact that China is a very patriarchal society, she kind of just sticks with what my dad says with the grades thing and the meeting restrictions. Unfortunately, my dad is about a million times more hardheaded than my mom, so I'll just have to see how this turns out.