Most people have dads that do cool stuff. But not my dad. He didn’t do anything that was cool. While other dads were playing catch, riding bikes and doing barbecues every summer with their kids, my dad liked it when I stayed indoors and read.

My father is very strict, and he wanted me well-educated. As soon as I learned to walk and talk, he wanted to develop my interest in reading. I remember some weekends where he would drop me off at a public library and have me read instead of having me play outside with the other kids. When I was sick of it, he would yell at me until I went back to reading. Needless to say, my early memories were pretty dull.

When I started elementary school, my dad would ask me about the kids in my class. He had a particularly keen interest in some of the more gifted students. When he heard that the other kids were very good at math, my dad was frustrated. He started devoting much of his free time teaching me things. When middle school rolled around, my dad pushed me even more. In my first year of middle school, my dad found out about a lot of the competitions, like MathCounts and the geography bee. To help me gain an edge over the other kids, he pressured me into reading a lot more literature and a bunch of difficult math books. He was obsessed with having me soar over other students, even though I was content with where I was. My days were reduced to nothing but a sisyphean loop of reading and mathematics.

Although this habit of learning stuck with me, it came with the cost of remembering everything my dad did to push me. Whenever he raised his voice in the slightest, I would tense up, anticipating a lengthy tirade. Whenever I couldn’t do a math problem, I would imagine my father by my side, telling me that I didn’t try hard enough, or that I couldn’t think fast enough. I felt like his voice was always in my head, telling me to do this and that. It was very stressful.

Because of everything that my dad did, he and I were never very close. Unlike my peers, I never bonded with my father. It seemed like he and I were in two separate worlds. Besides his constant droning about how I needed to push myself, and his frequent lectures, there was not much interaction between us.

One day, I was fed up with all of the work he assigned me. I walked into the family den, where I found him reading a science journal. I asked him why he gave me so much work to do when I could have spent my time doing anything else.

He thought about this for a while and told me that he wanted me to study all the time so that I could gain more knowledge. This knowledge, he said, could make my life a lot easier, and that he only wanted the best for me. He explained how hard life was for him when he was little. My dad grew up in a remote village where education was scarce and getting food on the table was a higher priority. He explained that since I lived in a first world country now, I should use the best of my current resources to live a better life than he had.

And I thought about this as well. I told my dad about how I didn’t want to study all the time, and that I should have some free time for myself. I expressed all the frustrations I had with him over the years. We talked about it for a while, and he listened. I was surprised that he didn’t yell at me or tell me to go back to reading. It seemed like he had a change of heart that day. I realized that my dad wasn’t a cruel parent, but rather a concerned one who just wanted me to excel. He admitted that he may have expected too much from me at times but told me it was for my own good. He worked out a daily balance of entertainment and studying that we both agreed was much more fair.

My dad and I are on better terms now. He doesn’t push me as often as he used to, and he doesn’t really want to anymore. I still try to learn things everyday, however. Although my dad may never find a game of catch amusing or invite the entire neighborhood over to test his barbecuing skills, he is still my dad, and I may have understood his actions for most of my life. Sometimes, it’s hard to understand people and you may perceive them negatively, but once you do understand them, you may see that they aren’t so bad after all.

-George Qu