By Jacquelyn Guillen

Sabrina Mendoza, Div. 471, believes in the saying that “strict parents make sneaky kids,” and says her parents are too strict with her.
Mendoza’s parents are from Mexico so grew up in a different culture. Many students’ parents, like Mendoza’s, are from other countries and were raised with different values. Coming to America and raising kids in a new culture can create conflicts between students and their parents. The parents tend to have higher expectations for their children, and students struggle to satisfy them.
“With me, if I don’t contact them by seven at night, they’ll start freaking out and they’ll question me right away,” Mendoza said.
Sometimes, Mendoza thinks her parents are too strict because she is the only girl in the family. Most of the time, Mendoza will not even tell her parents where she really is, because she knows they will overreact. She might just tell them that she is still at school, when she is actually somewhere else, like the movies.
“It frustrates me a lot, because they expect so much from me and any little thing I do, even if it’s not the biggest problem. I feel like I disappoint them,” Mendoza said.
When it comes to sports, her parents say they support her running Track and Field at Lane, but they are still strict. When she has to take care of her little brother, her parents expect her to miss practice, which does not make her coaches happy. Mendoza feels torn because whether she chooses to skip practice or not, it makes someone unhappy.
Even though her parents say they support her, she does not always see that support at her meets. Her older brother is two years older than she is, and Mendoza believes they went to more of his track meets when he ran.
“I could count with my fingers how many times they’ve been to my track meets,” Mendoza said.
Mendoza jokes that her best friend’s mom is her “track mom” because she is always at their track meets. Her friend’s mom will bring extra food or blankets for Mendoza.
Maggie Radzko, Div. 461, is another student who feels her parents are too strict. Her parents are from Poland, and her mom had a religious upbringing. Radzko was forced to take religious classes as a child because of her mom. If it were up to her, she would not have made her first communion or confirmation. She does not share all of her parents’ religious beliefs.
During church, Radzko usually zones out. She tries to sneak out her phone to keep herself busy. She also tries to avoid it by going into the bathroom, and she stays in there as long as she can, or at least until her mom comes to get her.
“Going to church is like that one class where you keep asking yourself ‘when is it going to be over,’” Radzko said.
Radzko also has two nose piercings, a belly button piercing, a tongue piercing, and a pair of gauges that she got without her parents’ permission. For her, it is a way to rebel against her mom. She says it is addicting to get them because she knows her parents do not like them. When she came home for the first time with her two nose piercings, her father said she “looked like a bull” and told her to take them out, but she refused. In fact, Radzko cannot wait until she turns 18 so she can get more piercings.
Hannah Pitchan, Div. 577, says her parents are strict with her about her grades. Both of her parents are from the Philippines. If Pitchan gets a B in any of her classes, they complain about it. She often gets grounded because of her grades. One time, her parents set a time restriction on her phone. Any incoming or outgoing texts and calls could not go through after 6pm.
Pitchan is also on the swim team at Lane. If her grades go down, her mom tells her she should quit the team or skip practice. Pitchan always has to reassure her that she can balance both her academics and extracurricular activities.
“My mom came from the Philippines when she was 12, and she was basically a perfect child,” Pitchan said.
Her mom got straight A’s throughout high school, and was the valedictorian of her graduating class. Her mom has similar expectations for Pitchan.
“She just wants me to be better than her or exactly like her, and I can’t because I’m a different person,” Pitchan said.
Pitchan is the oldest girl in the family, but she says her parents also put a lot of pressure on her younger brother, who is just nine years old. Her mom spends a lot of time studying with him to make sure he gets a perfect score on his tests.
Kimberly Cortes, Div. 577, has a mom who is from Guatemala, and she was raised with traditional beliefs about a female’s role in the family.
Her grandmother and great-grandmother were raised with the belief that women serve the men and should stay at home. A lot of Cortes’s other older relatives share this belief. Her mother was often forced to stay at home to take care of her own younger brothers, while also being responsible for cleaning and cooking. Now, although her mother has softened on that idea, she still holds both Cortes and her brother responsible for the chores around the house. Cortes still believes her mother is too strict.
When Cortes was younger, her mother decided who her friends were. She had to introduce her friends to her mother because her mother wanted to make sure they were a good influence. If her mother did not like someone, Cortes was not allowed to be friends with them anymore.
In eighth grade, a new student named Ofeilia came to Cortes’s school. Cortes thought she was nice and wanted to hang out with her. They started to talk and after school, they would hang out while they waited to be picked up by their parents. The first day Cortes’s mom met her, she did not like her because she thought Ofelia was “crazy and wild.” She saw Ofeilia joking around with a bunch of guys who were known to cause trouble at their school. She did not want Cortes to be under that sort of influence.
“I stopped talking to her and stuck to my other group of friends,” Cortes said.
Her mother still interferes with her social life today. When Cortes wanted to go with her friends to Statesville Prison during the Halloween season, her mother said no. Her family is Christian and her mom is very involved in their church. Even though many Christians do celebrate Halloween, Cortes’s mother chooses not to. Her mother believed that if Cortes went, she would be setting a bad example for her friends, and she did not want Cortes to be out past 10pm.
“They just want to make sure I don’t mess up. They want me to do something with my life,” Cortes said.
Even though their parents are strict, students like Mendoza understand that their parents want the best for them. Mendoza said if she has kids, she still wants them to have the same values she was raised with. She would want her kids to value family above all.
“I would enforce reasonable rules,” Mendoza said. “But I would give them some of that freedom that I’ve always wanted.”