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Getting your parents to tolerate your choices may be enough.

The parents of Adriana Ramrez are still not fine and will never be fine with her life as a poet, she told me. But they simply tolerate my choices because they love me.

Truthfulness is overrated.

Then theres the strategy that Zia Haider Rahman, a writer, advises: Lie.

Sometimes thats the only way to avoid a pointless confrontation. I have lied often to my parents, in words or by omission. For example: My father is a devout Catholic who goes to church every day, and I am an atheist, but when I come home to visit, I take him to church and say nothing about what I believe. (Our parents have probably lied to us, too.)

The belt-and-suspenders approach.

Pursue your dreams, but prepare a backup plan a double major for example (one major for your parents, one for yourself). This is also good preparation generally for a creative life. Thats what I did by pursuing academia for my day job, in the hope that one day I could call myself a writer.

Be patient.

While young people often want immediate answers, the road to acceptance from parents might be a long one. We may have to gradually wear down our parents, as Matty Huynh did. Instead of declaring I was going to be an artist, I made art, he said. By the time he left law school, his parents had gotten used to climbing around frames and boxes of books in their garage. Continuing to make art had become mundane, an inconvenience, he said, but eventually it became an inevitability.

Assert your independence, respectfully.

Parents, especially immigrant parents, have often worked incredibly hard to create opportunities for their children. Still, some parents have to learn that their childrens lives are not theirs, no matter what they sacrificed. Respect is the key, says Kavita Das, a writer: It comes down to helping them understand that we are not throwing away all their hard work but honoring their hard work, because it allowed us to pursue our dreams.

Mr. Huynh suggests putting less weight upon your parents approval: It might sound aggressive to say one shouldnt ask for permission, but its kinder not to expect a blessing from people who have no experience and only anxieties about your moonshot dreams.

Read the original here:

Opinion | Advice for Artists Whose Parents Want Them to Be Engineers - The New York Times