December 20, 2023
How Helpful Are Parents in These Modern Times? Diana Villano’s Shares Her Insights on the Effects of Parenting
By John Myers
By Natalia Oseida
As I am writing this Diana Villano is eating a pear. The most on brand thing for her. “Wait, wait, you’re not gonna believe this let me get it.” She shoves onto the screen a picture of her at the age of 2 munching on a pear. Classic Diana. Even at the age of 16 she is still addicted to them. Every time we walk past anything pear related there is no doubt about it, Diana will point it out and try to buy it. This obsession illustrates how passionate she is about everything she does and sticking to habits is something that is not difficult for her at all. She loves and is wholly committed to routines.
Diana is detail oriented and organized; A person who overworks and overachieves and yet manages to grow and flourish no matter what environment she’s in. She is a creature of habit who loves repetitiveness and the aesthetic of her tasks. However, she was not always like this.
COVID-19 changed everyone’s lives. Some for better and others for worse and, fortunately for Villano, it worked in her favor. Quarantine was a wakeup call for her to get herself together and work for what she wanted but it also caused problems in some relationships. “We stopped journaling altogether during quarantine,” states Daniella, her middle sister.
Even though their time together was cut in half, Daniella understood that her sister was now busy with her school work and doing what she had to do to pick herself back up. These sacrifices shaped Diana into the student she is today. She has flourished and created a new way of working and thinking.
One of the first things I noticed about her when I met her in my Global 10 class was how much she appreciated the aesthetic and organization of the things around her. She would take the first 10 minutes of class to change the entire format of a worksheet. She played around with colors and fonts. What amazed me was how she could spare all that time on the aesthetic of her worksheet and still get her work done before the bell rang. In contrast I wouldn’t even finish the classwork in class and I would not change my worksheet. That is something admirable about her. How much control she has in her schedule and how she pushes herself to do and give more. Diana goes the extra mile — when she’s allowed to, of course.
Sadly, her parents don’t often let her. “They would kill me” was the response from Diana when asked what her parents would do if she went to therapy. There is some trauma she would like to heal, but like most Hispanic parents, that kind of support is non-existent. Trauma is not even a thought and if their daughter asked for something like therapy, they wouldn’t support her.
When our parents grew up, mental health was not something that was talked about at all. People still had mental illnesses but things like therapy were reserved for “crazy people.” People back then thought that if there was nothing physically wrong with you then you were healthy and therefore did not need help of any kind. This is just the way Gen Z’s parents grew up and they can be very resistant to new things. Diana wants the best for her mental health but also does not want to go against her parents. There’s nothing she can do about this situation and as the eldest daughter, she cannot show signs of weakness. What would her sister think? What will they learn from her?
All these emotions that she must bottle up will one day rise again.
You can see it in her eyes when she vents about arguments she has with her parents. The frustration and hopelessness. However, the main thing that keeps most teenagers going is the promise to someday leave. Leave the cage their parents have put them in and do the best they can for themselves, such as therapy in Diana’s case. Nonetheless she is always productive and organized. She is a creature of habit.
