Waiting at the traffic light, my wife and I saw a man coming along the street with two children, one of whom was a five-year-old boy while the other was a four-year-old girl. Walking, singing, the children were happy. We watched at the children because they were so cute. Then, the little girl fell down. She sat on the ground and seemed to start crying. I felt like wanting to comfort the little poor girl by holding her. To our surprise, the man, who seemed like her father, didn’t pull her up. He just stood by her and said to the little girl, “you will be fine.” Knowing it was no use crying, the little girl stood up. She walked and soon laughed as if she had never fallen down.

Watching the scene, an awful lot of thoughts came to me. If it had happened in Taiwan, it would have been a totally different story. The parent would have pulled up and held the child, and the child would have cried for a while.

It reminded me of the child I saw in Yosemite who was a little boy about four or five years old. On a cut-down tree trunk, the boy was trying to cross the stream. The cut-down tree trunk was taller than the boy, so the boy could not went down. Seeing the little cute boy having difficulty going down, I wondered where his parents were. Then I saw two adults sitting at the side of the stream, watching the boy exploring the stream. I helped the boy go down, and then I found his parents smiled at me. That wasn’t the only case. I saw some children climbing rocks that were bigger than them at the Yosemite Fall.

From my point of view, it was dangerous for the little boy to play around the stream alone. It was beyond my comprehension that the parents let their children play in a potentially dangerous place like that.

Parents in Taiwan tend to protect their children as far as they can while western parents usually let their children explore the world by themselves. Do parents in Taiwan over-protect their children? I am not sure about it; however, I think that the western people tend to have more spirit of adventure and be more independent because of the way they are raised up.