How old are your wife's cousins kids? I can tell you as a father with a kid preparing for school in China as well as many friends with kids in China, once they hit end of middle school/highschool the work load becomes unbearable, any desire or ability to do extra curricular acitives really fall off due to simple lack of time and energy.
It is one thing to drag them to 'hobby practice', but worst of them all is berate the kid for underperforming. Even if the kid liked the hobby it will be quickly disliked.
Oh, they're too young for GaoKao, but that's just something they suffer before the testing craze. During that time, everything is shed for exam prep. My own cousin, during Gaokao prep, spent 3 years where she did nothing except go to school, come back home and prepare. Her only exercise was walking; she didn't cook; she didn't clean; she didn't go shopping; hell I think her mom even put her clothes on and wiped her ass for her to "save energy" for studying. She was fed 1 stewed turtle every day LOL after school because they thought that gave her energy and a 20 minute nap before she commenced to study until she collapsed from fatigue. Her hair was buzz-cut so that it wouldn't need to be combed or cared for; she gained 30 pounds of fat and looked like a MacDonald's butch dyke manager.
LOLOL I have a natural talent for drawing. My cousin doesn't. We got sent to the same Saturday art class in China as little kids and I remembered that when we came home and I got 5 stars for every picture I drew, even got them displayed on the blackboard as an example to others and she was an average 3 star student, her mom (my aunt) would chew her up in the nastiest way. She'd cry and try to hold her mom's dress and her mom pried her poor little hands off screaming, "Don't call me mom! I'm NOT a 3-star mom!" (At least her dad was gentle and didn't care about petty stuff like that.) Heartbreaking and so unecessary looking back but I was a total little shit and just gave her a sly little smile cus I was the 5 star favorite.
Lol, yea pretty much the experience from some of our friends. Afraid to get to that stage for our kid, they're still way too young for gaokao, but its gonna come. Thinking about taking them out of the Chinese system after middle school, but the US education system does not appeal at all.
That such an Asian mom experience, in my case i was the 3 star child being compared to a non existing 5 star nephew xD.
As the old Chinese saying goes, there are always taller mountains and higher skies. When I was in high school, I m'fing hated that SOB who lived upstairs to me. My parents always pointed out how his studies were better than mine. He actually has a very similar last name to mine, different only by the tone. So, one day, the mailman got our SAT II subject test scores mixed up and sent both our scores to our apartment, so my parents could see that he had done way better than me on this one test; I mean I was in like the 70th percentile and he was in the 93rd. They beat my ass then sent me upstairs with red slap marks all over my face and tears in my eyes to congratulate him, hand him his score, and tell him we're sorry we opened it because the last names were the same and we got confused. My father never stopped talking about that until I retested next year and scored a 95th percentile. I still hate that kid today even though we're both mid 30's, haven't seen each other in 20 years and I've no idea where he is, what he looks like or what he's doing LOLOL
Look from another side, you should thank him for pushing you up 25 percentile. All problems are for our training purpose.
Puahahahaha that sounds like what California's about to implement next for its college entrance exams in lieu of the SATs along with sexual health studies, ebonics and diversity! No. Social skills develop when you lean back and give them a chance; you can't teach them like you can't teach autistic kids to be normal. And although kids suffer for the Gaokao, strength comes from suffering; those Chinese kids grow up to dominate every STEM class in any country they go to.
Oh, as an adult, I consciously appreciate how he provided me with a target to chase after and how my parents pushed me there. But once something like that has happened to you, you pychologically have an aversion to the things the brought you embarrassment, hence the "hating him even today" joke. We're all adults; if I saw him again and he needed anything, I'd do my best to help, but subconsciously, he caused me a lot of pain as a kid just by being excellent. Actually the same with my cousin; I like her a lot more than she likes me cus she remembers me being grandparents' favorite and being better than her at stuff when we were kids but I've no doubt we'd both risk life and limb to help each other if needed.
Sounds like horrible parenting...