Small change

Parenting is one of the most powerful forces shaping a young person’s future — not just through love, but through restrictions, rules, and the limits parents try to set . In Chapters 7–8 of The Other Wes Moore , we see two mothers, Joy and Mary, doing everything they can to guide their sons. But their situations — and the restrictions they’re able to enforce — couldn’t be more different. Their struggles reveal how boundaries can protect a child, and how the lack of structure can leave someone vulnerable to the world around them. Joy’s Tough Love: Restrictions That Build Structure By Chapter 7, the author Wes Moore is deep into military school, a place he originally hated — so much that he tried to run away multiple times. But Joy’s decision to send him there wasn’t random. She knew her son needed structure, discipline, and a space free from the distractions and dangers back home. Joy’s restrictions weren’t meant to punish him. They were meant to save him . She limited his freedom ...

The best things to learn are sometimes not praised, but rather critiqued. In The Other Wes Moore we witness how feedback and correction are determining the lives of two men of the same name but who ended up totally different. It is not whether they received criticism but the manner in which the criticism was administered as well as who was behind it. The Correctional Method of Learning. Constructive criticism was a turning point to the author, Wes Moore. His mother Joy never allowed him to go too far. When his conduct began leading him in the wrong way, she never rebuked him, but she refocused him. He did not go to military school as a punishment, but as a wake-up call. Here, leaders and mentors helped him back up with discipline, responsibility and structure. The reason why the criticism was so powerful was that it was made out of love. The other Wes Moore did not get as much support as he did. His environment, the teachers, his family and even the police did not provide him with cons...

 A subset that struck me in particular viewing The Other Wes Moore is the issue of code-switching, how Blacks tend to switch their manner of speech, behaviour, or identities, based on the audience. It is not only a matter of speech change but life, chance, place. In their own fashion, both Wes Moores demonstrate that code-switching is a key determinant of identity and door-opener (or door-closer). And having undergone such circumstances myself, this was a theme that was not far away and more relative to me as apart of the black community. The author Wes Moore has developed the ability to travel between worlds as seen in the book. He is raised in an adverse environment of Baltimore, however, being taken to military school, he understands how to represent himself in a different way at school and at work. He gets to know about the rules of conversing in proper English, dressing in a particular manner, and to carry himself with a degree of confidence among what enables him to blend int...