In the first video, Avi is introduced as a 13 year old Canadian born girl of Indian descent living with her mother Sukhinder, who is a science professor on the university level. Sukhinder has very high expectations for her daughter, constantly giving her tips on how to make her history presentation perfect and gently but seriously chiding her daughter for getting 92s instead of 100s. She tells her, if you just put a little more work into it, you could have 100s. In the video of the history speech rehearsal, it seems as if Avi isn’t given much opportunity to address her issues with her mother. Although Avi is getting frustrated with her mother’s constant interruptions, she knows she is expected to simply do as her mother instructs and not express her own feelings. When Avi interviews her mother, it is clear also that her mother feels Avi is not as disciplined as she should be despite her very good behavior in all areas of her life. Avi is a top student, as her mother expects, and is dutiful in helping her mother and grandparents around the house. In addition, her mother doesn’t seem to take much of Avi’s interests to heart as she arranges her schedule around what Sukhinder feels is important for Avi to know, such as their different religion and traditional dance classes. If Avi has ideas that are different from her mother’s, her mother becomes upset and closed off to discussion because she feels that Avi is too young to make any decisions for herself. This is not to say that Avi is completely in agreement with her mother’s ideals as she expresses in the film that she would like to have a lifestyle with a bit more freedom as she has observed in her Canadian friends.
Jazmine lives with her mother and two elder sisters. One of her sisters is 18 and has already finished high school. The other sister is 15 and in grade 10. This makes Jazmine the youngest daughter at home, which her mother indicates makes her special and enables her to get away with a lot more. Jazmine is a straight-A student like Avi and has demonstrated that she will work very hard and that she is intelligent. Although she accepts the idea that her parents are now divorced, Jazmine still misses her father a great deal and wishes she could see him more often. She also has a sense that the divorce has caused her mother to envision greater things for her than are realistic. For example, when Sherry is straightening Jazmine’s hair for a school dance, she asks if Jazmine has a boyfriend yet. Jazmine is embarrassed when she answers no, perhaps being truthful in her response and embarrassed to admit that she hasn’t succeeded in this department yet, but her mother makes the situation worse by insisting that Jazmine has a boyfriend. When Jazmine refuses to come up with a name, Sherry reassures her, “you have lots of boyfriends” as if this was the only important thing to consider for Jazmine’s happiness. In this respect, it seems as if Jazmine also has difficulty in discovering opportunities to talk with her mother because they already are not intimate. Her mother is not interested in what’s important to Jazmine and instead insists that Jazmine’s primary concern should be with boys because of the way that she insists her daughter should have boyfriends by now.
Jane is quite different from the other girls because her mother views her as an independent person. Susan tells the film crew that she has always tried to treat Jane like an adult while also trying to introduce her to as many different experiences as she could. She says she wants Jane to experience everything so that she can make up her mind about what’s important to her. Following this philosophy, Jane has had the chance to join her mother in a variety of settings, including many adult situations such as artist galleries associated with her mother’s work. As she passes time in her mother’s textile workshop, she is welcome to draw her batik designs on fabric that she is then encouraged to dye. Although her mother is right there to help walk Jane through the steps that need to be taken, she allows Jane to do the work and doesn’t work to correct her at every turn. The design that Jane draws is completely up to Jane, even when the design is a very childish-looking cartoon drawing when her mother is talking about how grown up she is. This same process is repeated when it comes time to dye the fabric as it is Jane who is required to wear the rubber gloves, dip the fabric in the dye and then rinse it off. The relationship seen between mother and daughter can be seen to be very close and it seems as if Jane would be comfortable going to talk to her mother about anything, knowing that her mother will give her support and encouragement and a guiding hand if that is required, but still standing back and letting Jane determine the direction.