Jennifer Pan’s revenge on her Tiger Mom 🐅👩‍👧

Do you think psychopaths are made or born? So many people are blaming the parents for making Jennifer this way. But I think you have to have the underlying psychopath gene to be able to carry this out. A normal person with empathy wouldn’t.

The mom didn't deserve it. The dad...

This is a more detailed story of what happened

She's a psychopath. Doesn't matter how much pressure she got from her parents. Failed calculus, can't graduate? Summer school. You don't lie and let it snowball to murder.

R4 I agree - she should of just left. She was of legal age, she should of just walked out the door and never look back.

So many comments are saying how the parents deserve this and how it’s not the girl’s fault. I don’t think it matters how the parents treated her. They could have waited on her on hand and foot and she would still be a psychopath. It’s ingrained. Their brains are different.

Some children are simply not meant to live under such intense pressure to succeed. They snap, in this young woman's' case, she planned to have her parents killed because for her that was logical way of getting them out of her life. Not a normal course of action, but the only way out for her.

A few of the comments under the article made its seem as if the young woman's life was the norm for all children of Asian immigrants. Such ridiculous blanket statements.

It's Canada. She'll be out after serving less than half her time.

Is anyone gay in this story?

Could someone please give me the Cliff Notes on what happened? The OP's link is 26 minutes long (!), and I rerad halfway through the story at r3 and it never came to the point of what had happened.

I assume she took out on a hit on her horrible bullying parents.

R10 she arranged a phony home invasion to off her parents so she could collect the life insurance

She was living a lie, pretending to be the ideal daughter for the Tiger mother, but in reality she had failed in school (which she didn't tell her parents). She had a boyfriend (again not telling her parents) and wanted out of the suffixation.

So she felt her only way out was to stage this phony home invasion

The OP got the Tiger parent off on this one, the father was the 'dragon dad' and the mom apparently was more sympathetic.

Of course Jennifer really fucked up because the dad survived and the poor mother died.

I love the part where Jennifer took off in a sprint and hid in the hospital to try to fool her suspicious parents. That level of pressure is so insane.

[quote]Could someone please give me the Cliff Notes on what happened? The OP's link is 26 minutes long (!)

You should watch it. Very engrossing, especially if you like 48 Hour Mystery, Dateline, etc. I only was going to watch one minute but got sucked into watching all 26 minutes!

[quote] I agree - she should of just left. She was of legal age, she should of just walked out the door and never look back.

TRIPLE "oh, dear!" Brava!

Why triple?

Kids these days. They can fake their academics for 6 years to fool their parents but can't go to a homeless shelter

r15: should have, should have, looked.

Jennifer Pan was certified to teach Figure Skating, and was teaching skating lessons at the time. A plus was that she was fluent in both mandarin and Cantonese, so that made her unique as she would be in high demand for skaters from China who come to Canada for the ice time (which is lacking in China)

I thought she was teaching piano. I thought she was Vietnamese.

[quote] should have, should have, looked.

Although this used to be more of a spoken error than a written one, it’s quickly gaining as a written error,

[quote] I thought she was teaching pian

No I just checked the article, she was a former competitive Figure Skater

There's a subreddit called asianparentstories and it is the saddest thing ever.

I just finished reading R3's article, and I think the whole story is more complex than it appears at first glance.

Jennifer Pan's parents ― her father, primarily ― did not allow her to progress through the normal stages of development. Their immigration status is no excuse. In my opinion, they subjected their daughter to prolonged psychological abuse, and she was not mentally strong enough to survive it.

There's no doubt that, by the time she reached her 20s, she was seriously disturbed. At present, she is almost certainly beyond rehabilitation. But let's not pretend that this disturbance happened in a vacuum.

I think it did happen in a vacuum. Do you think Ted Bundy would not have happened if only he had loving parents? Some people are born gay. Some people are born serial killers.

No one is born a serial killer

Some people are born sociopaths. They kill small animals as kids. They upgrade to humans later. No amount of good parenting can stop this. Maybe she’s born with it.

Nope

So you think sociopaths/psychopaths is a learned behavior? It’s produced through nurture and environment? No, Jeffrey Dahmer was always going to be Jeffrey Dahmer no matter the upbringing.

They have defective mirror neurons. 4% of the population.

They're detectable now. FMRI scans clearly show who's a psychopath.

Exactly, they’re born, not made. You can see it in brain scans. No amount of good parenting, bad parenting, or tiger parenting can change this. Jennifer was a bad seed from the start.

She doesn't come off as a sociopath--she doesn't seem to have been that good at manipulating people and she seem to suffer from anxiety--something that's not an issue for sociopaths. She does have traits of borderline personality disorder--self-injury, fear of abandonment (she couldn't leave home), the crazy reality distortions, inability to think through consequences

Not all murderers are sociopaths.

Which one is the one that doesn’t feel empathy? That’s what she has. She was okay with her mom getting shot in the head and was happy about it and joked with the killer. Her father saw it all as he lay dying.

[quote]I think it did happen in a vacuum. Do you think Ted Bundy would not have happened if only he had loving parents? Some people are born gay. Some people are born serial killers.

Bundy’s mom and stepdad were by all accounts, including their other kids, very good parents. People may have the capacity, there may be a genetic basis for sociopathy or psychopathy, but it takes something external to light the match.

So what lit the match for Bundy if he had such good parents?

R19: the Pans were/are Vietnamese Chinese, as you can tell from their names.

‘Pan’ is 潘 in this case.

I had a friend whose father was a bully, also an Asian immigrant. She was over 20 years old, was in the RN program at a good university. Her father wanted her to live at home but she refused. She moved out and started dating a white guy which made him furious (as he wanted her to date within her culture). He cut off all communication with her and forbade her to talk to her mother or siblings. She was heartbroken and devastated but she was strong enough to break free out of an unhealthy environment. But it sucks that she couldn't even talk to the rest of the family.

Not all Asian families are like this but I've come across fathers who are very controlling like my friend's. The girl should have moved out but she wasn't strong enough or didn't have enough support from her friends or community. It sounded like she was psychologically abused and trained to be dependent on her parents.

[quote]The girl should have moved out but she wasn't strong enough

Not strong enough? I would say she was plenty strong to be able to kill her parents. If she was weak she would’ve just gone along with her parents’ wishes.

[quote]Kids these days.

She [italic]was[/italic] weak, R40, which is why she finally cracked. I encourage you to read the full article at R3, if you haven't had the chance yet. It's pretty illuminating.

r26 has seen "The Bad Seed" one too many times.

Jennifer Pan’s parents — her father Hann especially — were the definition of tiger parents. Jennifer's social life had amounted to nearly zero, packed over the years instead with music and sports lessons as well as an overabundance of time set aside only for study. More than that, she was barred from parties and social gatherings, couldn’t have a boyfriend, and prevented from doing anything that Hann perceived as counterproductive to her success. Pan’s friends saw her parents as extreme with their protectiveness, and controlling in regards to her life. Pan felt she was imprisoned in her own home.

Because of her parents’ super strict upbringing, Pan wasn't allowed to date, or have a social life, until she was formally enrolled in a university.

Why did they aim only for pharmacy school for her?

@R1 - Sociopaths are 'made'; Psychopaths are 'born.'

R45 Asians tend to want their children to study medicine or enter into the field of technology. Since Jennifer didn't have the stomach or grades to study medicine, the study of pharmacy was seen as the next best option.

Poor girl it sounds like psychological abuse.

Asian Dood, here.

The discipline of structure, the structure of discipline in the Asian culture is paramount; it, coupled with clarity of expectation, is the foundation of our formative lives.

Me - Musical training: classical piano or classical strings; profession: medicine or law. Excel in one, if not all. No vote, no discussion.

Clarity -

Like many Asian children, Pan was expected to maintain a strict schedule that often kept her up until midnight. A talented musician and athlete, she was told she could be a concert pianist or even compete in the Olympics as a figure skater. Make-up, dating and school dances were forbidden.

Exactly R4. A distant relative of mine failed calculus and during his last year of HS was sick and tired of his strict parents so he went to live with his grandmother, and got into a great university but failed out as he spent more time being in a frat than working.

R4 and R51 have never encountered Asian culture or other cultures. I am an Asian and know of families like that who put added pressure on their children to succeed. It's admirable that they are able to raise successful offspring but the moral of this story is that it reached ridiculous levels. Like children suicide in Japan.

IMO, Pan's father was an abusive parent, his one goal was for his children to succeed at all costs but there was no moral clarity or guidance given or even consideration for her as human being. Maybe she was a psychopath but it didn't help that she always lived under the rule of domineering parent who controlled her every move and a mother who complied. To me, her story sounds similar to women in abusive relationships, who finally crack and kill their abuser.

R52, you're mistaken. I'm East Asian and experienced the whole thing. Private school, Ivy League, law school. Depression, anxiety, guilt. But I never lied to my parents about school, as that just creates more avenues to hurt and disappoint them.

You should know as an Asian (assuming you're Chinese, Japanese, or Korean) that you can't lie to your parents about the important stuff. If you're Southeast Asian, well, you know what we think of you (kidding).

^^ Oh, Shit!

. . . If you're Southeast Asian . . .

R53, I didn't say that all Asian cultures are like that at all. But I have known families where the father is very controlling and domineering like my friend I talked about in R39. When she did tell him the truth about her white boyfriend, he ostracized her. She could have lied and avoided being ostracized but she is not crazy.. This Jennifer was not an emotionally healthy person but she was definitely abused by her father.

It was a mix of the two. She was a psychopath and she had abusive parents. If she wasn’t a psychopath, no amount of Tiger parenting would have led to murder or else all Asians would be murdering their parents.

If her parents were nice to her, her psychopathy would’ve come out later in other ways. Maybe she would’ve murdered a coworker or something.

R35, sociopath/psychopaths don't have empathy, but Pan still doesn't really fit the diagnosis. People with personality disorders of all sorts tend to be short on empathy. Pan seemed to be emotionally stunted as much as anything--she didn't have a sense of her parents as individual people, separate from herself. When she ran into trouble, she just lied about it and then lied so more without much control.

A sociopath is more likely to have cheated to pass calculus or found some other way to manipulate the teacher into giving her a passing grade. The wholesale denial of reality isn't really a sociopath thing. (Psychopath and sociopath are often used interchangeably--psychopathy is simply the more severe form of sociopathy.)

[quote] I didn't say that all Asian cultures are like that at all.

R55, did I imply that you said that at all? No. If anything, I'm saying that kind of strict parenting is common. The distinction I was making was against your assumption At R52 that "[R4] and [R51] have never encountered Asian culture or other cultures."

You assumed I'm not Asian. I said I am Asian and that I've experienced the same parenting and that even then lying would never have been ok: I said at R4 that lying to the point that you can't manage your lies is crazy. If you fail calculus, you tell your parents and go to summer school.

Of course your friend's parents would be angry with their daughter. That's the general rule with East Asian parents: immediate acceptance is the exception.

You're so out of touch that it seems you're not East Asian (one who actually experiences this extremely common type of parenting). You're South Asian or Southeast AsiaN, right? Or are you second or third generation American, Canadian, etc.? That would explain your "It totally happens: they can be really mean!" take on it: your an outsider to this kind of parenting.

She fucked up. She couldn't handle her parents' demands. But she's so deranged that she decided to lie, let it snowball, and then arrange to have her parents killed. She's a coward and a moron: not only could she not finish calculus, but she couldn't accept responsibility for that failure, whether it was because she wasn't smart enough and/or didn't study hard enough. She's so selfish that she wouldn't provide her parents with the information — the truth of her situation — so they could adjust their expectations and guidance.

Correction:

...That would explain your "It totally happens: they can be really mean!" take on it: your an outsider to this kind of parenting, **and so find its normal range or cruelty remarkable (literally worry of remark).

Correction again:

That would explain your "It totally happens: they can be really mean!" take on it: ***you're an outsider to this kind of parenting, **and so find its normal range or cruelty remarkable (literally worry of remark).

*worthy of remark

R58, I am Asian but I was born here. So fuck you.

R58 Do you think that it's good parenting style for her father to bar her from parties and social gatherings?

You sound like an Asian robot. Most Asian sons are robots. That's why Asian women prefer white men over Asian men.

She’s both a product of her crushing family and a product of her latent sociopathy.

Most kids who get themselves into this mess would be bored of lying about about graduating high school after 2 weeks then shack up with their boyfriend.

R58 Chinese men prefer to marry robots because they can't handle real women.

R1 - Born or made? There are several theories. The one I believe is that they are born that way. Same for sociopaths.

My sister and BIL are really good people who were loving parents to my horrible, evil 32 yr old niece. My niece is definitely a sociopath. She put them through hell and ruined their lives. They are devastated and not allowed to see their only grandchild. No way did they make her that way. And that's just one example.

I think people take a huge chance having kids because they could be born bad and in spite of good parenting they still turn out awful. I've seen it many times. But the parents almost always get blamed.

Umm, all of these are WASP parental expectations but with the added pressure of a thriving social life. Boo boo. And doctoring all her report cards from 9th grade on shows she’s complicit in whatever game they played- she a psychopath.

Her father is a psychopath too.

I read this as Peter Pan's Revenge on Tiger Lily. So disappointed.

Psychopathy/sociopathy runs in families. It's in the bloodline.

I have Korean neighbors and they have kids ranging in age from about three - seven. Daily for a few hours one of them plays piano while his mom yells corrections. I can hear her doing it in the middle of songs. Scary stuff.

Her mom wasn't the problem, OP, and it's weird that you think she was. The dad was abusive.

I had parents like hers, and despite what the frauen in the article's comments say, the parents were abusive. The mom tried to mitigate the father's demands, at least.

They didn't deserve to be shot and I doubt they ever had any idea that they were creating a monster, but they absolutely knew they were harming their daughter. That harm was deliberate, used to control her.

She was so scared of them she was concocting elaborate lies to try to not get hurt and not lose her family. I mean, a kid doesn't do that just because they're "evil."

[quote]Some people are born gay. Some people are born serial killers.

Fuck off, you piece of shit.

[quote]She was so scared of them she was concocting elaborate lies to try to not get hurt and not lose her family. I mean, a kid doesn't do that just because they're "evil."

Disagree. Some people are just born “evil.” Bundy, Dahmer, Manson, Lecter, Luca, Hitler. It’s a genetic defect.

I think she was the victim of long-term child abuse (sleep deprivation, forced to stay awake until midnight, strict rules, no social life, etc.) and she just snapped. As I wrote in my R70 reply psychopaths are born that way, I don't know if she is a psychopath but I do think she snapped and cracked under the relentless pressure. I also think her parents, or at least her mother, was a possibly a (NPD) narcissist. They see their children as extensions of themselves and want something to brag about. There was no excuse for pushing her beyond her limits.

They wanted her to be what she was not meant to be. They stole her childhood from her. This is no excuse for what she did, especially the plotting and planning and considering she could have just estranged from them and never spoke to them again. Although her parents did not deserve what happened, I just think they were were emotionally abusive and she was tormented by them for over two decades. She couldn't be who she wanted to be. Now she's a prisoner. Very sad story.

The cruelest thing was the whole “VIP access” thing. Heartless.💔

People, who abuse children, shouldn't be allowed to have children.

I agree ^ but there is nothing stopping them. As long as toxic people and abusers are allowed to have children there will be child abuse.

Tiger parenting is based on lack of empathy for the child. It's a psychopath's style of parenting.

Tiger parenting can lead to greatness, but if your child has limited capacity and/or is particularly sensitive to stress, it can be disastrous.

Jennifer Pan's attorney, Paul Cooper, admitted that Jennifer is a “complex individual” and stated that she has the social skills of a teenager.

[quote] She fucked up. She couldn't handle her parents' demands. But she's so deranged that she decided to lie, let it snowball, and then arrange to have her parents killed. She's a coward and a moron: not only could she not finish calculus, but she couldn't accept responsibility for that failure, whether it was because she wasn't smart enough and/or didn't study hard enough. She's so selfish that she wouldn't provide her parents with the information — the truth of her situation — so they could adjust their expectations and guidance.

Oh yeah, blame the child. Apparently, she was fearful of telling them the truth which says she experienced situations before where expressing herself was met with rejection, humiliation and abuse. I don't condone what she did but the derangement of her personality was probably from years of abuse and pressure.

You sound like future Tiger Parent. I pray that you never have children and if you do, I pity them.

My mother, a child abuser whom I estranged from decades ago, is a psychopath. She was the complete opposite with me and my siblings; belittled and mocked us, told us we were stupid and would amount to nothing, made us feel worthless, discouraged us from getting our degrees, and so on. She was awful. If she were the opposite, like Jennifer's mother, pushing me to be the best I would never have survived that kind of intense, relentless pressure. Although I did somehow survive the belittling and denigrating. I just got away from her when I could and hung around people on campus who were the opposite of her, who enjoyed me for who I am and who were supportive and recognized my strengths and talents. So I left home at 19 to get away from the verbal abuse, after saving up 18 months of minimum-wage income and put myself through college (with some student loans) and graduated from a good university. That accomplishment made me feel as though I got even with her --- best revenge ever. Plus I cut off all contact.

My older brother on the other hand, also a psychopath like my mother, would have done well under Jennifer's mother's parenting style because he had a very high IQ (much higher than mine) and always passed math, calculus, physics, geometry, chemistry, all the hard classes, everything with straight A's, and with minimal studying. He didn't do well under her endless belittling and mocking/teasing him about flunking out of university if he enrolled. He never received his degree because of her. He just had survival types of jobs. He hated her for not being the kind of mom Jennifer's mother was, of course minus the micromanaging and hovering. Back then I did fear he was going to do something drastic but he instead moved 3,000 miles away and stopped talking to our disordered mother.

However, being that he was a psychopath, without a conscience, if he *did not* have a high IQ and he was not so intelligent and such an amazingly quick learner I could see him becoming abusive towards our mother if she were a Tiger Parent, making her life a living hell instead of the other way around. Psychopaths, including the children, do not care what their parents want, nor do they empathize with their feelings. They are sadistic and enjoy tormenting them, usually in an underhanded, covert way.

The psychopath doesn't care if mom/dad are pleased unless they are manipulating them to get what they want. They live by their own rules and no one else's. They do what they want and don't care how others feel. That's why I don't think Jennifer is a psychopath. As mentioned upthread, she snapped and cracked under the constant pressure. Since she couldn't be what her mother wanted her to be she suffered a psychological form of child abuse and also feeling "not good enough." Now her mother is dead, and she's in prison, and her abusive father has no relationship with his daughter who wanted him dead. What a tragedy. Terrible ending.

My brother would have done a psychological number on our crazy mother if she was a Tiger Mom had he not had a high IQ and lacked the confidence to graduate with honors and lacked motivation/drive to succeed, and that is what she expected. But since he was so brilliant he would have done well with this type of high pressure, domineering mother.

Again, that's why I don't think Jennifer is a psychopath. They don't care how they make others feel and are not going to cow-tow to anyone or succumb to their demands. Jennifer and her mother were incompatible because her mother wanted her to be a star, so to speak, which was not that important to her. Consistently meeting her mothers unrealistic expectations was overwhelming for her.

The point is that some kids may do well with Tiger Moms and thrive and excel, others not so well. There was a disconnection with Jennifer and her mother and they were incompatible. Jennifer wasn't the type of child who wanted for herself what her mother wanted for her. She wasn't cut out to satisfy her mothers demands and unrealistic expectations.

Never Tiger Parent a child who cannot conform to that regimen, who can't meet such unreasonably high expectations, and who doesn't really want that life. Tiger parent a child who will thrive in that environment, not resent it. And where healthy boundaries and expectations that are realistic will be established too.

They should have sent her to boarding school.

^ I agree.

IMO, she was not parented the way that SHE needed to be and that would have been best for her. She was parented the opposite of what she needed in order to grow and succeed.

Cool reenactments.

The Twitter account of her younger brother, Felix

I thought you were talking about Tigerman

"They wanted her to be what she was not meant to be."

That's why I don't think she was a psychopath, a sociopath or psychopath would find a way to just pass the class - fake the transcripts, copy the work of some grind, fuck the teacher and then blackmail them into a passing grade, burn down the school before the grades can be released, something creative like that. The girl seemed desperate to stop the pressure in ways that sociopaths don't get desperate, is it even possible to intimidate or terrorize a psychopath? Do they feel fear? Because the way she told stupid and easily found-out lies isn't the action of a sociopath, it's the action of someone who's desperate to hold off the event they fear just a little bit longer, because their thinking process is overwhelmed with terror and they can't think of a better way to cope.

Honestly, it seems like she wasn't particularly bright or resourceful, and was being pressured to be something she couldn't be, and she could neither satisfy her father or get him to stop trying to make her into something she couldn't become. And she couldn't think of a better way to cope than stupid lies and incompetent murders, you'd think a proper psychopath would have done a better job.

I read the article that R3 posted. I couldn't understand how, for what sounds like 2 years or so, Jennifer Pan pretended to go to college and pretended to live with a friend (was really living with her boyfriend/murder accomplice). I'm thinking that was like a vacation for her in that she didn't really have to be in school.

To get into college, all she had to do was re-take high school calculus. Not sure why she had to pretend for 2 years instead of retake calculus.

Sounds like the boyfriend was in love with another girl, but would be with JP as a backup plan.