Who Is Nathan Huffner Selfish

Raising his only daughter, Patty, to be a perfect human is Nathan Huffner’s goal. He is in denial about his attitude towards raising his daughter; he said that he just wanted Patty to learn more than other kids do but the truth is he wants Patty to be his source of achievement; he is proud that his child is a genius and for that, he feeds his pride. He trained his daughter to be so intelligent, to be not only good at everything but be the best at everything. He taught his daughter things that even some adults can’t do. His daughter never had a chance to complain about the things that was being taught to her because she was so little to understand that her life was not the life of an ordinary little girl. Nathan Huffner concentrated so much
He didn’t let his child to enjoy her life as a child. He just fed Patty with knowledge and other complicated things and never let her feel the feeling of what a normal little girl should feel. That made him an authoritarian parent; the one that discourages expressions of disagreement. He has strict standards; he wants Patty to be a perfect human. As a result, Patty was unsociable with other children. She was unfriendly to others. She was withdrawn and was acting and reacting weird to situations that seems normal to other children (an example is the “thumb magic” of Gil to the children; others had fun with that magic while Patty screamed and ran away. Maybe that’s because of too many scientific facts in her head that made her think that that magic was disgusting.) Another scene that showed Patty being different from other children was in the party of Kevin; she saw a boy turning around and around, she asked her mother what was the boy doing, that means that Patty was unable to do the things that a normal child experiences, which is doing silly things and enjoying those silly
There were so many problems that he encountered in this movie. First, he found out that his eldest son, Kevin, needs to transfer to a special school for special kids and need to undergo therapy. He rationalized that Kevin is just too smart that’s why he seems not so normal compared to other kids. He covered up his anxiety of Kevin being not normal so he believes his own lie that Kevin is just too smart. At first he disapproved to that opinion but eventually, he agreed upon seeing the behavior and reaction of Kevin to different situations (baseball and the lost retainer). Another problem that he encountered was his job because the partnership was given to another person which means that he will be facing a serious financial problem in his family. He was so frustrated and angry so when he went back home, he was arguing with his wife. He displaced his anger to his wife because even though he showed anger to his boss, still he can’t put out all his anger to his boss. Then he found out that his wife, Karen, was pregnant. He was so frustrated about all of these problems but still he agreed on having a birthday party for Kevin. Kevin wanted to have a cowboy character that twists balloons on his birthday. Even though Gil knows that that will be expensive, he still agreed on hiring that cowboy character on Kevin’s birthday. When he found out that the cowboy will not make it to the party, he didn’t want Kevin to be disappointed,