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I have two opposing thoughts on this matter. 1.) Griff and Pete are doing it right, no question. 2.) These other parents maybe aren't doing it wrong, either. I think it's possible that they have a harder job to do, whether it happens to be a situation of their own making or not.
In my experience, the nature/nurture influence is a bell curve with nature mostly overtaking the whole middle portion of individuals. At one end you have the relatively small number of individuals who are neglected/abused, and no amount of innate "good" personality is going to overcome that kind of trauma. At the other end, you have the few kids with innate sociopathic tendencies, and no amount of good parenting is going to overcome that. But for the vast majority of everyone else... well, I've seen too many sibling sets turn out completely and totally different to believe that nurture has that much of a role to play. Maybe this other girl is wishy-washy because they raised her to be that way, or maybe they just stopped fighting her innate wishy-washy tendencies by about the age of 7 or 8, which is the time I see most parents give up trying to be the sole architect of their children's personalities. Which is not to say that they should give up trying to have any influence at all, though it seems a lot of them do.
Anyway, I don't know this kid, so maybe I'm totally wrong. I don't know if the programs they're pushing her towards are basically sensible, or rooted in some weird "follow in our footsteps" kind of mentality, or what. But I can at least envision the possibility that they do have her best interests in mind by steering her future so sternly.
A friend of mine's parents did something similar to her younger brother, and at the time I was horrified. They strictly informed the boy that he would not be allowed to major in English, regardless of what school he chose. They wanted him to major in business, but there were a few other options they would also consider acceptable. Now, this was not what you would call the typical MBA kind of kid, and they fought very bitterly over it, but ultimately the son majored in business at the most liberal college he could find. Turned out, the parents knew him better than we thought they did. They didn't want him to be a middle manager, they wanted him to learn entrepreneurial skills because they were already well aware that his personality was definitely not suited to working under others--and that included being able to work in a public school, or to navigate the academic politics necessary to get a PhD and use an English degree that way. This kid was truly inspired by literature, no doubt, and was well-suited to learning about it, but in the end he never would have been successful with it. By his junior year he had picked up enough basic business concepts that he was independently remodeling and flipping houses (and being quite successful at it even after the housing bubble burst.) He's happy, and has since told his parents he's glad they didn't let him major in his "passion." In the beginning he was also really ticked off that his parents hadn't exerted nearly as much control over his older sister's choices, but eventually he had to admit that she was more mature than he was at that age, and was already making choices that would allow her to be successful, so they didn't need to step in.
Anyway, just my two cents.
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