A young girl works to impress her highly critical parents and submits to a terrible fate as she struggles to meet their impossible standards.

A 5-year-old boy with a unique way of seeing the world feels alienated from his mother and tells her that he does not need her anymore. This viewpoint later causes him to lash out at his family, leading him to reflect on himself and his life.

On the eve of her students' elementary school graduation, a teacher in rural Ireland makes one last push to prepare her students for the real world.

A rambunctious teenager with an inquisitive mind causes much grief for all his New England family and neighbors when he visits them in the summer of 1914, on the eve of World War I.

Lost in her fantasy, 6-year old Elvy becomes devastated when she believes her imaginary husband has died. Her family strives to convince her otherwise.

A woman examines a period of time in her childhood spent with her sister and the babysitter's son, viewing it through the lens of an adult, and ponders how the experience might have shaped her as a person.

An afternoon at the park takes an unexpected turn for a mother and her son as the well-established families that they admire turn out to be unhappy people who secretly enjoy the misery of others. As the day progresses, the mother is surprised to learn that she and her son share many negative qualities with those families.

After her son dies, a mother reckons with the grandson he left behind.

A young boy, who is still unaware of his future in which his mother dies and he becomes a miserable, unaccomplished middle-aged man, lives through an ever-so-slightly unusual day which would later become the one and only core memory he has of his mother.

A little girl navigates her relationships with two boys in her elementary school class, a brash bully and a shy victim, and learns about the nature of suffering.