Her daughters would seek her out at night when she seemed to have a moment to talk to them: they were having trouble at school or they wanted her to persuade their father to give them permission to go into the city or to a shopping mall or a movie – in broad daylight, Mami! Laura would wave them out of her room. "The problem with you girls . . ." The problem boiled down to the fact that they wanted to become Americans and their father – and their mother, too, at first – would have none of it.

–“Daughter of Invention,"
Julia Alvarez

What is the meaning of the idiom underlined in the passage?

focused on
exaggerated
was dishonest
forgot a lesson