Just a quick addition to that last post.
Yesterday as we were leaving Chinese school A said, “Do you think that the white adoptive parents see all these Chinese kids doing extra academic work on a Sunday and get really freaked out?”
”Why would they be freaked out?” I asked.
“Because they realize how important academic success is to Chinese culture. They will have to do a lot of extra work to help their kids catch up and fit in with the other achiving Chinese kids.”
“Uh, I don’t think that is the part of Chinese culture that adoptive parents are interested in.” I said.
“WHAT? Education is the MOST important part!” A screeched. “You can’t have Chinese culture without an emphasis on academic competition! Chinese culture has thousands of years of Emperial exams! Clawing your way to the top of the heap, THAT is Chinese culture!”
“Yeah, well, I am just telling you I have never heard any adoptive parent lamenting their inability to make their kid into the kid who got a perfect on their SAT.” I said.
“Huh.” said A, “I don’t even know what to think about that.”
Whitey, you’re just slipping daggers into the heart of my brothah with your BLANTANT disregard of being obsessed with Chinese education obsession!
Hey! At least I’m getting one part right!
(And my husband said I was being weird…… it’s part of her proper acculturation!)
Wow, sounds hard. My husband was the third son and I think by the time his parents got around to him they had given up. They didn’t even know what grades he got, but let’s just say he was NOT a solid student. However, he has been the most successful in work life, so let A know that grades don’t always correlate to later success in life!
This post and your prior one could have been conversations at my house! My DH won’t even praise unless son gets a 100 — forget an A. He fantasizes, “what if oldest son gets into Harvard, MIT and Cornell? What will we do?” (DH and I met at Cornell so he would still prefer to schlepp to Ithaca). He calls Nai Nai only to report on school report cards. I spend all my time making sure kids are kind, considerate and happy. My Dad (Grumpy) just likes to load kids up on coke and cookies. We (hubby and I) are at opposite ends of the spectrum! But him (being beaten and all) and I (with ZERO expectations) both went to Cornell. Whaddya know???
DS-L
You can tell A that one AP you know *is* completely freaked out. I’ve caught myself nearly hyperventilating over it. H frequently tells me to chill out and relax.
Slightly different take but I see what A means. Over the years we have taken a lot of flack from family [white] and friends [white] that our poor deprived overworked kids are not doing sports but are doing that academic thing called Chinese school every saturday and swedish school on tuesdays. At this point, we ignore the comments but we have said in the past that we saw nothing wrong with our kids learning that it was okay to think more of learning stuff like a language than how to pass a soccer ball. And between ourselves we noted that the chances of various other people’s kids being professional atheletic-whatevers is pretty darn slim whereas my children’s chance of ruling the world due to their language skills and work habits are much higher [hey! A mama can dream can't she?].
But I have pondered how many adopted asian kids [because that hyper focus on education is not merely Chinese] can ever possibly fit in with other Asian americans if they don’t get the importance of education in Asian culture. It seems to me just one more way of being a permanent outsider.
That’s insane!!! There are plenty of ‘stupid’ asians!! “All asians are smart” is such a horrible stereotype and it negatively affects so many lives……
I just wanted to add that I think I would be hyper with a bio kid as well. And I have lamented over a future perfect SAT score, not that I expect it, but it hangs there. Remember me telling you that the school system I live in only had one this year? That was underlying angst. Man, I need an exorcism to cast that uber-perfectionist demon out.
The great thing about parenting adopted kids is that it’s so much easier to just let them be themselves. There’s no looking to see whether he got your brains or she got your partner’s athletic ability. They are what they are. And, at the risk of sounding pessimistic, postinstitutionalized children are more apt to have developmental issues and learning disabilities than the general population. You may be absolutely THRILLED with that B, as long as you know your child did his or her very best.
Jenn, where do you live that has Swedish school?!
In my experience, white adoptive parents have actively resisted the “just because my child is asian doesn’t mean s/he is smart” stereotype–or so they call it. What they may not realize is that Asian children aren’t neccessarily inherently smart more than any other child–it is an issue of discipline, responsibility, and priority on the part of their family and culture. I am not trying to say that white adoptive parents are neccessarily doing their child a disservice, but the level of intelligence and success at school for many asian children isn’t biological as much as cultural. My hometown had a Japanese family that took their two sons back to Japan every summer where they had to go to school for two months. Guess who graduated valdectorian of my high school? Kazumasa, that’s who.
I think we should all expect the best from our children and encourage them to be A students, but also encourage them to be well rounded individuals and not be so harsh if they get a B or a C now and then. If we train our children well and give them the freedom to grow, they will desire to suceed when they leave our house. My parents equipped me with that desire, and in college doing well was more of a priority to me than it was to them. My mom kept telling me how I was doing much better in college than she ever expected. I stil can’t figure out whether that is a compliment or not!
re southern california. Seems there are zillions of swedes who flee Sweden for SoCal resulting in about 4 Swedish schools here. check out svenska skolan on google…. ’nuff said.
I fully agree that the myth of the really smart asian is as bad as any other stereotype however, I think we are talking about something besides just “asians are really smart”. Think of it as the difference between being raised in a family of any color who believes that college is important. It is harder [been there, done that] to fit into a group of people who believe you go straight from high school to a job and that higher education is insignificant. It is something that differentiates you.
Every weekend, our Chinese school is full to the brim of Chinese American kids doing still more academics and not sports. And where we live, there are an awful lot of Chinese schools all dominated by Chinese American kids. They may love being there, they may hate being there, but the fact is that in their families, learning this language [however futile the effort] is considered more important than sports. And this experience of Chinese school is a shared something between that group.
hose who don’t have the shared experience have one more thing that isolates them from their peer group. Example: Everyone in my elementary school in the sixties had two parents. My parents were divorced. The fact of being part of a divorced family was isolating to me with my peers–they couldn’t figure out how I could not have a dad, I couldn’t figure out what it was like to have one in the house.
Maybe “can ever possibly fit in” is too strong but I do think that not being immersed in the emphasis on academics may prove isolating in the future.
As a Chinese kid that was forced to go to Chinese school, I will say this:
1. I really hated going.
2. I didn’t learn much from it.
But, what I did get out of that experience was making friends with other Chinese kids.
It was the one day of the week where I could be in a “school” and not get picked on because I was Asian. No ching-chong noises, no slanty-eyed faces, and no “ewww, you eat that”-remarks.
(Of course I grew up in the 80s so hopefully the kids are nicer today)
Anyway, it’s really hard to learn Chinese in those schools because it’s only once a week. And unless the parents are really involved, your kid will most likely put off doing the homework until the last minute and then cram like crazy.
For example, we had these Chinese character writing assignments where you had to write a word 10 times using the correct brush strokes. Instead of doing that, I would simply make 10 lines and repeat (like an assembly line of characters!)
I mainly learned how to speak Mandarin because that’s all my parents talked to me in. So if I wanted anything from them, I better know how to ask in Mandarin.