Every time I write a post about our parenting choices, I brace myself for the inevitable comments that make me feel defensive. I realize this is completely silly, because OF COURSE different parents are going to make different choices, even if they are in the exact same circumstances we are. If I stop writing about things because other people do things differently, what the heck would I have to write about?
That being said, I do want to elaborate a little more on our decision to help our kids learn Chinese. Hopefully, I can do it without seeming defensive.
Many moons ago, Mr. A and I had several conversations about what priorities we wanted to make for our kids. Obviously, a good education was high on that list. We also decided that we wanted our kids to have an opportunity to gain the following skills: 1) play an instrument 2) master a physical activity or sport and 3) learn a language other than English.
Yes, we are THOSE kind of parents. We are totally comfortable admitting that our kids will be highly involved in a variety of lessons because we think it is good for their brains and their bodies. We also think that all these activities teach discipline and other important skills like teamwork and respect for other cultures/countries.
Because it is easiest to teach a kid another language when they are very very young, we chose to start that first. Chinese was the obvious choice, not only because our kids will be of Chinese/Taiwanese heritage, but also because Mr. A has a pretty extensive knowledge of Mandarin (while he wasn’t fluent, he was definitely proficient back in the day).
The only problem about teaching our kids Chinese while we live in our mid-sized Midwestern city is a lack of resources. There is no Chinese language preschool, there are no small private Mandarin classes at language instruction schools and there is certainly no immersion program at any of the local elementary schools.
(As an aside, had we stayed in San Francisco, we would almost certainly have enrolled M in all of the above. The truth is, if we lived in CA, we would probably have been much MORE dedicated to making her learn Chinese than we are here).
Because there aren’t any toddler classes, we found M a private tutor when she turned one. She met with her first tutor for about an hour a week for the first two years she took classes. When we switched to a new tutor, she has two hours of lessons a week. Two hours a week was definitely NOT burdensome for us, especially because the tutors came to our house.
In our town, there are two weekend Chinese schools: the Mandarin mainland one and the Mandarin Taiwanese one. The Taiwanese one is much smaller, I think.
Since A’s family is Taiwanese, you would think that we would send our kids there. We chose the Mainland one because Mr. A is an accent snob and wants his kids to have a Beijing standard Mandarin pronunciation. (That is also why both our tutors are from Beijing…His choice, not mine.)
Another reason we initially started at the the Mainland Chinese school is because they had a Chinese dance class. We were just talking about starting M in some kind of physical activity when one of her classmate’s mother at preschool told us she was going to take the Chinese dance class there and we should look into it. M is kind of shy, so having a classmate in her class seemed like it would help her get adjusted. I asked Mr. A if he thought a Chinese dance class was Chinese-stuff overkill, but he didn’t. So into Chinese dance class she went.
After 3 months in Chinese dance class, we found out that M could take the first level Chinese class, even though she was only four (the registration materials said she had to be five). Since we were at the school on Sundays anyway, we signed her up to help supplement her Chinese lessons.
Honestly, I think Chinese school has been fun for M. She only complained a little at the beginning about the language class, then she found a little boyfriend (who is also in her preschool) and it seems all good.
The only problem we have with the school is Mr. A and his issues with the school’s adminstration and pedagogy. Mr. A and I have talked a lot about his issues in the last couple days. We revisited our decisions about our priorities and decided he needs to just get over it already because we still think it is important for M and L to learn another language–specifically Chinese.
(Just to be clear, our conflict was over the school not over the choice for our kids to learn Chinese.)
I could go into another whole post about how I think the parenting choices we are making and the resources we are collecting will help insulate our kids against the same kind of racial-identity angst that Mr. A grew up with in the Midwest. That is another long post though, so I am stopping here.
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On the topic of the word “Hapa”, I addressed that in this post a while back. I use it mostly for convienence while writing, but I also like the fact that the previously negative connotation is being lost as many mixed-race Asians are claiming the word and embracing it as a positive way to describe their experience and identity. (For example, just last night I read the book Hapa Girl). “Hapa” is a term that the small handful of mixed-race/asian adults I know IRL use (interchangeably with other words) to describe themselves, so it doesn’t seem odd to me to use it in this context.
For the record though, we don’t tell M she is Hapa. She is still trying to figure out Chinese and not Chinese. She isn’t developmentally able to grasp being two things at once just yet. When she is old enough, M can decide what she wants to call herself. I think it is nice that there are a lot of options available to her.
I’m jealous that you are able to find anything “Chinese” in your town. We live south of San Francisco (Carmel) and can’t find ANYTHING. We had a nice girl who was teaching our children when they turn 3 some little songs, but she just moved back to Beijing.
How bizarre that someone would think that it’s *bad* to send M to Chinese school! It sounds *wonderful* … except for the fact that the admin people sound like jerks, but I mean the concept of Chinese school sounds wonderful. I sure wish my parents had arranged for me to learn a foreign language when I was that young.
People have trouble with your decisions? Screw them! Your kids, your family!
That said, we are making sure the girls attend Hebrew school. S starts in the fall! That’s a huge time committment, but very important in our eyes
Your kids, your choice. You want what is best for your family and their future happiness, and you’re striving to make that happen.
My husband is third to fifth generation, depending on which branch of the family you’re discussing, and nobody in his family speaks. So it hasn’t been a big factor in his identity, and by extension in our plans for our child(ren). I think many of his identity flashpoints growing up concerning being Asian arose from feeling that he had little in common with a lot of other Asian-American students he met. Many of them were first or second generation and very religious (the religion thing was the bigger issue), and they simply didn’t have many shared experiences. I recall how annoyed he was in college when the Asian American Student Union tried repeatedly to recruit him when he had expressed no interest in joining their group. They kept inviting him to worship with them, and he found their approach very off-putting.
On another note, I do think it would be worthwhile for our entire family to learn Chinese, simply because China is a major player on the world stage and knowing the language that a huge proportion of the world’s inhabitants speak could be nothing but useful (I would also like to learn Russian if I ever have the chance). Perhaps family language lessons are in our future.
We are also determined to have our kids learn an instrument (probably piano or guitar because we own both!) and another language (probably Spanish, because it was my husband’s first language). I would love for them to be involved in regular physical activity also, but have issues with team sports, so probably swimming, dancing, something like that.
I remember reading an essay once, maybe in Brain, Child, where the author was talking about keeping her daughter in violin lessons even though she complained about practicing and other parents criticized her. She had grown up in a pretty abusive family situation and her attitude was, “I’ll be very happy as a parent if my child’s worst complaint is violin lessons.”
Chinese language and piano lessons have been foreordained for our children. As for sports, anything that isn’t a cliche is fine by me – maybe I’ll even give ‘em a choice.
I have been doing a great deal of research on how schools are run in China as I would like to go there and teach. I was concerned when I learned that there is much memorization and rote learning there. That is until I realized that unlike English which is largely a phonetic language which can be sounded out, Mandarin is a symbolic/conceptual language and one must memorize thousands of symbols in order to read/write it. It is tonal and so much attention must be paid to how to correctly say it. Memorization is the best/most efficient way to learn the language. Always interesting to learn the why’s as well as the how’s. Lucky M to have two parents who care so much about her and her future.
We say onoko in our family, which I think is Taiwanese (or rather a Taiwanese borrowing from the Japanese occupation). I don’t know anyone else who uses that, though.
GREAT post. I thought the previous one was too — I’m too lazy to go look what people said in the comments right now, but I’m glad you continued writing about the subject.
I think those 3 things are very important and it does help when both parents are from another country like us
and we have the luxury of living in a home that functions at the same time as language school… (I’d never thought of it that way before — thanks for the “inspiration”!).
I’m glad you found a Chinese teacher from Beijing to teach M. I now live in central New York but travel to China and Taiwan a lot. I want my kids to learn Chinese too. I found sources like Chinesepod to be too unstructured. Last year I found a Mandarin training site in Taipei that teaches Chinese in a more structured format than any other online Mandarin I’ve found so far. The site ( http://www.worldlearnerchinese.com ) in based in Taipei but teaches both simplified and traditional Chinese characters and they offer Live on-line instruction! Now my two teens have a Mandrain Chinese class twice a week live over the Internet. They can see the teacher and interact in the virual classroom. Thanks for the Internet!