The Underdog Parent!!

Stories of the Underdog Parent What is an Underdog Parent? Its a parent that feels they could of done something if they were just given opportunities instead of a series of obstacles and closed doors. Some might wrongly think that makes us “Helicopter Parent”, “Lawnmower or Snowplow Parent.” Those all have similar meanings. A parent that is highly invested in their child’s life, so much so that they will remove obstacles in their way. I get it. Kids should solve small obstacles now so they know how to deal with bigger obstacles in the future. That is not what an Underdog Parent is. An Underdog Parent is a parent who as a child, had less knowledge or skill as their peers and had less opportunities for support from those around them to help them catch up with their peers. Now as parents, they want to see their kids succeed where they themselves failed. They help their kids by learning the material themselves and then teach their child. For example, my children go to a Spanish after school class one day a week. My husband speaks Spanish but we speak English at home because I don’t know Spanish. They watch Spanish cartoons and my husband translates things they don’t understand when they ask. Because of this early exposure and ability to get their questions answered, they are able to learn quicker. My kids are the best kids in their Spanish class. Not to brag, but solely because they are the only ones in their class that has at least one parent who speaks the language. My 5 year old quickly learned to count to 10, then to 20, then to 60, then to 100 in the first semester while they other kids are still going over 1-10. Why? Because my son started to learn something and as he practiced he was able to be corrected and had opportunity to take his education further and by asking what comes next. Now imagine the other kids. It is a very diverse school with kids from all over the world such as European, Asian, Middle Eastern or American ect. So for simplicity imagine both parents only speak English? Their child wants or needs to practice their Spanish. They ask their parent to help them count from 1-10 in Spanish. If you don’t know how to count in Spanish, how can you correct them? How would you know if they skip numbers? Or say them out of order? Or had the wrong pronunciation? For example, the number 3, it is spelled ‘tres’ but its pronounce more like “Th-res’ than “Tr-es”. When my son was learning to count in English in he use to say “1-2-3-4-5-11-12” I would always have to stop him and correct him. It took about a week or two of counting every night to break him of that habit. So how do you correct mistakes like that in a language you don’t know? There are 3 ways you can address it: A) Let him figure it out on his own with his teacher. That’s why you are paying them to teach your kid Spanish right? (This will give your child an obstacle to over come. They will most likely experience a failure because they can’t preform as well as their peers. A lot of people mistakenly thing this experience will make them try harder the next time. But in reality the child will see their peers ‘accomplishments’ as them being naturally gifted and their ‘failure’ as poof that they can’t EVER do it. The key here is seeing big differences between themselves and their peers make them concluded that they can NEVER do it.) B) Play YouTube videos on repeat of cartoons of how to count from 1-20. This will get them to at least have more exposure to the foreign language which will improve their chances of success. But studies have shown that testing more allow kids to learn faster than just studying. So that difficult recall my son does with his dad counting himself out loud from memory is more beneficial than simply reviewing material, watching and hearing the numbers that are being counted for him. C) You learn the language slightly ahead of your child, well enough to correct him so you can test and answer questions as he learns it. You will in affect become his ‘self taught study buddy’. This will make your kids closer to the level of having at least one parent who speaks the language but still with a big disadvantage. You won’t be exposing him to all the little words. You can’t translate things on demand. You child will not know all of the various other ways to say the same thing or ask the same question. No matter what you do to shrink the gap in the parents knowledge and ability to help their child, their will always be a big disadvantage of not knowing all the small words not on their test. For example the very beginning of class they teacher could greet the children. My child could know how to say hello formally and informally. But what happens when the teachers doesn’t say hello? What if they say “How are you today?” Or “Good morning!” Or “Welcome!” Or a million other small little things that can confuse the child. The child doesn’t know what the teacher said or how to answer. That moment that someone looks at you and expects you to preform and you can’t, can cause stress and anxiety. Repeated moments of stress and anxiety without a balance of success and pride can cause people to disengage or hate people speaking Arabic. It becomes ‘too hard.’ For children to enjoy doing something they must have a balance of successes with difficulty. If its too easy kids don’t want to do it. But if the material is too hard they loose motivation to try. Very much like the study of learned helplessness. If the child learns at a level or in an environment where they can’t preform what is expected of them they will stop trying. So if my child has at least one parent who speaks Spanish, why am I talking about it? Yes my child lucky his dad can correct his pronunciation and quickly teach him to count passed all of his peers in his Spanish class. He feels success in his Spanish class. But he also takes an Arabic class one day a week. I am half Jordanian. So with my kids being 25% Jordanian I wanted them to learn Arabic. Not in some strict religious place. I choose a place that teaches as they play games and make crafts all while speaking Arabic. They said they were Montessori based. But Montessori main idea is to have the kids who know more teach those who know less and kids are grouped together with different skill levels. Yes Montessori uses more materials to teach than simply paper work which is what his Arabic school does. But the Arabic classes are teacher lead like the traditional way instead of student lead like Montessori way. Students are asked to preform and its obvious it comes easy to certain kids and harder to others. The parents are blamed for this. The teacher believes those kids who it comes easy to are studying more and those kids who it comes harder to are not putting as much effort in. That couldn’t be further from the truth. Do my kids know the vocabulary words they were required to know? Yes! Do they know all the variety of tiny words that people use to ask when they test them? No! He unfortunately is learning Arabic the way learned Arabic. A bunch of random vocabulary words with no way to string them together in a sentence. I know the word “Fish” for example but that doesn’t help me in a restaurant. How can I distinguish from a waiter saying, “we are out of the fish’ or “the fish is our specialty”. Or from a local saying “the fish is amazing here” or ‘the fish is terrible here”. I gain nothing from the ability to know how to say or understand the word fish. If they are going to teach our kids 500 words each year, instead of teaching vocabulary words that are the most common words that only serve to expand the vocabulary of kids who already speak Arabic, why can’t they focus on sight words? Like the 500 or 1,000 most common words? Imagine that kid whose parent knows no Arabic, they meet someone speaks Arabic and that person asked him “how is he doing?” Or “what is his favorite thing to do?” The child who learned the common words will feel very proud that he knows most if not all of the words the person said. And if he didn’t know all of the words like the word “favorite” he could at least ask what that one word meant. He will feel a sense of pride that he can show off his skills which would motivate him to learn more words including the now new word “favorite”. This child would want to seek out social situations that they feel they can show off their new talents so they can feel this sense of accomplishment again. This is how people learn languages faster and makes them eventually become fluent. 80% of the words we say are the same 500-1,000 words over and over. Language is a perfect example of 80% of your success comes from 20% of your effort. Now imagine that same kid whose parent knows no Arabic, they meet someone speaks Arabic and that person asked him how is he doing? Or what is his favorite thing to do? The child who learned mostly vocabulary words will be embarrassed. They won’t understand what is being asked. This person didn’t say an animal or color or number or ask them to say the alphabet in Arabic. They didn’t ask the child to do any of the things the school taught him and focused on. Instead of having that moment to feel proud and see their hard work pay off, they are instead in a situation where they are embarrassed or feel dumb and they may want to even hide. They learn to avoid practicing their Arabic with others or avoid being placed in that situation where they are expected to preform like that again. It is easy for my kids to avoid situations where they have to speak or try to understand Arabic. He has no one around him to speak it to. My Son is 50% Mexican, 25% white (English/Irish), and 25% Jordanian. My husband is doing what he can to teach our son Spanish and teach him about Mexican food, and fun traditions. We live in America so we speak English, eat American food and enjoy all of the American traditions and culture. But how can I allow him to experience the Arabic Culture if I know nothing about it myself? I don’t know much Arabic as I already admitted. I don’t listen to Arabic music. People usually choose music they can understand and the songs about elephants and cars, which are at my level of understanding are obviously boring for an adult. Others have told me they learned language from soap operas or Tv shows, Yet without knowing all the middle words myself that link car to train it becomes very hard to understand. Imagine trying to watch a show where you only understand one word every 500 that is said. Yes maybe, fish, car, milk is a common word, but knowing ‘the’, ‘and’, ‘to’, ‘what’ are way more common. Knowing even the 200 most common words would be the difference between feeling like you understand 70% of what’s going on verse only 1%. I want my child to eventually know Arabic. I enroll him in a school where many of the other parents speak Arabic. Many of those other kids have already learned the small but essential middle words. Many of their parents ask their kids “what do you want to eat?” Or “Are you hungry?” types of questions that teaches kids to know and be very familiar with these small words. I can teach my kids the colors but how can I teach them all the different ways people could ask questions to test that they know the colors? What if they don’t know what “What color is that” or “Which color is ___” what if my child fails not because he didn’t know the vocabulary word that they were testing for. But because he didn’t know what the question was asking? I could give up on my child ever learning the language or I can say “That’s fine.. let my child fail until he gets use to these phrases.” I don’t mind, especially if they have a wide range of kids ages in the class so he doesn’t feel like a big kid in a baby’s class. The problem starts when the teachers see that some kids advance quickly and others don’t and the teachers assume its from a lack of effort on the kids and parents side. The teacher took a video of a group of kids who answer questions that I don’t even understand, and I see my kid look confused yes, and my friend’s kid who is 100% Jordanian call out most of the answers. I know for a fact I have put in more effort than my friend did to teach her kid because each vocabulary word they have to know I had to first translate, then transliterate so I can pronounce it. I made study guides that took me several days to make just so I can have the translation and transliteration on the same page so he can study with me. My friend doesn’t have to look up ثعلب and translate it to mean fox and then find the transliteration to be pronounced as Thaelab. I have put more effort in. Yet the teachers shame us non-native parents. Saying “they can totally tell which kids study and which kids don’t”. “They say they want this school to be taken seriously, and maybe they need to talk to some parents about if this is the right school for their kids.” Honestly, its not the right school for my kids. As I explained, focusing on common words is way more productive and important that knowing letters, numbers and vocabulary that goes along with the letter of the day. Learning the word bird in Arabic should come way after learning the word ‘what’, ‘is’, or ‘that’. This is the wrong school to learn Arabic, this is more of a school to build on it. But there is no other school where kids can learn together in a fun way. They have fun there, they make projects and friends. Its a good school to spark their interest in learning Arabic. Sure I can just play videos and make him study on Anki or learn on sites like memrise. But how do you convince a kid to learn a language that no one in his family or community speaks? That is the dilemma. Arabic is irrelevant for first and more so, second generation American kids. I have cousins in a far away place who speak Arabic. He only has second cousins that he has never met in a far away place. Should I just give up? I am a parent who is trying my hardest to have a different outcome with my children than I had. I can try as hard as I can but I am only being shamed. I guess I will stick with trying to stay in as long as they let my kids. Until they finally kick out all the non speakers children who I guess make them look bad, because hey, they want to be taken seriously as a Arabic School. Isn’t that what all private schools do? Select for the best and kick the rest out so they look good? What is the point of anyone teaching their American kids Arabic? There is very limited number of people who will speak the language in America because they are being so selective with who gets to learn it. Just like the butterfly effect, you choosing to kick out kids like mine is lowering the likely hood that your grandkids will speak Arabic. Children of Arabic decent is a minority in America. I become friends with people who are from Jordan just like my dad is and our kids play together. You can’t speak Arabic around me if you are polite and your kids won’t speak Arabic around my kids. At playdates and parties you and your kids will all be speaking English to be polite. Your kids won’t see a value or benefit to speak Arabic if they see all of their friends speaking English at parties and playdates. If they don’t practice it they will forget it. If they don’t a reason to practice it they won’t. So having people like me around lowers your chances your kids will find Arabic valuable. So you can say well I will just hang out with people who only speak Arabic and their kids speak Arabic. Everyone else will see the benefit and does the same. The only problem is that when you do that you kick out a big group of people who are Arab but don’t feel any connection to other Arabs. Officially they were shunned from the community for not being 100% Arab. While that makes your own family better at speaking Arabic it makes your community weaker and fleeting. Arab men often marry people who are from different cultures. Women are more likely to do most of the caring and teaching of the kids. The community shuns the children and refuses to teach them Arabic, they refuse to include them in gatherings, or purposely speak Arabic so they won’t feel welcome. And that’s it the wife and children of the Arab father feel no connection to the Arab community. The community shrinks and becomes weaker. What is the purpose or goal of the school? To get a bunch of kids who already speak Arabic be better at reading and writing and having a larger vocabulary? Great! But that isn’t making much difference in the world. Its easier to teach kids who know Arabic, Arabic. But you could do so much more. There is children who are falling through the cracks all the time. They are blank slates and slow learners. Just like kids in ghetto school districts these kids aren’t as rewarding to teach. The teacher and school doesn’t get the pride and recognition to have kids who successful at being fluent. But what if the teacher’s reward didn’t come from having a kid memorize animals and colors? What if the teacher’s reward isn’t from instant gratification of seeing their kids succeed on test? What if the teacher’s reward came from seeing this kid who only has 25%, 13% or 0% Arab in them, stay connected in the community in 5 or 10 years from now. What if the teachers reward was from spreading language to those who wouldn’t otherwise be taught it. Do something that maters! Do something that changes the world. At least in the world of your little community. Those kids you make feel bad, and kick out and going to grow up and be people leading and voting in your community. Do you want those kids to grow up with love in their hearts for the Arab community or you want them to feel resentment for not being good enough to teach? Aesop's Fable 53. The Father, His Sons, and the Sticks There was once a man whose three sons were always fighting with each other. This made the man sad because he wanted his sons to get along. So, in order to teach the boys about the power of unity, he commanded them to bring him a dozen slender sticks of wood, each about as thick as a pencil. The father then addressed his eldest son. "Son," he said, "I want you to take one of these sticks and break it." The son did as his father told him, breaking the stick easily. The father then told his second son to take a stick and break it. When the father commanded his third son to do the same thing, the son laughed and said, "Father, it's obvious that these sticks are easy to break. I don't understand why you're making us do this." The father smiled and replied, "I have my reasons." Turning back again to his first son, the man commanded, "Take the remaining sticks and tie them into a bundle." The boy did as he was told. "Now try to break the sticks," the father commanded. The boy tried and tried, but he wasn't able to break the bundle of sticks. The father then commanded his other sons to try to break the bundle, but they were not able to do so. At last, the father explained the lesson. "You, my boys, are like these sticks," he said. "If you cooperate and stand united, no one will be able to break you. If, on the other hand, you quarrel with one another and act on your own, it will be easy for your enemies to break you. Please take this lesson to heart," he concluded, "and stay close to another." The moral of the story is that strength comes from unity.