Bilingual and Executive Function

As I help my children to learn to manage their daily routines, schoolwork, and social life, I have heard the child development term “executive function” and attended seminars on helping children develop their “executive function”.  Suggestions include check lists, post-it notes around the house, agenda books for organization, a 5-point scale to regulate behaviors and emotion, alternative approaches, flexibility, etc.  It is all rather challenging for children under 16 years old in today’s busy world.  Experts say the frontal and prefrontal cortex won’t be fully developed until 22 to 25 years old.  Meanwhile, we as parents need to be their surrogates and executive officers.

Being a young child and a teenager’s executive officer is certainly not an easy task.  I hope my kids will have strong executive function skills and manage their life effectively.  Today I read that bilingual ability may help develop executive function.  That’s worth noting.

“Over the past decade, Ellen Bialystok, a distinguished research professor of psychology at York University in Toronto, has shown that bilingual children develop crucial skills in addition to their double vocabularies, learning different ways to solve logic problems or to handle multitasking, skills that are often considered part of the brain’s so-called executive function.

These higher-level cognitive abilities are localized to the frontal and prefrontal cortex in the brain. “Overwhelmingly, children who are bilingual from early on have precocious development of executive function,” Dr. Bialystok said.

Dr. Kuhl calls bilingual babies “more cognitively flexible” than monolingual infants…”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/11/health/views/11klass.html?hpw

A Good Start to the New School Year

Today is a beautiful day, feeling more like summer than fall.   For my son’s family homework day, we went to the Russell Orchards farm in Ipswich for apple picking.  We took the hay ride into the orchard. With the blue sky and red apples hanging on trees it was picturesque.  Walking around the orchard with the sweet air, we were eating while picking apples off the tree.  It was a very nice way to unwind from the first week of teaching for Panda Land Chinese Fall 2011 and helping my own children settle into their new school year.

This week I was happy to return to Shore Country Day School to teach Chinese for its afterschool enrichment program.  I said Ni Hao to one class of 2^nd to 4^th grade students and another of 5^th grade students.  Some of them studied with me last year and happily return to learn more; others are new students who were eager to learn Chinese with me.   

On Tuesday at the Salem Athenaeum, we resumed our children’s Chinese class.  A new girl from China joined us.  I was glad to see that she and the other students were so friendly with each other.  Saturday I taught two lovely young children age 3 & 5 (brother and sister) their first Panda Land Chinese lesson.  They sang the children’s song of Liang Zhi Lao Hu (Two Tigers) to me -- Chinese lyrics to the same melody as “Frère Jacques”.  At the end of each class, I gave each child moon cakes to celebrate the Chinese Autumn Moon Festival.

At Panda Land we have children of all different backgrounds learning Chinese together.  I felt so lucky to have such a wonderful opportunity to teach these American children my native language and share with them my own heritage.

American Common Touch in China

This past week, I have been reading news about Vice President Joe Biden visiting China, mostly about visiting Beijing since I am originally from there. What I enjoyed most is the reports about Joe Biden going for lunch in a local restaurant in Beijing. The place, the people, and the food were all so authentic and touching to me. Mr. Biden stepped into this everyday life of ordinary people in Beijing, and we got a chance to see it. For the last few years, we’ve heard so much about China’s economic development and its rising role in the world, but this episode of Joe Biden mingling with ordinary people in an ordinary place in Beijing captured my heart -- Americans and Chinese are getting closer and closer. We are not only talking about the big political and economic issues, but also getting connected in simple everyday life, sharing soybean paste noodles, steamed pork buns, cucumber salads…

In a Chinese report I read, Joe Biden was referred as ye ye (grandfather) introducing his sun nu (granddaughter) to China. They toured the Forbidden City and walked on the Great Wall. In the restaurant at lunch, Joe Biden was introducing his granddaughter to the Chinese: “This is my granddaughter.” His 18-year-old granddaughter Naomi has studied Chinese for 5 years. During the trip, she has been very helpful to her grandfather with translation of Chinese.

Someday, I would like to introduce China to my children and show them around in Beijing. But I know I need to put in the effort now. They need to learn Chinese and get to know the culture. I am sure if you want to introduce your children to China someday, you would want them to learn Chinese now.

THE CHINESE CONCEPTION OF TIME

Last night I was helping my son with his Chinese homework. The subject was time, e.g. last month, this month, next month, yesterday, today, tomorrow, past and future, etc.

To explain time, I drew an axis. In English, time is coming towards us from the front as if we are facing upriver. In Chinese, we face the past, as if looking downriver, since the past is visible to us, but the future is not yet visible. Yesterday came in front of Today, and Tomorrow will come after Today. Therefore in Chinese, we say the past is “in front” of the future which is coming “afterward”.

In my family it is no surprise that we see things from two different points of view. Anyway, China has a long history so there is a lot to see in the past.

Green Eggs and Ham 绿鸡蛋和火腿

After a long winter, we started our Chinese classes for Spring 2011. Yesterday before Easter Sunday at the children’s class, we reviewed the sentence patterns for to eat, to drink, and like to eat, like to drink, etc. The children conversed with each other using the sentence patterns with different vocabulary, e.g. "What do you eat?" "I eat carrots." “Do you like to eat onions?” “I don’t like to eat onions.” “I like to eat potatoes.” Then I moved on to teach them how to indicate the past, present, and future, e.g. yesterday, today, and tomorrow. To make the sentence drill more fun, we practiced on saying what each of us would eat and drink on the next day, Easter Sunday. Since many of us would have ham for Easter dinner, I told everyone that the Chinese phrase for ham is “fire leg”. This reminded them that the Chinese for turkey is “fire chicken”. Now with the Easter bunny jumping around in their heads, the kids got very creative. They started to put the words they have learned together to say “Tomorrow I will eat a Chocolate Rabbit.” “Do you like to eat Green Eggs and Ham?”

“Are we doing Dr. Seuss in Chinese?” one student asked.

Later I googled on Green Eggs and Ham and found this website on chinesepod.com/lessons/chinese-green-eggs-and-ham. It sounds like a fun lesson. You may want to listen to it when you get a chance.

Here are more Chinese translations from this Dr. Seuss rhyme:

——你喜欢吃绿蛋和火腿吗？ ——你喜欢在这里吃或者那里吃吗？ ——你喜欢在房子里吃或者和老鼠一起吃吗？ ——你喜欢在盒子里吃或者和狐狸一起吃吗？ ——你喜欢在船上吃或者和山羊一起吃吗？ --山姆是我

I hope you had a wonderful Easter dinner today with your family and you liked everything you ate.

Thoughts on Chinese Tiger Mother

Last Saturday I read the article on WSJ “Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior” and immediately shared it on my Facebook page. I then had a discussion with a friend of mine who is a psychologist teaching parenting skills. She stated: “A middle approach is helpful: no name-calling and being supportive but not timid - and expecting the best!”

Below is my email sharing my thoughts with her.

Thanks for your comments. I agree that somewhere in the middle --not the extremes (between the Chinese Way and the Western Way) should be the way to go. It also has to be adjusted to different children.

My older one is very intelligent, but laid back, easy going. When he was little, I didn't demand too much from him academically and hoped he would develop at his own pace. I just didn't know if I should push him too much academically at a young age. I was more interested in seeing where his interests were and what he was naturally good at. Now he is a freshman in high school and I certainly see he is still working on strict self-discipline to get high grades although he got into the honor program at St. John's Prep with his high SSAT scores and enjoys his classes. I can't use Amy Chua's method on him now since he is a teenager, but I often tell him that he needs to work hard and be self-motivated. I think he understands it but doesn't have the discipline and the habit to do it consistently yet. It will be a process and I hope he can get it before he goes to college.

My younger son is different. He handles his homework mostly by himself without much reminding. He is more of a perfectionist and very competitive, but can be insecure and anxious sometimes. I spent a lot of time working on his social and emotional development instead of academic development which most Chinese parents don't necessarily think is a big deal, believing that a child will grow and mature on his own.

From the article, I see Amy Chua describes the Chinese culture of raising children very true and clear although a little extreme in her own way. I am not for her extreme methods. But I was raised to live up to my parents' high academic and professional expectations well into my adulthood. From 4th grade, my parents expected me to get 100 points in all subjects. My grandma lived with us and together with my parents, they wouldn't let me do any house chores. As my grandma said, I was raised "to open my mouth when food is served and stretch out my arms when clothes are put on". I scored high in the national college entrance exam and got into the top university of China, which at the time had an over 80% male student body, with a major in computer technology and engineering chosen by my mother. When I had my children in the US, my parents came to help me out. My Mom said that she would help me with child care so that I could advance my career. It was a totally different way of spoiling and demanding of offspring.

To raise my own children, I constantly feel the differences between the Chinese Way and the Western Way. I share a lot of the Chinese cultural values and beliefs that Amy Chua described, but I’m not always certain of the best way to carry them out in raising my boys in America. My mother-in-law often reminds me that I am living in America and that is not what Americans do. My husband tells me that there is no one way to do things here in America. Right, but we have to establish a Wang-Bedell Way as I told him. My husband has lots of intellectual interests. He is a very tolerant person and enjoys playing with our children. I prefer more structured routines, staying focused and setting high expectations for my children, while my husband doesn't always take strict stands. Children sense the difference and get by as much as they can. Or they maybe just get confused and try to figure out what to do. As a result, we don't get to extremes, but I am not sure if we can raise our children to reach their highest potential as I hope.

Parenting is very challenging, yet is very rewarding. I am committed to this journey of trial and error to establish our Wang-Bedell Way to raise our two sons.