5 ms·

This was a personal struggle for me, as a first generation immigrant. I'd try to explain to my parents why I was getting bullied and having a hard time making f

by qiqing 9y ago

This was a personal struggle for me, as a first generation immigrant. I'd try to explain to my parents why I was getting bullied and having a hard time making friends, asking them for advice. In response, they'd assure me that obviously the students with the best grades should garner all the respect like it was for them in their childhoods, and that's just how the world's supposed to work. ::shakes my head::

nopinsight 9y ago
Would switching to a magnet school or a gifted program help? Asking this for others whose kids might face the same situation. It appears there are pockets of academic excellence in many US cities. I don't know how widespread they are though.
- qiqing 9y ago
  I was already in a magnet school at the time, in the gifted program, but it was in a small ethnically homogeneous town. The things that do make it better: (1) moving to a larger, more diverse city / population center, (2) not being the only Asian kid in a class (better if you're > 5% because having only 2-3 in a class still 'others' you).
  - stcredzero 9y ago
    (better if you're > 5% because having only 2-3 in a class still 'others' you). I was also in the gifted program. There are special problems with being a hypo-minority. For one thing, you're highly visible to every sociopath in the area. This is a part of what women can experience in the tech field, when they are only about 1% of the local population.
    - qiqing 9y ago
      Exactly.
- yardie 9y ago
  I'm a product of a magnet school. Switching to a school of excellence most definitely helps.
stcredzero 9y ago
I'd try to explain to my parents why I was getting bullied and having a hard time making friends, asking them for advice. In response, they'd assure me that obviously the students with the best grades should garner all the respect like it was for them in their childhoods From my personal experience: Some Asian parents make it all the worse, if they then insist they know better in the face of reality on the ground. When they do this, they destroy their own credibility at a time when children most need to hear advice. Furthermore, they cut themselves off from the information they need to give the best advice possible.
- jonathanyc 9y ago
  As a counterpoint, I admire my immigrant parents for the ethic they attempted to impart onto me and don’t blame them even if at times I thought they were being “unfair.” I think that far more worrying is the dangerous narrative pushed by people insecure about their accomplishments and aided by people jealous of others’ carefree childhoods that seeks to diminish immigrant accomplishment as lacking individualism or initiative. If it’s just strict parents and the kid is just forced to do it, then we can simultaneously criticize the parents, strip the kid of individuality and attribute any of their accomplishments to things outside of their control. Again, just placing this here as a counterpoint because too often I see this discussion play out and get upvoted in the same way.
  - qiqing 9y ago
    To be clear, I admire my immigrant parents for their work ethic too, and for that influence on me. And the counterpoint about diminishing the accomplishments of others is something that definitely needs more attention. I've been casually called a "robot" or a "trained monkey" by well-meaning non-immigrants in the U.S. (even kids in gifted programs) out of what I perceive to be jealousy. Relevant to the particular article, I did notice that my cousins who lived in China worked a lot, lot harder than my cousins who lived in the U.S. (and myself), even though we typically worked harder than non-immigrant children.
  - stcredzero 9y ago
    I think that far more worrying is the dangerous narrative pushed by people insecure about their accomplishments and aided by people jealous of others’ carefree childhoods that seeks to diminish immigrant accomplishment as lacking individualism or initiative. In my experience, this narrative was pervasive in the 70's and 80's in the white majority areas where I lived, that my humanity was substandard or lacking entirely. This is precisely why communication between parents and children on a genuine human level is all the more important. If an Asian parent just tries to pull unilateral parental authority, flying in the face of the different contextual reality around them, then they play right into that narrative of the inhuman/less-human parent. This is not to say that parents should be permissive or that they should treat children as equals. I think that parents should be strict, and that children's status needs to be earned. Parents cannot become the friends of their children, until the children have become adults. However, parents who immigrated from a different culture can not act as if the surrounding culture is going to support them in the way their own culture supported their parents -- if they want to maintain their credibility. Parents who immigrated from a different culture have to maintain their credibility by living principles and by example. Denying reality and being unwilling to learn themselves will destroy their credibility. A six year old child is going to notice that your grammar is poor, you don't get the jokes, and that you can't tell the commercials from the TV shows. That child will notice the illogical puffery of insisting that one is always right because one is the parent. In that situation, it is better to live an ideal of always striving to become more correct, instead of insisting on being correct by fiat when you are clearly not correct about many things.

by qiqing 9y ago

nopinsight 9y ago

Would switching to a magnet school or a gifted program help? Asking this for others whose kids might face the same situation. It appears there are pockets of academic excellence in many US cities. I don't know how widespread they are though.

qiqing 9y ago
I was already in a magnet school at the time, in the gifted program, but it was in a small ethnically homogeneous town. The things that do make it better: (1) moving to a larger, more diverse city / population center, (2) not being the only Asian kid in a class (better if you're > 5% because having only 2-3 in a class still 'others' you).
- stcredzero 9y ago
  (better if you're > 5% because having only 2-3 in a class still 'others' you). I was also in the gifted program. There are special problems with being a hypo-minority. For one thing, you're highly visible to every sociopath in the area. This is a part of what women can experience in the tech field, when they are only about 1% of the local population.
  - qiqing 9y ago
    Exactly.
yardie 9y ago
I'm a product of a magnet school. Switching to a school of excellence most definitely helps.

stcredzero 9y ago

I'd try to explain to my parents why I was getting bullied and having a hard time making friends, asking them for advice. In response, they'd assure me that obviously the students with the best grades should garner all the respect like it was for them in their childhoods From my personal experience: Some Asian parents make it all the worse, if they then insist they know better in the face of reality on the ground. When they do this, they destroy their own credibility at a time when children most need to hear advice. Furthermore, they cut themselves off from the information they need to give the best advice possible.

jonathanyc 9y ago
As a counterpoint, I admire my immigrant parents for the ethic they attempted to impart onto me and don’t blame them even if at times I thought they were being “unfair.” I think that far more worrying is the dangerous narrative pushed by people insecure about their accomplishments and aided by people jealous of others’ carefree childhoods that seeks to diminish immigrant accomplishment as lacking individualism or initiative. If it’s just strict parents and the kid is just forced to do it, then we can simultaneously criticize the parents, strip the kid of individuality and attribute any of their accomplishments to things outside of their control. Again, just placing this here as a counterpoint because too often I see this discussion play out and get upvoted in the same way.
- qiqing 9y ago
  To be clear, I admire my immigrant parents for their work ethic too, and for that influence on me. And the counterpoint about diminishing the accomplishments of others is something that definitely needs more attention. I've been casually called a "robot" or a "trained monkey" by well-meaning non-immigrants in the U.S. (even kids in gifted programs) out of what I perceive to be jealousy. Relevant to the particular article, I did notice that my cousins who lived in China worked a lot, lot harder than my cousins who lived in the U.S. (and myself), even though we typically worked harder than non-immigrant children.
- stcredzero 9y ago
  I think that far more worrying is the dangerous narrative pushed by people insecure about their accomplishments and aided by people jealous of others’ carefree childhoods that seeks to diminish immigrant accomplishment as lacking individualism or initiative. In my experience, this narrative was pervasive in the 70's and 80's in the white majority areas where I lived, that my humanity was substandard or lacking entirely. This is precisely why communication between parents and children on a genuine human level is all the more important. If an Asian parent just tries to pull unilateral parental authority, flying in the face of the different contextual reality around them, then they play right into that narrative of the inhuman/less-human parent. This is not to say that parents should be permissive or that they should treat children as equals. I think that parents should be strict, and that children's status needs to be earned. Parents cannot become the friends of their children, until the children have become adults. However, parents who immigrated from a different culture can not act as if the surrounding culture is going to support them in the way their own culture supported their parents -- if they want to maintain their credibility. Parents who immigrated from a different culture have to maintain their credibility by living principles and by example. Denying reality and being unwilling to learn themselves will destroy their credibility. A six year old child is going to notice that your grammar is poor, you don't get the jokes, and that you can't tell the commercials from the TV shows. That child will notice the illogical puffery of insisting that one is always right because one is the parent. In that situation, it is better to live an ideal of always striving to become more correct, instead of insisting on being correct by fiat when you are clearly not correct about many things.