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Parents Challenges and Responses |
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Challenges and Responses
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Extended Family Bond
In Pakistan, we have a joint family system where the child is exposed to many people and lives in healthy relationship with many adults, including grand parents, uncles, aunts, and friends and family. In the US, we typically live in relative isolation where the child develops close relationship only with the mother and father. Does this leave a developmental gap in his/her upbringing?
-Parent, Dallas, TX
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| Bilingual Challenge
We are bilingual but we are afraid to teach our mother tongue to our young daughter because we are afraid that she may be left behind in school material, which is in English only. Our question is whether it is harmful or advantageous in teaching our daughter both languages (Urdu and English) from her academic growth point of view?
-Parents, Queens, NY
A response:
Although I am not a parent, I would like to refer them to the following webpage - http://www.ncela.gwu.edu/oela/summit/Petitto.htm - which is an interview with a neuroscientist who has studied language learning among human beings. The article answers the aforementioned question directly.
The brief summary of the article is: Scientific research into the development of children exposed to two different languages negates the commonly held notion that bilingual exposure can delay normal brain development of children. Research by Professor Laura-Ann Petitto, a cognitive neuroscientist, for over 15 years point out that "a child who's exposed early in life to two languages achieves each and every milestone [in language cognition] on the same timetable as the other language – and also on the same overall timetable as a monolingual child" (Interview: The Brain's Capacity to Learn Multiple Languages, NCELA).
Therefore, it is obviously an advantage for your daughter to learn both languages as she can connect more easily to your culture through Urdu while learning English which is the language of her academic instruction.
- Parent to be, St. Paul , MN
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| Immigrant Families’ Learning Curve
As parents who were born and raised in Pakistan, we feel a gap of learning the subtle shades of some American ways and associated American problems. I sometimes feel that by the time I come to know of a problem that I need to deal with, I may not be able to deal with it effectively because of my lack of knowledge of the American ways and also because it may be too late for me to act on that problem at that time. Can we do something to learn from the experiences of others in knowing what kind of challenges can immigrant parents expect in different stages of a child’s life and how best to overcome them?
-Parent, Texas |
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60th Jalsa Salana, USA 
