On parenting as an immigrant | Tinuke Fawole | TEDxCherryCreekWomen

I missed it. I totally missed it. I pride myself in being a mother who is attentive to and supportive of my children, but I miss this. My 12-year-old daughter was answering a question in class one day when she said the word European. Her classmates were like, what did you say? And she repeated, European. When they still had these puzzled looks on their faces, she proceeded to write the word down and then they said, oh you mean European. My daughter felt ashamed and embarrassed and in her distress she made a decision. She was never going to raise up her hand in class ever again. In that way she silenced her own voice, but the saddest part is that I knew nothing about this until years later. In my experience as an immigrant parent of four children and my work as a child welfare law attorney, I have had the opportunity of knowing some of the struggles that children of immigrants go through that even their parents are sometimes completely unaware of. Children of immigrants deal with identity conflict and sometimes wonder, am I Jamaican or am I American? Am I Mexican or am I American? And sometimes they'll hear, but you are not Indian enough. You are not quite Ethiopian enough. Our children live with certain expectations in our homes, but the moment they get out they face a totally different culture with a whole new set of expectations. So in the Japanese household for instance, a child may have been taught to look down when speaking to adults to show respect, but when that child gets out he better look up otherwise he's guilty of something. We told our children that in the Nigerian culture it is disrespectful to hand something to an adult with your left hand. You either use your right or your both hands. When our children get to school here in America, they see everyone handing things to the teacher with the left, with the right, and the teacher doesn't seem to care. They come home, they forget, they give us something with their left hand, and we reprimand them. You're rude. Don't you know you're supposed to use your right hand? And children of immigrants wonder, where does which rule apply? When am I supposed to be American? When am I supposed to be African or Asian or Caribbean or Latino? At school, they sometimes get ridiculed for their weird names, the smell of their food in the cafeteria, their awkward clothing fashion, their accent, and yes, as it happened with my daughter, they sometimes pronounce words in ways that give them away. Children of immigrants sometimes feel like outsiders in America, their country of birth. And when they come to us, their parents, to express their frustrations, their fears, their struggles, their pain, sometimes their guilt, we shut them up. We say things like, when I was growing up, I had to walk three miles to school without shoes. But look at you, you live in this beautiful home, you wear nice clothes, what could you possibly be complaining about? I don't want to hear of anyone hurting your feelings or making you sad. Now go wash your face and get back to your books. When we do that, we deny their truth, we ignore their feelings, we stifle their emotions, and we silence their voices. Children of immigrants continue to face these challenges, even as adult professionals established in their careers. So Dr. Malhotra, son of Indian immigrants, is an attending in a hospital, and his colleagues and co-workers and patients all tell him, doctor your name is hard, can we just call you Dr. M? In hospitals all across the United States, children of immigrants get called Dr. I, Dr. O, Dr. P, because people won't say their names. Our children continue to need our understanding and listening ears from early on, so they can be prepared to face these challenges. Another way in which immigrants unwittingly silence our children's voices is the choice of their careers. All parents of course want their children to do well, but immigrants tend to stir, coerce, or even force our children into certain career paths like law, medicine, engineering, and the like. Many of us have emigrated from countries where these professions command a high level of income and prestige. They also provide the security and stability that we look for in jobs, because many of us lost our support system in our immigration. Our children are not faced with these obstacles, however, they have a world of opportunities open before them. So they may decide to be writers, fashion designers, or even business owners, but we discourage, disapprove, or outright disallow such disciplines. So for instance, a child comes home excitedly, mom dad I want to study communication in college, and we go, oh you truly think that I'm gonna waste my hard-earned dollars to send you to college so you can learn how to speak? You must be out of your mind. When we do that, we silence their creativity, their passion, their talents, and their desires. One other way in which immigrants unwittingly silence our children's voices is the choice of their life partners. Many of us still maintain most of our friendships and associations with people from our ethnic groups. Those are the people we know, those are the people we trust, and so when our children are old enough to get married, we either subliminally suggest or outright declare, you must marry from my tribe, and if we are more generous, you must marry from my country. Our children, on the other hand, are quite assimilated into the countries in which they live, they have friends from different cultures, and sometimes they do fall in love with people from other cultures. Our children also know that love, respect, compassion, kindness, those traits that we all look for in relationships are not only found in the cultures that we know, and so when we disallow our children from marrying the love of their lives based solely on ethnicity and nothing else, we may derail their life destinies, quench their love, and invariably silence their voices. Thankfully, many children of immigrants are having their voices heard in the larger world. Yvonne Orji is a Nigerian-American actress who told her story in one of our podcast episodes. Her parents always wanted her to be a lawyer, doctor, or engineer, of course. When she completed her master's degree in public health, however, she decided she wanted to do comedy instead. That did not sit well with her Nigerian parents, so there was a conflict that ensued, and that conflict led to their relationship being strained for years. Today, Yvonne is a very successful actress, she has won many awards, and thankfully, her relationship with her parents is good now, but look what it took to get there. Jimmy Yang is a son of Chinese immigrants who grew up in Los Angeles. He also told his story in his book, How to American. His father always told him, pursuing your dreams is for losers, doing what you love is how you become homeless. So his father arranged for him to have an internship in this prestigious financial consulting firm, but after being there for a month, Jimmy decided he hated it with a passion, and he dreaded having to do this for the rest of his life. So when he was offered a full-time job after graduation, he declined it. His father, of course, was not happy, and he stayed disappointed for many years. Jimmy Yang today is also a very successful actor. So yes, many children of immigrants are having their voices heard in the larger world, but what they want most of all is for us, their parents, to hear their voices too. I wish that what happened to my daughter was an isolated incident, but unfortunately, it is not. The other day, we were at a social gathering, and I overheard my daughter and some other children of immigrants talking, and I was appalled to hear them one after the other describe how they did not speak up in class for fear of pronouncing a word incorrectly, because they feared being mocked by their classmates. Some of them talked about when the teacher was calling names of students in class, and all of a sudden, the teacher paused, that they started shivering in their seats and having heart palpitations, thinking, she's about to call my name. She's about to call my name, because they were thinking about the laughter that was going to erupt from their classmates as the teacher struggled through pronouncing these foreign names. It was just better to remain silent and anonymous. On that fateful day, when my daughter came home, she must have worn her sadness and anger on her face, because she later told me that she said to herself, if my parents weren't Nigerians, I would have known how to say that word correctly, but I had no clue. Maybe she hardly touched her lunch that day. Maybe she ran up to her bedroom and had a good cry. Mama had no idea what her daughter was going through. What if instead I'd been more observant? What if I'd noticed her countenance as she walked through the door? What if I'd asked the question, not how are you doing, to which she would have responded, fine, but an open-ended one. I see that you don't look happy today. What happened at school today that caused you to be sad? What if I listened with empathy rather than judgment? What if I'd offered words of assurance, comfort, and acceptance? What if I'd even shared when I had been humiliated before, rather than not wanting to be vulnerable? What if? What if? So many what ifs. I am thankful that my daughter did not keep the promise she made to herself that day, that she in fact regained her self-confidence, continues to speak up in class, and eventually became a doctor, a desire that she had nurtured since she was five years old. But not every child is able to overcome these obstacles without becoming destroyed forever. A young man, child of immigrant parents, took his own life in his third year of medical residency, leaving a note that he hated the profession his parents chose for him and couldn't take it anymore. Much of my message today is for immigrant parents, so we can support our children better and avoid tragedies such as this. But I'm also aware that children of immigrants are impacted beyond the home, and so I'm asking that teachers and school counselors will receive the necessary training and become aware of the unique challenges of the immigrant children in their care so they can support them better. Something as simple as a teacher learning how to properly pronounce the foreign names of the students in her class, encouraging the students in her class to say the names correctly, and demystifying whatever it is about foreign names will go a very long way. I'm asking that in health care that doctors and nurses and other health care workers, thank you, I'm asking that in health care that doctors and nurses and other health care workers and in the court system that police officers, probation officers, caseworkers, lawyers, judges, that all of us who provide services with children of immigrants will become aware of the struggles they have in straddling between cultures and provide services that are tailor-made for them rather than a one-size-fits-all. I'm hoping that this talk will start up conversations, curiosity, learning, and creativity around new ways of doing things in different sectors. But mostly I ask my fellow immigrant parents, can we put our fears aside and invite our children for a heart-to-heart conversation where we allow and encourage them to speak to us from the depths of their souls? And when they do, I ask that we actually listen. And as we listen with our ears, I'm asking that we also listen with our eyes. But most importantly, I'm asking that we listen with our hearts. Thank you.