August Japanese Mothers' Study Class was held at Seicho-No-Ie Hawaii Matlock Center with 5 participants including my wife and myself today. A number of participants was not so big, that is why we could share what we were into lately and our impressions on material distributed and a lecture provided. We truly enjoyed our company and learned an important mindset as a mother based upon the SNI teachings. Thank you very much everyone who came and made this class so meaningful!
Time really flies fast. It has been a year since this Mothers' Study Class started in last year's August. Outstanding is growth of children who have constantly been attending. A boy and a girl of two years old who attended today are quite different from who they were one year ago. This is not only true for the children but also for their moms. I firmly felt that we, as a parent, are also being grown through child-raring.
By the way, it has been about three weeks since my daughter, Manami, started to go to a nearby kindergarten. She seems really to enjoy her kindergarten life with two former preschool's class mates and one Japanese boy who came from Japan just one month ago. However, she seems very tired every day; she takes a nap for a couple of hours, sometimes for FOUR hours! Nevertheless, after she wakes up, she has a dinner, does her homework with mom and dad, takes a shower, and watchs TV and has some fun for a short time, then, she goes to bed and falls asleep soon.
To our surprise, despite the fact that she is still four years old, she already had homework to be done at home. She cannot understand what for and what she should do, however, she starts to practice to write her own name, ABC..., and numbers. More than that parents have to record a title of the books they read and how many minutes for reading with parents initials every day. It is an unbelievable thing for a Japanese! We are also fed up with so many handouts for parents to be read because, to do so, we have to take much more time than native speakers do. We need to have Manami favor doing homework, we give her chocolate after she has done the homework. So far it works well. Every time we finish a dinner, she said, "Let's start homework!"
A Japanese boy I mentioned above is Calvin Nishihara, as same old boy as Manami, and Ian, 7 years old boy. After school hours, the kindergarten prepared an ESL class for Japanese students. However, if Manami attends the ESL class, she cannot afford to do her homework. Then, I asked the ESL teacher whether she has to attend the class. Her answer is she doesn't have to because she can communicate with teachers and friends without any problem. Therefore, Manami will attend the class once or twice a week in accord with her condition. But, to tell the truth, she wants to participant in the class because the teacher gives them some snacks in the end of class, which attracts Manami so much, and she is very looking forward to playing with those boys after the ESL class.
A dad of the boys was born and raised in Hawaii, however, he speaks very fluent Japanese. He stayed in Japan for 9 years and taught English at a high school there. Their mom, Kazue, was born and raised in Kobe, in Kansai area, and speaks with a Kansai accent. She is kind and friendly and frequently contacts with my wife by e-mail.
Tetsuya Abe
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