Strict Education VS Lack Of Patience - New Concept of Etiquette

Since I came to America, the biggest part of my everyday life is a life as a mom. In Korea, I was working for company, and a babysitter always supported my everyday life. What I did for my kid was just checking for my son’s health and mental condition after work. However, here I really started to be more involved in the childrearing. Furthermore, childrearing in America is more complicated for me. That is because this culture is new to me and childrearing should be based on the complete understanding about this new culture the kid belongs to.

Choosing and sending my son to the day care center was the first task for me after settlement of house and utilities because that task meant freedom for me. The day care center I chose was close to UT. Most parents have some connections with UT, which made me feel comfortable because it seems that if the center has been popular with the UT staffs or students, it meant that it provides a reasonable education to children; nevertheless, I have had hard times since my son joined the day care center.

Every other week, I worked as a parent helper in the center, which was its policy that made parents more involved in children’s education along with supervising teachers’ quality and efforts. I cannot forget first experience as a parent helper until now. Unlike my expectation, their teaching methodology seemed unreasonable and crazy to me. The teachers were so strict. Even toddlers and 2-year-old children were not an exception. Teaching and punishing children, they looked really scary and rigid. What made me more confused was the fact that most American girls and boys in class looked like well-trained soldiers. On the first morning as the parent helper, I worried envisioning in my mind’s eyes what a mess kids’ classroom would be. A vivid picture of the classroom occurred to me which would be full of mischievous boys and girls running around the classroom, yet actual scene was totally different and even weird. It was too quiet, too organized, too well…

I was not happy with the scene. The kids I saw did not seem energetic and curious. They looked like an adults. They looked more calm and mature than Korean kids, but they seemed to lose their confidence or energy to my eyes because of American adults’ toughness and strictness. The way American children are taught was absolutely different from that of Korean children. Generally, Korean moms and dads are struggling with their children to persuade and teach them. The Korean parents usually spend much time to teach their kids. When their kids do not want to eat their meals, American parents stop giving their children their meals. Moreover, to teach them how to require something, the parents do not open the lid of the kids’ food if not required from the kids even though the kids skip the meals. I was upset about that kind of unreasonable and severe education approach.

Now, I am getting used to the way the American parents took for children’s education. I found the reason not from childrearing itself, but the concept of etiquette in America. I found that Americans hated being annoyed by other people. Regardless of being in a bad or good situation, they do not want to be interrupted by people around them, so they put a lot of priority on social etiquette. Childrearing is closely related to the socialization which means a procedure of being a nice member of the society. This makes American parents so strict and rigid while teaching rules given by kindergarten teachers. In contrast, when they teach other things except social rule, they look not so serious and rigid. For example, to let their children study hard, Korean parents are more severe and require much more whereas American parents don't do that as much as Koreans. After realizing Americans’ attitude toward etiquette, I got to be more comfortable. They cannot make any exception for kids who do not follow their etiquette rules, even for under 2-year-old ones even though it costs children’s innate imagination, their own confidence, especially sometimes their health by giving medication saying, “Boys, you are ADHD.” I like to suggest that American society should be more generous for its children while they teach them social etiquette.