Talking and Conversing Like An American

By Tim | Monday, September 26, 2011 | 25 Comments

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8a american Talking and Conversing Like An American

When I took my daughter to Taiwan when she was four years old, there was one aspect about our relationship that always surprised my relatives. It was the way I talked to my daughter and always asked her opinion on what we should do that day, what we should eat for the next meal, and in general just including her in the conversation.

Every one of my relatives was surprised, including the younger cousins, who were raising their own babies. The comments I heard included: “Children are never asked for their opinion, they just go wherever their parents tell them”, “My child doesn’t get to pick what they eat,” and other similar phrases.

Apparently this difference in conversation doesn’t only apply to children, but to adults as well, as referenced in a recent article in The New Yorker. Describing the difference between people talking in conversation in China and the U.S., the author points to an observation made by Peter Hessler:

He described the sensation of chatting with his new neighbors in Colorado and elsewhere. He was inundated by over-sharers. “People in China never talked like that. They didn’t like to be the center of attention, and they took little pleasure in narrative.”

This deference to not being the center of attention starts early, and the same New Yorker article references a study of four- and six-year-old Chinese and American children, which found American children to be twice as likely as Chinese children to talk about their own likes, dislikes and moods. I see that as a direct consequence of not including your child in the conversation, as my relatives in Taiwan generally did not. I guess even as an immigrant to the U.S., my relationship with my daughter is completely American, which makes sense, since I was raised in the U.S.

The New Yorker article wraps up the difference between Americans and Chinese succinctly with a quote from Richard Nisbett:

“Westerners are the protagonists of their autobiographical novels,” [Richard] Nisbett concluded. “Asians are merely cast members in movies touching on their existences.”

While I’m not sure I completely agree that Asians are merely cast members, I do see where the self is generally less important the whole, meaning the family, or even society. And as some commenters on 8Asians have pointed out, the entire one-child policy in China is creating many more children where the focus is on the self, so maybe even the Chinese will start talking like Americans too.

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http://hubpages.com/profile/Pamela+N+Red PamelaNRed

Some of that is generational. Even in America people didn’t used to ask their kid’s opinion all the time like they do today. My parents would never ask me what I wanted to eat or where I wanted to go. I got what I got.
ellebee11

yes it’s more generational and more American. I see it all the time where I work – Westernized parents are asking their 6 year olds what they want to do, what they want to drink, what they want to buy, etc…. These children will grow up feeling entitled b/c they always always get what they want. And then I see immigrant parents and their kids simply enrolling their kids in classes in what the parents’ deem appropriate (w/o asking their kids); and sometimes, they’ll ask their kid if they want something to drink and usually these kids say “no, i’m okay.” (which is what I did all the time when I grew up even though I was parched!). The “entitled” kids are definitely more talkative and loud and comfortable doing whatever they want, asking for whatever they want. The “less entitled” kids are definitely more quiet and polite and stay focused on what they have to do (in class) versus how else they should draw attention to themselves. I honestly don’t think 6yr old, 8 yr olds, or even 10 yr olds should get choices in most matters of their life. It really isn’t doing them any favors, and what 10 yo wants to have to decide everything about what they have to do? How many of us as adults have trouble deciding what to eat, what restaurant to go to? etc….
timat8asians

@ellebee11 While I agree if you give your child everything they want they will become entitled (as apparently a whole generation of single chinese children in China are becoming as well), but we use it as point to converse about what others in the family want to eat, how to come to a consensus, what it means to vote, etc. What’s interesting about it, is my daughter’s now in first grade, and her teacher says it’s incredibly obvious that we have conversations (actual conversations) with our daughter, because she can make logical connections, hold intelligent conversations, and has a large vocabulary. Compared with parents who ignore their kids, that’s a pretty big difference. There was also another study done, I don’t have the reference to it handy but I heard it on NPR, where they were talking about the difference between kids living in poverty and middle to upper income kids in America. The middle to upper income kids had over twice as many words spoken to them in an average day. They discovered that lower income parents really need to learn to speak to their kids, and speak with a more diverse vocabulary in order to “break” the cycle of poverty.
David06

I think it depends on the situation. If you went to a theme park, obviously you’d give her a choice on what rides to ride. If at a restaurant, you’d help pick out what she wanted to eat from the menu. So I think to a certain extent, a child should be able to choose instead of dictated to. I think this style of parenting, children have no say whatsoever, can lead to bad feelings later on in life. The best way to parent would be to allow a child to participate and choose within limits.
moye

@ellebee11 I think comparing the opportunity to give your child a choice with spoiling children with a sense of entitlement is unfair. Tim is simply allowing his daughter to learn about cause-and-effect, consequences and decision making skills.

Also, is it that bad to ask a six year old what s/he wants to eat for dinner? I’ve seen some Asian parents over-control their children to the point where they’re unhappy, whether it’s SAT practice classes during middle school, violin lessons or even plastic surgery. And I have seen all of this happen.

So really, it can go both ways.
http://www.bigwowo.com/ bigWOWO

Very interesting. We always give our kids choices. I don’t know if we overdo it, but I think it’s important for a child to get in the habit of KNOWING what he/she wants.

This is also a class issue among Americans. Middle class and upper class kids feel entitled (not necessarily in a bad way) to make decisions and to change their surroundings. Poorer kids often defer to professionals or whoever is in charge. Both upbringings have pluses and minuses.

http://www.bigwowo.com/2011/05/unequal-childhoods-class-race-and-family-life-by-annette-lareau-review/
nannaia

I think it’s wonderful that you’re letting your daughter the chance to voice her opinions. Life is full of choices and consequences after all. Though ideally, there has to be a fine balance between being an total authoritarian parent vs. the indulgent “free-range” parent. A child needs to have independence but there must also be limits enforced so he/she won’t fall prey to becoming spoiled brats.

With China’s one-child policy creating “little Emperors”, it seems to me that it’s combining the worst of the two parenting styles (unrealistic expectations + extreme overindulgence). Youch.
timat8asians

@ellebee11 I found a blog post pointing to that NPR story here:

http://larryjamesurbandaily.blogspot.com/2011/01/expanding-vocabulary-poor-children-all.html

and the relevant quotes:

“But in the end, the finding that most struck people, Hart says, was not about the quality of the speech — how often rich versus poor parents asked questions or positively affirmed their children — but about the quantity.According to their research, the average child in a welfare home heard about 600 words an hour while a child in a professional home heard 2,100.”Children in professional families are talked to three times as much as the average child in a welfare family,” Hart says.And that adds up. Hart and Risley estimated that by the age of 4, children of professional parents had heard on average 48 million words addressed to them while children in poor welfare families had heard only 13 million.”
http://hubpages.com/profile/Pamela+N+Red PamelaNRed

@timat8asians@ellebee11 I wasn’t allowed to make my own choices at that age and didn’t have any problem carrying on a conversation or participating in a classroom discussion.
http://hubpages.com/profile/Pamela+N+Red PamelaNRed

@timat8asians@ellebee11 There is a big difference between carrying on a conversation with your children and using a large vocabulary and letting them run your household making major decisions like where you will go on vacation or what kind of car to buy.
timat8asians

@PamelaNRed@ellebee11 I do agree that I think it’s more than just how you get your child to participate or even that you allow them to participate in a conversation. As you’ll note in the other part of my blog post I referenced a discussion on adults and the difference between conversations of adult Chinese and adult Americans.

I’m sure even if you’re not talked to as a child and asked your opinion, you certainly notice and pick up on how your parents and their peers talk to each other. So when you grow up in America, you certainly hear the conversations that revolve around “I, me, and my”, whereas in China, as the conversation doesn’t.

I think including your child in the conversation does help them develop social and cognitive skills earlier, and our experience has certainly borne that out.
http://hubpages.com/profile/Pamela+N+Red PamelaNRed

@moye@ellebee11 Giving them choices to eat once in a while is good but children aren’t good at knowing what is healthy and what is not. A good example: A friend of mine had two children who didn’t like vegetables or many other healthy foods like fruit. Everyday for lunch she sent them Coke and chips. They both had a lot of health problems, bad teeth and broken bones. She has a college degree so we aren’t talking about a welfare mom here. Her husband wouldn’t eat healthy so she said she couldn’t make her kids eat foods he wouldn’t eat.
moye

@PamelaNRed Okay, when I said “is it so bad asking a kid what s/he wants to eat for dinner,” I didn’t mean “You can eat anything you want and here’s a bag of sugar to munch on while you’re at it.”

I mean that there’s nothing wrong with including your child in the decision making process of things like dinner, and turning it into a learning experience. Like, giving them healthy options to chose from.

Let’s not assume @timat8asians is letting his child run the household just because she can make a decision.
timat8asians

@PamelaNRed@moye@ellebee11 We definitely don’t send junk food in her lunch, or even let her pick fast food, except as an occasional treat. Usually it’s framed as, here’s your choices, which one of these would you like? She’s pretty good about sticking within bounds when you give her a few choices. While I certainly wouldn’t let her pick out my next car, I did let her pick the color (when given the choice of two colors), and we let her pick out the amusement park she got to go to for our family vacation (when given the choice of two parks).
sbard

And the latter kids will likely end up working for the former. My girlfriend had a pretty normal Chinese upbringing and one of the clear effects of it is that she has a lot of trouble engaging in small talk, especially with her “superiors”.
mwei

on a total tangent: when I first read the article name it reminded me of this Onion piece:

http://www.theonion.com/video/incomprehensible-shouting-named-official-us-langua,19417/
http://hubpages.com/profile/Pamela+N+Red PamelaNRed

@moye@timat8asians True, unfortunately, I have seen this happen many times. I have relatives that do this.

Most recently my husband is planning a family get together at the lake next summer and his brother had him talk to his kids to see where they wanted to go because that family is ran by the children.

There is a fine line and you have to be careful.
ellebee11

yes I am familiar w/ the study on language skills. My point wasn’t about not talking to your kids. My point was that it’s not necessarily a good thing to give them a choice on everything, or daily for that matter. And most choices should be closed ended “We can have either Salmon or Lasagna for dinner – do you have a preference for tonight?” And other nights, dinner will be served w/o questions. Kids shouldn’t get used to the idea that they have a choice about most aspects of their life. B/c even as adults, we don’t have choices about everything. And I wouldn’t want my kids when given something to reply back “I don’t want this. I want that” b/c once they get used to saying it to you, they get more comfortable saying to others and god forbid they appear to be ungrateful spoiled lil’ suckers.
http://hubpages.com/profile/Pamela+N+Red PamelaNRed

@ellebee11 Exactly, Ellebee. There is a clear difference between talking to children and letting them have a choice in every decision in their life. Like you say in the real world we don’t always get to decide what happens so they might as well get used to it now.
timat8asians

@PamelaNRed@ellebee11 One of the sad inescapable facts of today is that the generation growing up today is going to be the first generation in the U.S. that isn’t as well off as their parents. I already suspect this will be the case with my daughter. Not because I don’t think she’s intelligent, but rather because we’re raising her with American ideals and values, she won’t be pushed to be a doctor or engineer, as my parents did to my sister and myself. We’re letting her explore her creative side as well, and that will likely lead to choices down the line that won’t be as lucrative for her in terms of money making potential.

So I know full well she will have plenty of disappointments in life. So when there’s an opportunity to make her happy, we do take it, but at the same time, we do understand the purpose of moderation, and being realistic about things. We certainly disappoint her plenty of times now. “No you can’t go to Disneyland during Halloween,” “No, you don’t need another camera, just because it’s purple”, “No you can’t take both gymnastics and soccer class”, “No you can’t have candy before dinner”, “No, you can’t watch TV first, you have to do your homework first”, “No, you can’t have another stuffed animal”, “No you can’t stay up late”, “No, you do need to take your shower/bath now”, etc.

Most of the time I feel like I say “No” more than anything else, so that’s why it’s good to engage her in conversation and give her some choices in life.
timat8asians

@PamelaNRed@ellebee11 One of the sad inescapable facts of today is that the generation growing up today is going to be the first generation in the U.S. that isn’t as well off as their parents. I already suspect this will be the case with my daughter. Not because I don’t think she’s intelligent, but rather because we’re raising her with American ideals and values, she won’t be pushed to be a doctor or engineer, as my parents did to my sister and myself. We’re letting her explore her creative side as well, and that will likely lead to choices down the line that won’t be as lucrative for her in terms of money making potential.

So I know full well she will have plenty of disappointments in life. So when there’s an opportunity to make her happy, we do take it, but at the same time, we do understand the purpose of moderation, and being realistic about things. We certainly disappoint her plenty of times now. “No you can’t go to Disneyland during Halloween,” “No, you don’t need another camera, just because it’s purple”, “No you can’t take both gymnastics and soccer class”, “No you can’t have candy before dinner”, “No, you can’t watch TV first, you have to do your homework first”, “No, you can’t have another stuffed animal”, “No you can’t stay up late”, “No, you do need to take your shower/bath now”, etc.

Most of the time I feel like I say “No” more than anything else, so that’s why it’s good to engage her in conversation and give her some choices in life.
http://hubpages.com/profile/Pamela+N+Red PamelaNRed

@timat8asians@ellebee11 Tim, I have no doubt you are a good parent and it sounds like you are doing a great job. I am mostly talking about those parents that aren’t making good choices for their kids.

Being a parent isn’t an easy job no matter race or economic situation, we do the best we can and hope for the best.
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http://tinabot.blogspot.com/ TinaTsai

I work with Asian American kids every day, and more often than not they won’t stop talking about themselves. ^O^
timat8asians

@TinaTsai Yep, and that’s because Asian American kids are pretty American, including my own Asian American daughter. It’s the Asians (in Asia) that don’t talk about themselves, and don’t include their kids in the conversation.

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