Fight # 1
If you don’t make some effort, you’ll never make it up to
the next level
Fight # 2
How did you write that word again? Show me the paper! NOW!
Do you realize this is the hundredth time you write that same word, and you
still can’t get it write?
Fight # 3
Did you do your Arabic?
An hour later… Did you do your Arabic?
Days later… Did you do your Arabic?
The answer remains the same no matter how repeatedly I ask…
I C.A.N.T.D.O.I.T.A.L.O.N.E…
Yes by now he’s as angry as I am
Fight # 4
This is it, I’m done, I can’t hold your hand forever.. we’ve
been stuck on this level for years now and I see no improvement. Worse, there
is no will to improve.
I’m telling your teacher right NOW that you are not doing
lessons anymore. I AM DONE.
Tears are starting to flow … on both sides
And you know what?? Don’t you dare come in the future and
blame me for not writing and reading in your own native language. It’s your problem;
you deal with your own regrets. BAM!!! that hammers the last nail in.
It’s only December, and I think I’ve been through this cycle
at least three times already.
As I write this, my son and I are not on speaking terms.
Thank God I can use my other two to communicate to him through. He on the other hand is tripping on guilt
wires, knee deep in frustration and drowning fast!
This can’t be it: A life long struggle to teach my kids
their language. I had to endure daily hours of torture at school to reach the
level I’m at. And it was nothing to be proud of to begin with. Only through my
work in later years did my written Arabic so improve. So why am I torturing my
kids?
The answer is clear and simple.. Egyptian is who they are,
partially at least. Ten years of their
cumulative lives in New York have stretched that thread to their native
background real thin. They speak Arabic (at least the first two Ts), they eat
Egyptian food, they have some Egyptian summer friends. By some obviously I mean
my friends’ kids who see them for a few days every year.
We started lessons at the age of 4. We had weekly private
tutoring and homework dispersed in the days between. This year, I came to the
conclusion that it was simply not enough. So we upped it to twice a week and
twice the homework. That also translated, to my greatest “chagrin”, to twice
the fights, twice the time spent spelling the same words over and over, and
over and over, and again……
There will come a moment when I will just give up. T1 has
had his shot. Languages were never T2’s
stronghold anyway.. and T3, well as usual, she gets the shortest end of the
stick simply because I’m just too tired by the time I get to her. The curse of
a third child!
Funny, how my dreams of pushing my kids to take the state
exams no matter where we lived, just washed themselves away. I always dreaded
the day I’ll have to face the truth that my kids are not Egyptian. At least not
in the same way I am. Surprisingly, raising global children becomes a much
easier task once we give up the notion of a motherland, a native origin. The
day has come, and to my relief, it’s not so bad J
yet!
