移民家長除了升學要注意什麽？

30歲ABC的反思：移民家長除了升學要注意什麽？

過去幾年裡，我跟很多移民家長探討過美國和亞洲的文化差異以及不同價值觀給他們的家庭和子女所帶來的影響。作為哈佛的面試官，我最常被問到的一個問題是：“我該如何培養我的孩子進入哈佛？”

學業固然很重要，但我同時也想告訴家長：在培養ABC孩子時，考上好大學和找到穩定的工作可能只是孩子在美國會面臨到的所有挑戰中的冰山一角。（在英文中，我們會說“education is just the tip of the iceberg.”）

我並不是說升學不重要——但是我們往往會投入更多的時間、精力和金錢在這些 “回報可見”的方面，而忽視了“無形”但更直接影響孩子未來人生的方面（如家庭關係、團體歸屬感和身份認同）。從長期來看，我在三十多歲的ABC同齡人中更常見的問題不是學歷和事業成就如何，反而是與原生家庭關係的疏遠和自我身份認同的困惑。

如果我能回到過去，我會告訴我的移民父母：在美國除了升學之外，你更需要在孩子成長過程中關注以下五個關鍵領域：

1. 自我了解和興趣了解。我有許多ABC朋友在學業和職業生涯中經歷了重大轉變——有人在大學主修營養學但轉行銷售，有人學習應用數學但從事諮詢工作，有人從事金融工作後又回到醫學院學習精神病學。培養孩子的自我認識和做出決定的能力遠比幫助他們做出“正確”決定更重要。在美國多樣式的經濟大環境中，ABC孩子遇到的挑戰是選擇很多反而不知道該選哪條道路，而不是因為選擇太少所以需要按部就班“打勾”和別人競爭同樣的機會。

2. 親子關係和溝通能力。在我身邊，有超過一半的ABC朋友會說他們和父母關係疏遠。一般來說，我看到這種情況發生有兩個原因。首先，父母可能過於注重升學和成就，以至於孩子感覺不到被愛。我有一位學業事業雙收的30歲朋友最近告訴我：“小時候，我知道父母愛我，但總覺得這種愛是建立在我是否能考入史丹福大學之上的。” 其次，我們之間存在巨大的文化差異，這些差異會引發衝突（例如，美國的親子關係更像是朋友之間的關係，而亞洲的親子關係更像是長輩和晚輩的關係）。維持親子關係很大程度上取決於家長能否在西方環境中學會傾聽孩子並改變固有的想法。

3. 團體歸屬感和社交能力。對ABC孩子來說，如果周圍沒有很多親戚，在一個固定團體（例如教會、華美夏令營）裏成長就會變得很重要。能夠接觸父母之外的熟悉面孔(”familiar faces”)和其他可信賴的成人(“trusted adult”)在我們成長過程中變得非常重要。當我們和父母的關係面臨挑戰和衝突的時候，我們需要其他愛的來源來建立健康的自我價值感。此外，我們更需要這種團體來和校外的其他人一起練習我們的社交能力。從小在這種社團中成長的孩子們通常會更自如的解決所面臨的挑戰，尤其是當他們在青春期叛逆時期和父母很難溝通時（例如，在我領導的台美夏令營裡，青少年們會與輔導員進行一對一的交流，常常提及他們與父母之間的衝突等棘手話題）。

4. 中英文雙語能力。在我ABC朋友圈裏，幾乎所有人都後悔長大之後不能更流利地用中文交談或讀寫中文。雖然對升學直接影響很小，但是中英文雙語能力對我們和父母未來關係的影響至關重要。如果沒有中文溝通能力，我們在成年之後會很吃力的表達複雜的想法，導致我們很難與父母建立更深厚的關係或者幫助父母更好的理解我們（例如，「孝順」是一個無法用英文解釋的概念）。

5. 身份認同感和對亞洲的了解。有位家長曾經對我說：「即使在美國遭受歧視，我知道自己來自台灣。」我們的父母擁有一種歸屬感，因為他們知道自己的根在那裡。然而，對於ABC孩子來說，情況往往並非如此。許多從未回過亞洲的人難以在亞洲找到歸屬感。但在成長過程中，我們常常被其他美國人問道：「你（原來）來自哪裡？」就算我們生在美國長在這片土地上。這些經歷使得我們曾經質疑我們自己的歸屬感。如果ABC孩子能有機會常常回到亞洲，他們會通過接觸到兩個世界和文化而感到自豪，從而重新建立在美國長大的亞裔歸屬感。

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Reflections of a late 20s ABC: what I would tell immigrant parents now

I often have conversations to help immigrant parents understand how cultural differences affect immigrant families and how they can prepare for them. One of the most common questions I get asked, especially in the Bay Area, is: “what do I need to do to get my kid into Harvard?”

While academics are important, I often also want to tell parents: in raising ABC kids, you may one day learn that their academics and job stability are the least of your worries. (In English, we would say “education is just the tip of the iceberg.”)

Education is crucial, but it is also important to consider how much time, energy, and money you invest in this “visible” aspect your your child’s upbringing versus how much you invest in the “invisible” but much more at-risk aspects of your child’s life, such as family relationships, community and belonging, and identity. In the long term, what I see far more often among my 30-year-old ABC peers is not a lack of education and achievement, but extremely strained relationships with family and identity.

If I could go back in time, I would tell all the immigrant parents of my generation to look out for these five key areas in their kids in addition to education. These are topics we will be focused on discussing in This ABC Life:

1. Self-understanding of interests. Many of my ABC friends have made a significant transition in their academic or work lives - studied nutrition but transitioned into sales, studied applied math but worked in consulting, worked in finance then went back to medical school to study psychiatry. Building your kid’s self-knowledge and ability to make their own decisions is far more important than making the “right” decision for them. In a highly dynamic economic environment like America, our biggest problem is having so many opportunities that we don’t know what to choose, not having so few paths that we need to “check every box” to make sure we have the best chance at success.

2. Family relationships and communication. Over half of my friends would likely say they do not have a close relationship with their parents. Generally, I see this happen for two reasons. One, parents may be very focused on education and achievement, to a degree where children do not feel loved. In fact, one of my 30-year-old friends recently told me, “My parents loved me, but it always felt bad to feel like that love was related to whether I got into Stanford.” Two, we have large cultural gaps that create conflict (for example, American parent-child relationships are more peer-to-peer, Asian parent-child relationships are more authority-to-subordinate). The strongest family relationships often come from parents who learn to listen openly to their children and adapt their behaviors in a Western environment, instead of hold on rigidly to old habits they have from an Asian environment.

3. Community and social skills. Growing up in community groups such as church where we see the same faces consistently and have other ‘trusted adults’ matters deeply in a world without relatives or close friends. Parent-child relationships can carry a lot of direct tension, so we need other sources of love to develop healthy self-worth. In addition, we need community groups to practice our social skills with others outside of school. Kids I see who grow up in these kinds of communities often have better support when they run into issues that they cannot talk to their parents about (for example, at the Taiwanese American summer camp I used to lead, the teenagers would have one-on-one time with their counselors and would often raise difficult topics such as conflicts they were having with their parents).

4. Bilingualism. Almost 100% of my ABC friends regret not being able to converse more fluently or read and write in Chinese. Bilingualism is critical for us to have deep relationships with our parents, community, and identity. Without it, we cannot communicate complex thoughts as we get older, and we cannot have a deep relationship with you or understand why we are the way we are (for example, 孝順 is not a concept that can be explained in English).

5. Identity and relationship with Asia. A parent once said to me, “even when I was discriminated against in America, I knew that I was from Taiwan.” Parents have emotional safety knowing that they belong in at least one place in the world. Oftentimes, this isn’t the case for ABCs. Many of us who have never been back to Asia struggle to feel belonging in Asia, but growing up we are so often asked by other Americans, “where are you from?” that we don’t feel like we belong in the US, either. Building a positive and close relationship with Asia can help us feel proud of having access to two worlds and cultures, instead of ashamed that we do not fully belong in either.

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