Kimchi Mamas

Houston, We Have a Problem...and a Confession

To my beloved Kimchi Mamas,

Please do me and our community a favor by reading this short article on self-harm and violence in the Korean American community

I know this seems like a big bummer to post this during the holiday season, but 'tis also the season for a spike in suicides, suicide attempts, and domestic violence.

Does this ring a bell for you at all?  It definitely did for me:

Grace Yoon, executive director of the Korean American Family Service Center in New York, told The Huffington Post that Koreans come to America with high hopes of acquiring wealth and providing a good education for their children. When their expectations are not met, some feel like they have let their families down. Yoon commented that the problem has gotten worse since the recession, "especially with Korean fathers and heads of households whose small businesses are not doing well."

The article goes on to say that the intergenerational language barrier as well as the cultural taboo against seeking mental health services may contribute to the higher-than-average suicide rate in Korean Americans.

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If this helps anyone at all, I'll just put myself out there as someone who did try to kill herself when she was in the throes of what she now recognizes as a major depressive episode.  

I was 21, feeling exhausted and beaten down, not doing well in school, but instead of seeking help, I just ignored my health and soldiered on, terrified of delaying my graduation by yet another quarter or year.  It got to the point where I stopped talking to my friends and stopped checking in with my parents, unable to keep up the lies when I claimed I was okay.  As I got more and more insular, my whole world consisted of my classes and my inability to attend them, my lack of focus, my inevitable failure.  So a few days before my first finals, hating myself for letting my parents down, they who worked so hard and sacrificed so much so that I could go to a top-notch school, and I couldn't even repay them with simply succeeding, I tried to take my own life.  I honestly thought I was doing them a favor, relieving a burden.

I was so, so lucky that my attempt was feeble at best, and my roommate was in the apartment.

After that, I was hospitalized for a week.  For some reason, I had this stereotype against psychiatry and didn't consider it a fully-valid field of medicine.  I could not have been more wrong.  Thanks to the medication, counseling, and support I received then and afterwards, I finally graduated from university.  My grade point average was barely enough to scrape past, and my department might or might not have overlooked a single missing requirement, but I did it.  And my life instantly became easier once I stepped foot outside that damn campus and moved on with my life.

Did I at 21 have even the tiniest correct inkling about how life after college would be like?  Absolutely not!  My instincts and intuition that I relied on so heavily turned out to be completely off; I think it was because I was completely biased to see only the negative.  That's what depression does; it skews your outlook on everything to just remember the negative and completely ignore the positive, and that small shift in perspective is what makes depression so dangerous.  It was actually quite a relief to discover that my "lenses" were off and needed readjusting.  

The turning point for me was my dad tearfully telling me that he would rather have a non-college-graduate daughter than no daughter at all.  That he would have let me crash at home for as long as I needed in order to get back on my feet again.  And that he was truly sorry that it had to come to this for him to tell me that, that this was completely uncharted territory for him, that we would get through this together.  My mom was too overcome with emotion to speak to me then, but as time went on, I came to realize that she felt the same way.  And believe me when I tell you that my parents made the Tiger Mom look like a kitten; that I was pushed very hard all my childhood; and if you had asked me before all this if I truly believed they loved me, I would have a hearty laugh at the mere notion.

But it turned out that my Korean parents, as stoic and strict and cruel and physically punitive as they were, were still parents.  And now they are very demonstrative, nurturing, giving, loving grandparents.  

And now, daily I think to myself, "I'm so relieved I'm not dead.  All the fun I would have missed out on!"

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If you at any point feel as hopeless as I did that summer, please know that you aren't "crazy," that you are struggling alongside countless others, that there are other solutions besides death, that people love you and are rooting for you, that honest-to-goodness there is light at the end of the tunnel.  Or at the very least, there are enough points of light inside the tunnel to make it worth sticking around to observe.  DO NOT MISS OUT ON THE REST OF YOUR LIFE.

Call a friend and tell them you need help, call 1-800-273-8255, go to the emergency room, connect with people online, just don't leave yourself alone with the thoughts you are thinking, the same way you would try to save your friend who is trapped in a house with someone who is trying to kill them.

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If you got this far, thanks so much for reading.  This was difficult to write.

--Julie

Parenting Style

I haven't read Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mom. Just the excerpt in the Wall Street Journal. But I got to thinking, what kind of parents did I have? My mom was pretty much out of the picture, so what kind of dad did I have? He certainly was not a Tiger Father.

My dad did not sit with me and drill me on math. He did not make me practice the piano or the violin. I never had to learn tennis. I don't think he even owns a tennis racket. He never asked me if I did my homework, or even if I had homework. I had no curfew. I consistently came home well past midnight on Fridays. I never had any lessons. I could do whatever I wanted to on the weekends. I watched TV, Korean dramas, and played video games. I was in the school musical.

Open Thread...Friday?

Oops, I think we missed Open Thread Thursday yesterday.  Must be the holiday scheduling forcing us back a day.

So, what's on your mind?

Here's a question for Silicon Valley Korean Moms:

What has been your experience with Silicon Valley Korean School? 

I am thinking of enrolling my 11-year old son in the fall, but he speaks and understands NO Korean at all.  Will he be stuck in a room with 4 year-olds?  I might have trouble getting him to give up his Saturday mornings if that is the case.

--posted by Jomama

Mother Tongue?

I'm about to make the jump in to being the parent of a kindergartner.  Gulp.

My partner and I are trying to decide what school will be best for her.  Our local district-assigned school teaches all the kids Spanish, starting in kindergarten, through 5th grade.  There is a nearby school, that we could try to petition to get our daughter, T, in to, that has a similar program that teaches all the kids Mandarin.

Part of me would really like to send T to the neighborhood school - where most of the kids will live closeby and there is a tight-knit school-based community.  But, another part of me thinks that it's an amazing opportunity to have T learn Mandarin in school, with all of her classmates.  Unfortunately, Mandarin isn't really her mother-tongue.  It's closer than Spanish, but my grandparents speak Cantonese, and her dad's parents speak Korean.

I don't really know how to weigh this all.  There's no way to guarentee that T could go to the school with the Mandarin program.  Would she benefit from this?  More than Spanish?  Would it be more beneficial overall to go to the neighborhood school?  There are a bunch of other complicating factors... so I feel a little overwhelmed.  I know that at the end of the day, T will have a good education.  But, still, I worry about these kinds of decisions, and what it will mean for T in the big picture.

How are you going about exposing your kids to other languages?

~ eliaday, who is more fluent in French than Chinese and oddly enough gets them confused in her head.

Hungry like a 늑대 . . .

My kids had their first day of school today.  I am sitting in my home office at almost 12 noon, wondering how their first day at their new school is going and if they will like the Americanized doshi-raks I packed them this morning.  (There are no food services at their school so packing lunches is a necessity.)

And since I'm feeling a little nostalgic for Korean comfort food today, too, I think it's Spam and kimchi on my menu for lunch.  ; )

What's in your kids' lunchbox?  What do you like to pack?  What do they eat?

--Angie in Texas is enthusiastic about packing lunches . . . for now.  Ask her how she feels in about 3 weeks.

Cope Deal

Recently my daughter was tested for the Gifted & Talented Program (aka Alpha Programs) at her school.  She is a very bright girl who is also motivated to do well in school.  She is curious and inquisitive and makes some of the funniest (and wittiest) comments ever known to almost 9 year-olds.  I was a little concerned about the pressure of taking this test, as it is a 2-3 day ordeal.  But she was excited at being selected and every day she came home feeling good and confident about the test.  Throughout the examination dates, and even before, I told her how proud of her I was, how the results didn’t matter – as long as she tried her best and that I loved her no matter what.

She did not get in.

While speaking with several other parents (and non-parents) about this, I was shocked to hear the same thing over and over again: call the school and make them accept her.  WHA?!

I know it was disappointing for her to not make it into the program.  I know this because when I told her, she bravely held back tears, I hugged her, told her it was okay and she burst out in big, fat, hot tears of disappointment.  It was heart breaking. (And as a mother, it killed a part of me.)

But as a responsible mother, I have to help her understand and DEAL with this result.

Let me back up: when I was a graduate student, I was an assistant.  I dealt with students every day.  College-aged students.  I got to teach/lecture, I met with students and I graded their work.  I CANNOT tell you how many times throughout the 4 semesters I did this students would come up to me and tell me I was “wrong”.   Huh?

I also worked closely with a variety of university students in a professional position at another university.  Again, I cannot tell you how many times I would have a student approach me and have almost no sense of responsibility or accountability for their actions.

Worse yet, many of these students (at both universities) were completely unable to COPE. 

Yes, cope.  You know “deal”?  Most of these students grew up with parents that intervened on their behalf when a problem came up – whether that problem was social, academic, athletic, etc.  If their child was failing a class, the parents would bully the teacher into creating extra-credit or re-evaluating their child’s work for a better grade.  If the student got into trouble for bad behaviour, it wasn't their fault it was the school's.  Huh?

And do you know what happened?  These kids grew up with a sense of entitlement.  They lack the skills to deal.  They are unable to cope with failure – because they had never truly experienced it.  And when they enter into the "real" world it is harsh . . .

So though it was hard for me to see my daughter so hurt from disappointment (she’s already had a lot of disappointment in her life), I also understand this is a life lesson* she has to learn.  Because part of life is not so much that there is disappointment, but HOW you deal with that disappointment.

Angie in Texas wasn’t in G/T in elementary school but was in the AP program in high school.

*Some of her other friends who also took the test were not accepted into the program either.  She is feeling better now that she knows she wasn’t “the only one who didn’t pass”.

I Already Passed the Third Grade

. . . and Kindergarten.

Ahhhhh, two weeks into the new school year and already with the school projects. 

I don’t know what the deal is, but I am really unhappy (already) with some of the expectations the teachers have on parents.  Earlier this week AM came home and told me her assignment was for ME to CREATE a math worksheet.  Don’t get me wrong, I did so, but not without a little confusion . . . I mean why didn’t the teacher just send a worksheet home?  Why didn’t the kids copy a list of problems? Why am I supposed to be creating these sheets?

"Ivy League Skills?"

There's a piece that popped up on the home page of the NY Times entitled, "Elite Korean Schools, Forging Ivy League Skills."  The article profiles two elite schools in South Korea, and the phenomenal rates at which they send students to "top" American colleges and universities.

It talks about how grueling these schools are, how the schools "suppress teenage romance as a waste of time," and how students outscore students from Phillips Exeter on the SAT.  One American teacher even said, "Even my worst students are great," and went on to talk about how he would get questions via email from his students at all hours of the night.

I'm often slightly cynical about things like this, but this just seems like one big promotion of the model minority stereotype, of how Asian and Asian American students are machines about studying and doing well on standardized tests.  Did they ever talk about how class issues might affect this process?  (The Korean schools profiled are both private.)  What if they compared rates of admission for these students compared to legacy students (COUGH G. W. Bush)?

~ eliaday

Lunchbox - Umma's dosirak

I never knew how hard a simple lunchbox would be.

Times 5.  5 days in a week.  5 lunches.  At least one serving from each food group.  Are they kidding me?  Don't I give Little Nabi her daily vitamin every night?  Isn't that enough?

Okay, I kid.  I do not endorse substituting healthy food with a regimen of vitamins... really, I don't.

When LN's preschool director skimmed over the lunch details, I gasped and asked him to go over the rules again.  One serving from each food group?  Um... what food groups?  Edamame beans are NOT vegetables?  They're protein group?  Dang.

A familiar face - cultural bonding

Trepidatious.  Now that's an understatement to describe how I felt this morning as I dropped off Little Nabi, 2 and 1/2 months shy of 3 years of age, at her preschool. 

For the first time.

Due to her dad's night work schedule and my day work schedule, we have been (un)fortunate enough to not need daycare.  We also never used a babysitter.  For two occasions, my sister took care of LN for 2 and 1/2 hours each time - long enough for a movie.  Both times, she missed her mommy and cried.