Monday, September 08, 2008

Odd Moments in Parenting

Today I found myself saying one of the oddest things. Maybe not as weird as the no sniffing armpits rule, but it's up there.

I told my six year old son to go do his Chinese homework.

Yes, that's right our public school is now teaching Chinese once a week.

I get the whole teach them a foreign language when they are young, but Mandarin Chinese?

Spanish would be far more useful around here and it would be a nice boost for the kids who come from Spanish speaking families. There is not a whole lot of Chinese spoken around here and it's hard to learn a language without some sort of reinforcement outside of the classroom.

Also, I know precious little Chinese. So Max and Rebecca will be getting no help from home. At least with Jake and his upcoming Bar Mitzvah we have Grandma helping him out with his Hebrew. If it was Latin I could really do a lot with them. I could even help a bit with French (admittedly I bailed on French when I learned about regular vs irregular verbs and that there 16 different conjugations). But Chinese... well they are on their own.

So tonight during Rebecca's soccer practice Max got to practice writing Chinese with me looking on and having absolutely no idea what he was doing.

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