I am a Student

 

As we gear up for the holiday break, I'm happy to report that 4th grade Asher has made a lot of progress as a student. His special needs, development delays, and behavioral issues were already causing problems before he lost his kindergarten year to COVID, preventing him from the socialization and instruction of that critical on-ramp to school (and, for that matter, 1st grade was in person but interrupted many times by quarantines, illnesses, and such).

Since then, he's had the support of his two parents and a bevy of educators at school, particularly to get caught up in literacy. He is still reading at a rudimentary level, well below grade level. But he is making progress every week. 

Even better, which has been an overall point of emphasis for his 4th grade teacher for all of her students, he is owning his role as a student, meaning that his education is his responsibility and that it is a major one to take seriously. In parallel, his behavioral disruptions have become rarer and rarer, both as he gains more coping mechanisms and as his attention is diverted to the proper tasks at hand.

We have a long way to go but have come a long way already. So I am marking and celebrating that!

All Walks of Life

 

 

We’ve been blessed to send our kids to two great public schools, Penn Alexander and Central High. Both are, for Philly schools, very well resourced, which is come in handy as we’ve often needed to lean on the extra supports for various special needs and intervention moments. Both are academically rigorous, as evidenced by high test scores as well as the resolve and professionals of the educators there. 

Importantly and not coincidentally, both are diverse communities. There has been some justifiable concern that racial and ethnic diversity is declining, particularly if it continues to do so. At the moment, both schools remain very racial and ethnically mixed, which we are glad for given the fact that we are ourselves a racially mixed family and value our kids being among diverse company. 

Another critical yet sadly rare type of diversity is income diversity. Indeed, it is intentionally rare, because in this country we tend to set up our local laws to discourage wide ranges of household income levels to co-exist in the same school catchment zone. So, as elusive as it is to send your kid to a school where there is true racial and ethnic diversity, perhaps rarer still is a school where socio-economic diversity exists. 

Things change, especially in cities, but at this moment in time, we experience that at our kids’ schools. They have friends whose parents are blue collar and professional, who have no cars and fancy cars, who have never gotten on an airplane and who have second homes.

Of course what you learn in the classroom is important for preparing you for career and life. But I would argue that who you learn with is just as important. And part of what is important about that is being alongside and empathizing with people who come from different walks of life, who are differently resourced and whose world view is shaped by that scarcity or abundance. We are grateful for what we have as a family, including community with people who have far more and far less than us.

Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

 

Barely two months after posting about Asher getting into taking care of his own hair, it turns out picking and cleaning are not high on the list of Asher's favorite things to do in life. So much so that, unsupervised, he took some scissors to his head and clipped off chunks of his curls. A rite of passage for many kids, I suppose, as validated by many of my friends who offered support when I shared this humorous incident on social.

But Amy wonders, and now I do too, if there is something deeper going on. Because I'm lazy, I've preferred keeping Asher's hair short (and my own, for that matter), because shorter hairs means less maintenance. But, Asher's desire to grow his hair out felt like an age-appropriate impulse and something that allowed him to connect deeper with his Blackness. Indeed, our communications with him on his hair maintenance tended to focus on how special his hair is (unlike anyone else's in the family) rather than seeing the responsibility as an unappealing chore.

I don't think that Asher was, consciously or sub-consciously, rebelling against his Blackness in taking a scissors to his hair. But, I can certainly understand if, if part of your identity means that you are different than others and have to do extra work, that that is something that you want to downplay or even run from. We will monitor to see how things go, including how every day his hair will grow longer and we will have a decision to make about how to take care of it and whether to keep letting it grow.

Eco-Friendly Holiday Greetings from the Huangs

 

She Knows What She Wants and is Willing to Put in the Work to Get It

 

Here's another great example of Jada knowing what she wants in life and being willing to put in the work to get it. Tomorrow she runs a half-marathon, having trained for the past several weeks to get herself up to that mileage. Her previous races have all been 5Ks, and once a year at that, so this was a daunting amount of prep. But, with the help of her friend, she has worked her way up day by day.

Running a race is a pretty good metaphor for life in general as well as any other aspiration a young woman can set her heart on. Which means she is doing pretty darn good at this critical life skill. Her mother and I are very proud!

Going Back to Cali

 

Unbelievably, we find ourselves at the tail end of the year, when end-of-year holidays start to bear down on us and we wonder where the year went. As we usually do, the Huangs will be in California next month: SoCal from December 24 to December 29, and Bay Area from December 29 to January 4. We look forward to being together, having fun, and seeing people and sights. If anyone is around, it would be great to meet up with you!

Under Pressure

 

Whether it’s Tiger Dads, Type-A personalities, or the career-driven, it can be easy to fall into a parenting vibe that puts a lot of pressure on kids. And, to be sure, pressure is a good thing. Pressure is what establishes that high expectations are better than low or no expectations. And pressure is what human beings will face out in the world, so feeling some from your own parents is a good way to prepare to stand on your own when you’re out of the nest. 

But, obviously, pressure can have negative consequences. And, because of that, I think I’ve tried hard to intentionally throttle down. I truly don’t want my kids to “follow in my footsteps” unless they desire those things on their own; far more important to me is that they find what unique footsteps they want to take. And, I honestly couldn’t care less if they are rich and successful, so long as they are a contributing member of society and learn how to live within their means (whether those means are expansive or tight). 

Kids today inherently face a lot of pressure. I’m sure my kids feel a lot of pressure from me. I hope they will respond favorably to it and chart their own courses to a life that they fully own and embrace. And I hope they learn to set their own expectations, give grace when they fall short of those expectations, and take pride when they meet or exceed them.