S “Right, so, you have to say who you love most. You can’t say everyone. You can’t say strawberries, or glasses, or a cucumber, or…”
Me “I have to say a family member?”
S “Right, you have to say S or M or K or mama (H).”
Me “OK, uh, H.”
S “And mama, you have to say”
H “S”
S “And I choose mama. So, mama gets two stars, S gets one star, and you get no stars.”
Me “Aw, I lost.”
S “Yes. You get no stars. You get a hammer. Buu buu. You lose. See, you have to choose carefully, this is a strategic game. I used to play this game all the time at daycare. Do you want to play again?”
Saturday: dismantled the Ikea loft bed, replaced the curtain rail with one inside the window frame, and assembled a new triple bunk bed.
Sunday: went to Ikea with three little kids in tow only to find they were out of the mattresses we needed. Found two in stock at another Ikea, went there, snagged literally the last two in the warehouse - looks like there are only a few left in Japan.
All worth it when the kids are super excited about the new bed, and Sat night wife and I had a bed to ourselves for the first time in years. Hoping that will continue!
Apparently our eldest was shown a video about the bombing of Hiroshima.
She came home with a story about a 6 year old girl (“my age”) whose mum couldn’t be with her for some reason, who went outside to look at the plane. She called this girl “bacon”, with an awkward laugh each time because she was cooked. Apparently her mum also died “from crying”.
There was also some talk of a smiling statue becoming an angry statue that I didn’t understand.
She now thinks the person (singular) who dropped the bomb should die, and asked if the next couple of planes we heard were from America.
I have to wonder if this is part of the curriculum, and if so, why so soon?
Ouch! To 6 year old children, that seems a bit too early. I still get the creeps whenever my daughters ask me about death, I cannot imagine how hard it would be to discuss something like the nuclear bombs…
Someone helped me track down the likely story, Okorijizou, so it was stop-motion anime based on a picture book. The girl doesn’t die in the book, at least not before the book ends, and the mum only seems to feature in the animation that I haven’t seen. But still, the picture book is dark, and written by a survivor. Everything in the city is obliterated in a flash, people everywhere are staggering and crawling about with burns and torn clothes, and a little girl with the clothes burned off her back crawls to a statue begging for water, of which there is none, anywhere. The laughing statue turns angry, and cries, and its tears help her thirst… and then it ends, as far as I can tell.
It’s not nationalistic trash, but I have to wonder what the teacher thought the kids would take away from it, and what they discussed.
I think over here we started learning about the Holocaust in 5th grade (and I doubt that has changed much). At least that’s what I remember as my first encounter. I was 10. So 6 seems a little early.
There’s a way to roll out things, heck even a heads up email to parent.
Man I’m getting all sorts of flashbacks with this talk.
When I was six in kindergarten. They showed us the The Little mermaid. The 1975 version where she does because she won’t stab the prince in the heart.
Remember thinking that this was maybe a bit inappropriate for our age group. I knew of that concept because when I went to the babysitters older kids would get to watch like PG-13 movies while younger kids nap.
And the babysitter’s daughter got to decide which kid was more “mature” enough not to naka on her good side.
I started learning about the Holocaust in 5th grade too.
The teacher showed us the movie The Day After and told us it was what would happen if there was a WW3.
I don’t know if any of you have the kind of experience or knowledge that might help with this, but I’m pretty worried.
The last conversation I had with the eldest went down some very dark paths: she likes her Japanese half, but thinks the half that came from me ruined that. Her hair is the colour of shit and she hates it. She thinks her head doesn’t work right, and that that might be because of her hair colour (foreign aspect). Foreigners are bad, Japanese are good, brown and black skin are disgusting…
She maintains all this is from within her, not outside influences, so it’s hard to identify how to approach it other than gainsay what she’s telling me, which obviously isn’t that effective.
She said all this quite casually, but it must be coming from a place of stress. I know she’s encountered some low-level bullying, being called a foreigner, but nothing that persisted or seemed too serious. Homework and schoolwork remain difficult for her, and she doesn’t enjoy learning. Obviously, not maintaining any of the friendships she had with kids in similar situations (non-Japanese parents) over the last two years of pandemic isolation hasn’t helped.
But really, just a really depressing situation, and I’m not sure what, if anything, I can do.
I have no direct experience. And it sounds as if she needs to find an identity for herself; something all kids struggle with to some degree. But having physical characteristics that can be called out by her peers makes it even more difficult.
I’m not sure what to tell you, other than to be supportive and keep a thick skin as she drags your genetics and heritage through the mud. It seems, likely, that someday she may take pride in her mixed heritage, but probably not soon.
This is based entirely on my experience in various listening/peer support volunteer situations and not at all on any experience with children, so all of the caveats. Have you asked her what’s brought her to those conclusions? E.g. when she says something negative about her heritage or non-japanese people in general asked her “what makes you say that?” (Adults often respond less defensively to this phrasing than “why do you think that” for some reason).
It might help you pinpoint something specific to tackle, or just help her talk about what’s bothering her.
There’s some tips on active listening for parents here:
Focusing on listening, rather than on what I “have to do” is smart, thanks. Look on the positive side, that she felt comfortable bringing this up in the first place, even if she didn’t want to continue or develop the conversation.
A happy(?) conclusion, of sorts: it is rooted in bullying. A 3rd year boy bullying a 1st year girl with racist taunts, ugh. At least we have something we can work on though.
I’ve been terrible with keeping up in here but if you’re up for it I’d be in your debt to hear how this went. I have a mixed child (soon children) of Chinese and White descent and I want to ensure I’m on the (right) ball. I have a history of activism on this front, so my concern is less about THAT I’ll confront it, and more that I’ll confront it a little too head on/zealously.
I had resolved to talk to a teacher and get in contact with the parent of the bully, when the next day S came home happy and said the boy was no longer in the after-school program. I forget the reason, maybe his mum stopped working or went part-time or they moved away.
In any case, everyone wanted me to drop it, so I did, and nothing as dramatic has come up since.
S still sometimes comes out with some negative stuff - like sometimes she hates her name and wants to change it. She has an English surname mangled into Japanese phonics, and a 100 % Japanese first name, but she heard from H that we avoided l/r sounds in choosing her name (because they are pronounced differently in the two languages) and decided that meant we didn’t give her a name we liked, or something.
These days nearly all our stress is just trying to keep her up to speed academically. She’s probably dead last in her class of 37 in every subject, and I don’t think that’s because of outside factors. I’m doing OK teaching her math, H is really struggling teaching her Japanese, and we aren’t even trying to teach her English.
Had a conversation the other day in which our seven year old child told me we were selfish for travelling so much before she was born, wasting money that we should have saved to buy a nicer house. Apparently our current one is too old and she doesn’t like it!
I mean, wow, that’s not a train of thought that would ever have occurred to me as a pre-teen.
(Oh, and the example of a house that would have been acceptable was Chloe’s from Miraculous, which I think is a mansion or luxury penthouse in central Paris. I tried to explain how that was far out of reach to anyone not born into ridiculous wealth, but…)
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