On my 7th birthday party, after I blowed the candles, mom started cutting the cake. She asked me how many pieces there were when she was done. I counted 4 rows and 5 columns. I said: "4 by 5 is 25." Mom went like : "What?" Then my friends all said 25. Mom went bananas! She said if we do not get the number right, we will not get a piece of cake. But we still got our cake even though we said the number wrong.
Mom likes to teach me math after school because she thinks math in school is too simple for me. So when I was in kindergarten, she taught me second grade math. When I was in first grade, she taught me third grade math. She would be mad at me if I solved a problem incorrectly. One day, I asked mom why she is so strict with me at math. She said that she was a teacher when she was in China. She is very strict because when she was a student, her teachers were strict about learning.
Mom came to America to study education and to be a better teacher. She first went to Ohio. She was a student in a graduate school and also a teacher in a high school. She was strict to her students at first but they did not listen to her. Mom said, one time she could not help shedding tears in class because her students would not stop talking when she was giving a lesson. Then she began to know that teaching is different in America. So she decided to learn and try new ways of teaching. After finishing her study, she moved to California with her husband (my daddy). She worked a little bit before she had us (me and my sister). Then mom homeschooled me till I went to first grade.
I enjoyed learning with my mom. We did many fun activities and projects together. When I went to first grade, I found everything easy in school. The only thing I did not like was when I solved a problem wrong, she would raise her voice. So I asked her, "why do you have to raise your voice when I solve a problem wrong?" Mom said it was because I did not pay attention to the problem she gave to me. But when I was in school, I was focused.
So I said to mom, "Can you talk like Ms. McAuley (my teacher)?"
"What does Ms. McAuley talk like?" Mom asked.
"She only raises her voice when the class gets loud," I told her.
I think Mom listens. Instead of getting mad, now she makes jokes when I solve a problem wrong. She often reminds me to double check my problems when I am done. She is not that strict as I first thought. I think she will be an even better teacher one day.
Although she is my mom, she is not teacher of everything. I teach my mom English. She learned many years of English in China, but she is still learning English from me everyday. She often pronounces lizards as lazards, scissors as seessors, rose as ruse, rain as ring, and son as song. The list can go on and on. Some words like lizards and son are hard for her to say correctly because she has said them wrong at the beginning. But she is still working hard on those pronunciations.
I am sometimes the backseat driver when mom does street parking. I tell her how much more she needs to go. So she can park aligned with the curb. Sometimes when she does not park really well, I can feel which way the car is pointing. My mom never drives on highways because she is afraid of the speed. She is good at driving locals and expressways. But she also gets nervous when driving if I talk to her in the car. She always tells me to hold my thoughts till she parks the car. I understand why she has so many things to learn in driving because the only thing she could ride in the past was a bike. She did not get her license until after I was born.
Now I know my mom more because she moved here from a different place. She is still learning things in her new community just like me. I am learning new things too as a child.