Mother's Mother Tongue

The Chinese school held a New Years party today for all it's students and their parents. Sienna and Olivia dressed up in traditional Chinese costumes. Great pictures are here courtesy of Olivia's Dad Miles. Just see how beautifully the Chinese Lilly and Peony are growing up on a foreign land we call Canada!

I was waiting for Sienna's afternoon Mandarin play session to start. A mother came into the room to get her son, who attended the morning session. She was having a conversation with me, in Mandarin of course, while trying to get her to leave with her. Everyone in that room was speaking Chinese. But this mother in question switched to English to talk to her son. With him, it was English all the way.

I am still puzzled. It's difficult for me to understand already how come some Chinese parents just don't care if their kids speak Chinese or not. Now, this is beyond me why this woman would speak English only to her son, AND then she sends him to a Chinese class once a week. For a mother to pass down her mother tongue, isn't it the the best way if she speaks her mother tongue as much as she could manage to.

I thought I was understanding of a lot of things...