Challenge of Immigrant Parents

Both my parents are immigrants from Bangladesh, and like many other families they came here before I was born. So basically we are a family of two Bengali parents and two American children (though of course my parents think of me as a Bengali, not an American). Now the usual cultural differences and blah blah blah exist. However, this is the stuff people even non-immigrants already know. Also, most children, mainly teens, who are in my situation are always complaining about these usual cultural problems.
Seriously, people do not really notice how much we get away with because we are children of immigrants.
And that is what I think is the real challenge, not misusing these advantages over our parents.
Now of course, some people have parents who are a lot smarter, but many are like mine who don't understand technology very well.

Examples of get aways:
1. Internet history- My parents do not know how to check that either do they know it exist. I know a lot of people who have to continuously delete their history in fear their parents will look at them.
2. Emails- My parents never check my emails.
3. Books- My parents can read English but not enough to understand what is written in books like Harry Potter and Twilight so I never fall in the banned book solution.
4. Talking- My parents are always complaining that I speak English way too fast for them to understand what I'm saying. So of course me and my cousins usually can say all sort of things that they do not have a clue about.
5. Cell phones- My mom cannot use a cell phone and she never picks hers up. So she never checks my call history or my text.

Now the list can be longer. So I can take advantage of these moments but I do not, intentionally at least. Firstly, I do not find a need to go against my parents by doing something that if they were aware of they would feel extremely hurt. Also, trust me greatly, or else they would not have sent me to Texas to live with my aunt to finish college. I would seriously hate myself if I ended up breaking that trust even if it was by accident or something.

Of course my parents, especially my mom, always find loop holes in everything.
When I am chatting with friends my mom will just sit behind me and watch. However, this does not bother me. Every 5 minutes she asks me what I'm talking about with my friends. This is actually not irritating either. No, what is irritating is explaining things that are not possible to translate into Bengali. The hardest thing to ever explain was sarcasm.

Me: Well it's like..........let say I was waiting for you to come here at 7 pm but you come at 8pm. Okay.
Mom: Okay.
Me: So after you come in I say, "Oh my God! You are so early!" See that is sarcasm.
Mom: I do not get it. Why are you going to say i am early when I am obviously very late.

I love my parents exactly the way they are. It makes my life so much more interesting. So anyone who feels their parents too culturally different just remember the positive side.

Interaction Activity

Today I went to a leadership and team building workshop and over there I got the opportunity to do something that I found extremely interesting.

First we were divided into groups of 2- one is the instructor, and the other is the drawer.

We had to sit with our backs to one another, so we couldn't see each others face but we could hear one another.

Now the drawer was given a piece of paper and a pen. The instructor was given a card with a simple diagram drawn on it.

Now this is what we had to do:

The instructor had to describe the picture to the drawer but the drawer could not say a word; they could only draw. So if they did not understand the instructions given to them by the instructor they could not ask the instructor to repeat or ask questions or anything.

So now the outcome.

I ended up being an instructor. When I saw the diagram I thought, "Oh this will be easy."

It wasn't.

I kept wanting to ask my partner if they understood what I was saying. I didn't even know if she could hear me. But I had no way to clarify.

Finally once everyone finished the coordinator asked all the drawers how they felt for not being able to talk to their instructors.

Basically they all said that they felt confused. The problem was interpretation. All of us interpret things differently and so when I said draw a line in the middle of the rectangle she did not know if she should draw it along the length or the width.

What we learned from this exercise is that when communicating with others we need to try to be as clear as possible but at the same time let them or encourage them to ask questions and explain what they understood.

Again we repeated the activity but the only difference this time was that the drawer could interact and talk. This time all the teams except 2 got their pictures to look the same.

I just thought it was amazing exercise that explained the importance of communicating both ways. We see in many places people always complaining that their children don't understand them or the children say that their parents don't understand them. Well the reason for this is that either the parent keeps placing orders upon their child but the child cannot give feedback about what they feel and vise versa. We need to learn to give ideas but at the same time be ready to expect and accept other interpretations.