Why do your children not like to learn Chinese?

Many parents often get a headache when their children don’t want to learn Chinese no matter how hard they request, demand, even force them to go to Chinese learning programs or schools. Under such pressure, most children have to involuntarily sit in the classroom even though they don’t have interests in learning Chinese at all. Because of this, even though they are sitting in the classroom, they are either thinking about something else, doing something else, or refusing to answer any question. After the class is over, they don’t review at all. The study is very ineffective. This is not an individual case but a very popular phenomenon.

Four reasons for parents to send children to learn Chinese

Normally, there are four reasons for parents sending their children to learn Chinese: First reason is since they want their children to get to know where they are from, what kind of cultural background they have, what kind of native language they use to communicate each other. The second reason is that some parents especially hope that their children can speak to them in Chinese at home so that they don’t feel lonely, helpless, depressed, and being isolated if they can’t speak English by themselves. Due to the language barriers, they have to face difficulties and inconvenience, even can’t protect themselves when they are insulted and bullied. The third reason is that parents hope that their children can understand and remember even though they are not born in China or they already immigrant to another country, their blood and skin color can’t be changed. So learning Chinese well is not only a “requirement” but also “must”. The fourth reason is a small portion of parents want their children to learn Chinese so that someday in the future they can help their parent’s business spread out to the Chinese market.

Children are so uncooperative

However, why children don’t want to learn Chinese to fulfill their parent’s desires? At first, children think that their parents have those desires, but they don’t. They don’t think that they need to learn Chinese to get to know where the parents are from, what their cultural background is and how they communicate each other. Second, children don’t want to communicate with their parents. Comparing to understand parents’ emotional needs, they feel happy or happier to spend time using English or other languages to communicate with their friends. They don’t want to spend extra time learning Chinese. The more important is that the lifestyles, culture, concepts, and thoughts between their parents and them have big differences and gaps . They rather use the language barrier to keep distance between so that they feel more freedom. At the third, based on the different life and growth environments, they can’t feel proud of the Chinese blood and skin color even can’t find friends to practice and to use Chinese to understand the advantages of why they “must” learn Chinese, except their family members. So, even though they are willing to follow their parents to go to Chinese school or program, they are not active and quite cooperative. Fourth, if parents have a business’ purpose to ask children to learn Chinese, children normally use business’ view and definite target to learn Chinese. However, learning Chinese is not an easy task. This language system is completely different from other language systems. It needs children to contribute long-term, persistent and constant efforts. Children normally are not able to make it. Their natures make them easier to change and turn their interests on simple, short-term, and more flexible targets.