My Family Culture

I would choose a omamori, manekineko , and chopsticks.  Omamori is a talisman. It is a small bag that contains paper or wood chip inside on which something religious is printed. I would bring one for my family’s health. Manekineko is a statue of cat and one with right hand lifted gather the luck of money and one with left hand lifted gathers the luck of people. I would bring one with left hand lifted. The last one is chopsticks.

I would explain that omamori is important because I can mentally depend on it for my family’s health. Manekineko is similar. I would like it to help me to gather people in the new country so that I can have another happy life there in my new community. Chopsticks might sound less important compared to the other two. But from my experience living in a foreign country, the only thing I get frustrated with and find inconvenient regularly is when I don’t have chopsticks. I think this is because they are an important part of my daily life.

I would feel sad, similar to a feeling of having to leave my friends behind when I had to give up two items among three I brought.   If I was forced to choose just one, I would have to keep the manekineko.

Since I have lived in the United States as an immigrant, this simulation may not be a big impact on the way I see my culture or how I handle with cultural issues. Even though I know I do not usually stick to my culture, it is interesting that I try to bring Japanese items that will bring my lucks or works as a guard. It means that Japanese culture means a lot when it comes to spiritual beliefs. It also proves that I see myself as belonging to Japanese culture even though I am not planning to go back to Japan or that I seem not to care about Japanese culture in my daily life here.

Hi everyone!

Hi everyone,

My name is Ayako March. I’m Japanese and I moved here with my first child and my American husband 5 years ago. Now I have two daughters who are five and two.

I am looking forward to knowing about you and sharing our thoughts through this blog assignment!

                               

Aya

When I Think of Research...

One of the insights I’ve had about research is that we have a lot to think to make quality research. It is not all about research techniques. Researchers need to think carefully to collect objective and trustworthy data, balance the benefits and interests of the research and ethics and so on. My Idea about the nature of doing research changed from researchers’ curiosities to social benefits. From research simulation, I learned that it is very difficult to prove relations between some events and a child’s behavior because children become who they are by being influenced by many factors. The most difficult part of this course was the vocabulary. It is sometimes hard to understand what the textbook says. To meet that, I tried to concentrate on grabbing the outlines first and read for details when doing assignments. This course modified my perceptions of early childhood professionals to more academic and influential for the society than I used to think.

For my colleagues,

Thank you very much for sharing your thoughts through the course. They were very important because research is a difficult topic. Good luck on your future courses where I hope to see you soon!

Research Around the World

Researches in the sub-Saharan area seems to relate to training or assessment to improve the quality of the care for children.  The surprising fact is that the quality level they are working on is still very basic such as survival rate, community health and orphanages.  The Australian website introduces the topics like what we see in America. They are for understanding children so that educators and caregivers can provide quality care and education. The surprising fact from a journal from this website is that one in five children living in low-income or single-parent families have mental health concerns. The European one has a lot of interesting and up-to-date topics such as children’s self-esteem in computer and learning and playing in different languages. One of the new insights here is that there are studies done about the challenges of children’s real participation. The noteworthy information/insight is that the interpretation of observation and interviews are always done by adults so what we think is true from the research results might not be true so we have to continue to study about children to understand children more accurately.

Research that Benefits Children and Families—Uplifting Stories

This is a story that benefited me as a parent. I co-slept with my daughters after they became three months. This is natural in Japan because we think close attachment between a mother and a baby helps the baby to become stable and satisfied so that he or she can become independent sooner and considerate of others. However, I felt that I was doing something wrong in the US. because I knew a lot of people believe that  co-sleeping is a bad idea, is dangerous or is spoiling a child. When I read a research article that explained that different cultures have different opinions about co-sleeping and a lot of them are positive, I got free from the anxiety and guilty feeling, and became confident with what I was providing my children by co-sleeping.  I tried to find the original article I read but I couldn’t find it. However,  The Natural Children Project (http://www.naturalchild.org/guest/tami_breazeale.html) introduces research that show children whose mothers co-sleep develop stronger secure attachment and says “[c]osleeping is the cultural norm for approximately 90% of the world's population”(Breazeale, 2001, para. 3).

Reference

Breazeale, E. Tami.(2001). Cosleeping. Retrieved on May 18, 2012, from http://www.naturalchild.org/guest/tami_breazeale.html

Your Personal Research Journey

The research topic I chose for week 1 assignment is How Does Bilingualism Influence on Children’s Socio-emotional Development? The subtopics are 1.Are Bilingual Children More Self-Esteemed?  2. Are Bilingual Children More Resilient to Stress? 3. Do Bilingual Children Have Different Personalities When Speaking Different Languages. I came up with these topics from questions that came from my personal daily experiences of learning English and raising my children to be bilingual. I am also most interested in socio-emotional development among the three main domains of child development because I think it controls the other domains. So, I wanted to know how being bilingual influences children’s socio-emotional development. For my final choice, even though I am most interested in 3, I chose 1 because I thought this is the most workable question based on what our textbook says, and I also thought it is the most purposeful topic that can bring benefits for both children desiring to be bilingual and children not seeking language skills who are in need of more self-esteem.


What I would like advice on the most is if I should combine 1 and 2 because they are related or if I should concentrate on only 1.


I found this website when looking for articles for myself and feel it might be helpful for someone else. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/DisplayAbstractSearch.cfm

 Thank you.

 Aya

Hi everyone!

Hi everyone,

My name is Ayako March. I’m Japanese and I moved here with my first child and my American husband 5 years ago. Now I have two daughters who are five and two.

I started Walden while being stay-at-home mom but I recently started a temporary preschool assistant job at an international school because this is the school I had been interested in for a long time. The position is only for 8 weeks, so I can get started there, but will be able to stay available to my girls until they are more ready for me to work full time.

I am looking forward to communicating with you all through this blog assignment!

                            

Aya