Middle of Everywhere - Mary Bray Pipher [71]
She had a highly aroused flight-and-fight system that wasn't adaptive now. But her protectiveness and her fierce intensity had kept Anton alive. Seen from her vantage point, her behavior was understandable. She and Anton weren't crazy, only reacting to a crazy world. The irony was that they could really use someone to help them understand they were in a new place and could calm down.
ADOLESCENCE
While puberty is a biological event, adolescence is a cultural phenomenon. American adolescence is about individuation, risk taking, and experimentation. It's about wildness and freedom. Our concept of adolescence is discordant with the values of many cultures. While American children often are raised to be independent and antiauthoritarian, children from traditional cultures are raised to have great respect for adults. In Middle Eastern, Latino, Asian, and African cultures, elders are venerated. Old and young enjoy each other's company. They all enjoy the same activities; they work together and play together.
Refugees are amazed by how American teenagers treat their parents and grandparents. Many of the ELL teens plan to live at home until they are married. Some hope to live all of their lives with their families. And yet, at school, like all American teenagers, they learn to think for themselves. In fact, the major identity struggles of refugee teens involve finding the balance between independence and their obligations to family and community.
As discussed earlier, for refugee families in America, the power often shifts radically from parents to children. Children of refugees frequently become bicultural and bilingual more rapidly than their elders. As teens, they learn how to drive and get around town. Some even support their families. Parents no longer have superior knowledge of the world and they no longer have a village helping them raise their kids.
When teens become surly and disobedient, refugee parents often don't know how to respond. Their traditional means of discipline—shaming from elders, reprimands from the extended family, or physical punishments—may not be possible. Furthermore, the parents may be dependent on their child's goodwill in order to have a ride to work or even an income. This parental lack of power allows teens to rule the roost in ways that hurt the whole family and especially the teen. Many parents feel they lose their children to America.
At the high schools in Lincoln teens must call home for permission to do many things. However, since these teens speak English and their parents often don't, the school must trust them to explain problems to their parents and accurately report their parents' reactions. Parents often cannot read grade cards or talk directly to school personnel about their concerns. One boy told his parents that the school required all boys to wear expensive black leather jackets, and his impoverished parents scraped together the money to buy him one.
And yet, in spite of the many problems, I was struck by the love and loyalty refugee teens feel for their parents. When I asked teenagers, "What is your dream now?" many answered that they wanted to buy their parents a house.
Teens are caught between their families and the larger culture. They are expected to meet demands in school that vary significantly from what they experience at home. At school they may not be considered American and at home they are considered too Americanized. The most resilient kids do a lot of cultural switching. They act American at school, traditional at home. They are bicultural, or in many cases, multicultural, and they know when "to wear each culture."
Adolescents are identity-seeking organisms. They try on different identities for size and fit. Nothing is yet fixed. This experimentation is intensified for the ELL students. They hunger to be defined, to be told, "this is who you are or who you could become." Eleanor Roosevelt's definition of success is, "To cultivate and express one's talents and powers to the utmost and to use those