Most of the very young children of Filipino origin in our midst now must be third or fourth generation Canadians. That is, if their parents are offsprings of those who came to this country in the sixties or seventies when large numbers of Filipinos first arrived in this country. During those first years of Filipino family immigration to Canada, a considerable number sponsored their parents who were probably in their fifties or sixties to come and help look after the young children in the families.
During that time, those grandparents who looked after the young children of their own offsprings often complained about the difficulty of taking care of grandchildren who did not want to obey them, were disrespectful and had no regard for the Filipino traditions their grandparents brought with them.
Now, those children are either parents or grandparents themselves. They were born and have grown up in Canada. They went through the Canadian school system and have been employed in the Canadian workplaces. But the problems they meet in bringing up their children are different in many ways from the ones their parents and grandparents had when they were babies.
In the sixties when I was still in the Philippines I made a research on the role of culture in child upbringing. That study was prompted by the existing situations in Philippine schools wherein the medium of instruction was English and most of the concepts being taught came from American ideals. I tried to see how American culture was affecting the upbringing of Filipino children. I tried to compare the child upbringing practices of Filipino mothers, especially in disciplining children with those of the teachers in Filipino schools.
At the time, corporal punishment was already prohibited in schools,although I know that some teachers still used it.
I found that most mothers brought up their children the way their own mothers reared them. Teachers, with all their training in American principles of teaching and child upbringing also treated their pupils the way their parents brought them up. You are not allowed to reason out. You have to obey, teachers’ instructions all the time. “Makuha ka sa tingin”.
That was an expression children learned from parents and teachers. A look was enough to deter a child from mischief. I remember that when I was a child, I always looked at my mother before doing something. I knew I would get approval or disapproval from her look without uttering a word. I used the same approach when I started teaching and I found it very effective. But that approach was never of any use when I started teaching here in Canada. Children here do not even look at the teacher unless she is doing something interesting that would call their attention.
When I look back to those years in the Philippines as well as here in Canada, I realize that we Filipinos depended heavily on our elders for learning and guidance in life. “Ang hindi lumingon sa pinanggalingan, hindi makararating sa paroroonan”.
This is also the source of our great value for remembering our indebtedness to our parents, friends or anybody who had done us a favour. We always remember our “utang na loob”.
Here in Canada, we develop in our children, from a very young age, the sense of independence. We allow them to wander around without censoring their actions. We cannot really stop them because they will fight back. Little ones who are just starting to walk are already difficult to control. They enter all hooks and crannies in the house. They cannot be left without someone watching lest they bring danger to themselves. You cannot put them in one corner and tell them to stay there. I can just imagine how a nanny with a three-year old and a one-year old manages in an ordinary eight-hour baby-sitting.
Culture plays an important role in child upbringing. The traditions handed down from generation to generation remain a part of the practices of parents and guardians. That is, if the culture remains static. With the recent technological upheavals many cultural values had become obsolete. Our dependence on elders, has diminished with the innovations and inventions of many youthful minds. We move forward; we look back only to see how much we have improved from past experiences.-
In the past, we took care of our elders as part of paying back what they had done for us. Now we put them in nursing homes where we demand that they be given the best of care commensurate to what we pay or what the elders pay from their pensions.
Many parents have been relieved of the task of helping their children with homework. The computer is now always there to aid students in doing their assignments although solicitous parents still check their offsprings to be sure that the work is done.
It is amazing how technology has conquered the minds of our young generation. The tremendous amount and variety of learning devices available is awesome and the turnover is so fast that it is hard to follow and determine which one is best to get for our children. It is also causing a large dent in the wallet.
It is something to wonder about how technological developments have affected third world and developing countries; how culture and traditions in rural areas have been influenced and how child upbringing in those parts of the world have been altered. Do children in rural areas in the Philippines still depend on their elders for guidance?
How about our own children here? To what extent do they listen to their parents, instead of to the media and their technological devices? Have we, the older generation accepted this new culture that seems to make the older generations obsolete? In what ways have we remained useful, respected and important to the younger generation?
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