Let’s Give Our Kids that Chance!

Growing up with an Asian family background, I was very fond of the legend of Mencius’ mother, who moved three times to find a good place to raise her child. Her strategy clearly was successful, because Mencius went on to become a great philosopher. The story underlines the importance of the environment in which a child develops. President Obama, recognizing the essential role of children’s environments in their learning and growth, has proposed a significant investment in early learning to ensure children have positive experiences in their first years of life, both in and out of the home.

I know how critical the early years are for learning from my own experiences learning different languages. I was born to a mixed nationality family (Vietnamese and Chinese) and later studied abroad in New Zealand and now in America. According to my grandmother, at the age of three, I spoke Chinese so well that the neighbors thought that I was born and raised in China. I continued to speak Chinese at home while speaking Vietnamese at school without any struggle. Having learned both languages early in life, I did not have any difficulty in shifting back and forth between the two. In contrast, learning English in secondary school was not a piece of cake for me.

Even now, while I am sitting here and writing this blog, I am still struggling. I am constantly nervous about making a grammar mistake. I have to remind myself all the time about a word’s part of speech when I make conversation. I never experienced these worries when I spoke Chinese at home and Vietnamese at school. For my first semester in college, I decided to register for English 101 as one of my four courses. I often struggle to write essays in English in college. It is much more challenging gaining a feel for a new language at this stage, compared to my first ten years of childhood.

Given the importance of learning in the early years—as shown by Mencius’ experiences and my own—we need to invest to make sure that all children have high-quality early learning opportunities. We can do this together. The National Women’s Law Center is part of the Strong Start for Children Campaign to support the President’s plan to expand access to high-quality early care and education for infants, toddlers, and preschooler, and make it a reality for children and families. Let’s give our kids that chance!