Yanwen’s blog

It was a busy Sunday. We met up with a friend for lunch in Flushing. From there, we went to my son's place and had a small gathering with my sister's son.

Over lunch, my friend told me about her experience as a caregiver in China. She was there for a few months, taking care of her 87-year-old mother who had a stroke last year. As a result, her mother faces many challenges, from taking care of herself to speaking and writing. It was easy for her to feel despaired and lose the courage to keep living.

My friend hired a helper to care for her mother during the rehab period. Meanwhile, she was there not only assisting her recovery but, more importantly, being her cheerleader, providing her positive emotional and mental support.

Her mother is lucky to have a daughter who is there for her, offering emotional support and encouragement! Being her cheerleader is another new level of care, which is crucial to her healing process.

But my friend wasn't prepared for the enormous tolls of being a caregiver and cheerleader. Supporting an elderly parent recovering from a stroke involves huge physical, emotional, and mental effort. She felt overwhelmed and emotionally drained. She herself became depressed under the weight of caregiving.

Then she turned to writing, trying to get relief for herself. She put her thoughts, feelings, and daily experiences into words. Writing served as a powerful outlet for processing these experiences, allowing her to gain a new layer of mental clarity and inject new meanings into what she experiences. She also got the sense of relief she sought.

What I learned today is that writing is therapeutic. It is important for us to find coping mechanisms to maintain our mental health and well-being while dealing with demanding caregiving duties. 

Ending our day with a shared meal and heartfelt stories like this one reminds me of the strength found in friends and relatives, and the healing power of expressing oneself through writing.

I received several comments on my post yesterday about teaching English to a 6-year-old. Most of what I learned actually reinforces my previous belief that getting parents heavily involved is crucial.

My observations from some of my friends' children strongly support this. Those children graduated from a local Chinese school after dedicating one whole Sunday afternoon to the school for many years, but still cannot carry on a daily conversation in Chinese. In the end, their Chinese-speaking parents struggle to communicate with them in English.

On the other hand, my children did not go to Chinese school, yet they can speak like natives, not an easy trick for ABCs, mainly because we carried out daily conversations at home in Chinese.

By the way, if you do a survey on parental involvement in children's education, I bet the neighborhood that registers the lowest involvement see the highest high school dropout rate.

When consulting professionals here on this topic, the emphasis is always on teaching techniques. I’m sure those teaching in Chinese schools are well-versed in these methods, but without adequate and sincere parental involvement, the expected outcomes are often not achieved.

Parental involvement includes the followings:

• Keeping children motivated: Encouraging children consistently to maintain their interest in learning.
• Supervising homework: Making sure that the kids complete their assignments, especially if they are not yet well-disciplined.
• Providing positive feedback: Reinforcing children's efforts and achievements. Key to boost their confidence.
• Also very important is: parents need to learn how to have constructive conversations with their children. 
• Lead by example. Children are unlikely to focus on their studies if they see their parents constantly distracted by their cell phones.

Finally, while teaching techniques and methods are helpful, they are far from enough on their own. The active and genuine involvement of parents in their child's education is the only key that makes everything work. Ultimately, the effective teamwork between teachers and parents, school and family, is what makes children thrive in their learning journey.

I was asked by a young relative of mine in China to teach her 6-year-old English, online once a week. This makes me think of many ABCs (America-born Chinese) here in America. 

The ABCs are sent by their parents to a Chinese school to learn Chinese, also once a week. Unfortunately many graduating from Chinese schools can't even speak Chinese like native Chinese.

I want to ensure my relative's daughter doesn't face the same challenges. Things are made more difficult with online teaching. I have to crack my brain to see the real learning taking place.

In the past I have worked with high school kids and in recent years with adult students, having zero experience with a 6-year-old.

I need all the help that I can get from the girl's parents, making sure the girl reviews what she learns from me.

I am going to use the same method as with older students, setting achievable goals first. Of course, I will need to explain to her what a goal is. I told her parents to prepare some visual aid like a goal board to track her goal, like adding a star for the day she does her homework.

The young child needs constant positive feedback to stay motivated and fully engaged, so by the end of the week the parents should reward her with something for her progress toward the goal.

Since they are the first time parent, there's so much to share with them, because parental involvement in the child's learning journey is crucial. I need to teach the parents how to have engaging dialogues with the girl to encourage self reflection, like asking her "How did you do?" "What did you do well?" "If not well, what can you do differently next week?"

While challenging as it seems, I am trying to make her learning journey both enjoyable and effective, using the same tools as with adult students —setting achievable goals, providing constant positive feedback, and fostering meaningful dialogue between the child and her parents, confident that this supportive learning environment is key to growth and development for all of us, young and old alike.

Here’s a Chinese saying: 十年树木，百年树人: it takes ten years to grow a tree, but a hundred years to educate a person. Be patient.

"Tell city leaders: No cuts to libraries. Next Tuesday, May 21, library leaders will testify at City Hall regarding the proposed $58.3 million budget cuts to NYC's public libraries." from New York Public library.

"You may already be aware that BPL (Brooklyn Public Library) was forced to reduce our service hours from seven to six days a week, as well as drastically trim our new book purchases due to a painful midyear city budget cut. Libraries across the city are currently facing millions more in potential cuts."

I was going to write about my plan to teach online English and something else to a group of Chinese kids, but I changed my mind when I saw these emails.

American society provides an excellent public library system. Wherever we moved in America, we always got in touch with the local library. It is like a small community service, which always reminds me of the one provided by churches in the Middle Ages.

While libraries today are built and maintained by the government to provide knowledge, churches are by their communities of believers to offer spiritual comfort and other communal support. Both contribute to the fabric of society. But churches play a much weaker role in contemporary society.

Modern societies like the U.S. prioritize individualism over collective well-being, with everyone taking care of himself, resulting in a full spectrum of social crisis, such as loneliness, trust issue, drug addictions, meaninglessness, depression and tribalism.

For a wholesome modern society, I see churches being as essential as libraries, especially in the advanced capitalist society. Both play crucial roles in fostering community and addressing societal challenges.

A healthy and compassionate society needs both knowledge and collective well-being, which no government and no individuals can solely provide. It takes a whole village in a traditional sense.

A few days ago we saw the launching of GPT-4o, which starts the chat-box of the whole world. I heard that it is a huge step moving closer to be human-like now. It also tries to sound friend-like.

Yesterday I heard this question: can AI replace the complex dynamics of human psychology and counseling?

I remember a case of social worker at work. There was this guy who was super religious. He refused to take medicines because medicines are man-made, not created by God. The counselor told him, you are wrong. It is God who told Man to create this medicine for his children.

"How do you know it is God who told Man to create it?" "Remember God has plan for everything? This is part of his plan. It is not human plan. He orders the creation of medicine." In the end, the guy agreed to take the medicine.

While AI can excel on this type of job using logic and language, it falls short in understanding the depths of human emotion and experience. We humans are fully packed with complex emotions and the ever-flowing dark undercurrent of past experiences, which defy any simple categorization or quantification.

For example, a man was often neglected during his childhood. The experience impacts his adult life so that he becomes oversensitive when he feels ignored or neglected. Even he himself doesn't understand why. How would an AI find out what's wrong with the guy in the first place?

The complexity and nuances of human emotions, of how one feels is far beyond the reach of logic and language. Simply put it, AI can think like us but can't feel like us. It is created with language and logic but not with human understanding, empathy and intuition.

As we contemplate the role of AI in our lives, we might also consider its broader societal implications. How do we interact with AI systems, and how do they shape our perceptions of ourselves and the world around us? Does AI judge me as other humans do? These are questions that extend beyond the realm of technology, offering fertile ground for exploration by psychologists, sociologists, and ethicists alike.

In the end, while AI may be of some help in certain aspects of psychological counseling, it is our shared humanity—our capacity for empathy, feeling, understanding, belonging and connection—that remains at the heart of healing, growth and counseling.