1 The other day my daughter and I had an argument. While we were watching a magazine, we saw a picture of a red rose. Wanting her to learn the word, I pointed at the picture and said “A., this is hoa hồng.” But she immediately talked back “No, it’s hoa đỏ, Daddy.” To be honest, I didn’t realize what she meant at once, kept saying “It’s hoa hồng.” She shook her head and repeated stubbornly “No, Daddy, it’s hoa đỏ.” Only at that time did I suddenly figure out what she meant and burst out laughing. Yes, my little girl was correct. The flower was red in color really, not pink. There in the picture was a red rose.
Up to this point, Vietnamese readers already get the point I believe. But I bet those who don’t speak Vietnamese are still confused. It’s because of the language. The Vietnamese word for a rose is “hoa hồng”, literally meaning “pink flower” in English. So when I saw the picture, I took it as a rose (hoa hồng,) not mentioning a rose in red. But my daughter saw it was a hoa đỏ (a red flower,) but not pink.
2 Sometimes the adult doesn’t see what a child sees. The above story reminds me of the amazing book that my friend Gloria brought for my daughter awhile ago entitled “Do You See What I See?” The co-author of the book dedicated it to his son who had passed away while still very young. It was his power of observation that inspired his father. The book consists of a series of photographs of nature. Each picture is then covered with a sheet of paper with a hole in it and young readers must guess what the picture is through that opening. Then they can compare with what the photo really is. My daughter and I did have a good time together figuring out what the pictures were. I remember A. was so clever to say it was marble table top while it was in fact the tree bark. In case she didn’t know what it really was, she thought of the shape of the hole and compared it with objects that she had seen before. In the process, I saw the power of imagination in a child. It also justfies that the adult and the child take things very differently. In order to understand a child, one needs to look at things through his eyes.
3 My faithful readers might still remember the essays that Ruby wrote and noticed the way he corrected himself when revising his essay. I now observed the same thing in my daughter recently. Seeing lunch being served and food carried up to the dining room from the kitchen at the back A. called out to her grandpa who was then in his room “Mời ông nội LÊN ăn cơm.” To be exact, the statement should have been “Mời ông nội ra ăn cơm.” But I didn’t correct her right away and kept observing her in silence. And to my joy, I heard her correct herself the second time she called out again “Mời ông nội RA ăn cơm.” How amazing! This again confirms the power of self correction, not only in a child but in human beings in general. That also confirms what I have been doing in my writing classes when I often give clues for my students to correct themselves instead of correcting them always.
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