Tag Archives: parenting

Make sure you have good parenting

Nationality: Chinese
Age: 34
Occupation: Freelance writer
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Performance Date: 04/12/12
Primary Language: English
Language: American Sign Language

The following story was not told directly to my informant, but rather to her older brother. When she was eight years old, she was riding in the back seat of the car and overheard her dad telling her thirteen year old brother this story. Though it was not intended for her it stuck in her mind because of how bizarre it was.

“Um, apparently this guy, his mother never disciplined him so he grew up to be quite the… deviant person. Ended up getting arrested, going to jail, and having to be executed because of all the poor choices he made in life, and uh… then, before he was executed, when they asked what he would like as his last whatever… ya know, do you have any final requests. Anything you want before you bet executed tomorrow. And he said he wanted his mothers breast milk… of all the weird things. He wanted to have milk from his mother’s breast. So they’re like “ok…”, so they had his mom come in and rather than suckling her nipples and taking the milk out, he mauled her breasts until they came off and she bled to death. He murdered his mother and when he asked him why he did it he said because she never disciplined me and I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for her.”

The purpose of the story was to emphasize to her brother the necessity of good parenting. As the story says, this boy would not have ended up on death row if his mother had properly disciplined him. Thus, any forms of discipline that may seem strict or unfair can be justified through the use of this tale.

Sana Sana Culito de Rana

Nationality: Latino
Age: 19
Occupation: student, officer worker in a shitty office
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/14/2012
Primary Language: English
Language: some Spanish
Sana sana, culito de rana
Si no sanas hoy,
Sanarás mañana

Translation:

Heal heal, little ass of frog
If it doesn’t heal today
It will heal tomorrow
 

This is a rhyme that parents, usually moms, will say to their kids when they get a little injury. My informant said that it’s like a mom kissing a boo-boo and that you can hear a lot of Latin mothers say this to their kids; he learned it from his. Sometimes there will be variations on it such as:

“sana, sana, culito de rana,
si no se te alivia ahora,
se te aliviará mañana”

Translation:
it heals, heals, little ass of frog,
if it is not alleviated to you now,
is alleviated to you tomorrow

Sometimes parents will change “ass” to “tail” or “bottom” for little boo-boos and keep it as “ass” for boo-boos that hurt a lot.

Story

Nationality: Japanese-American
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Hermosa Beach, CA
Performance Date: April 17, 2007
Primary Language: English

Notes:

The subject’s grandfather and immediate family were out to dinner when the subject and his grandfather got into a disagreement. The subject’s grandfather yells at him. After the dinner the subject was still upset about the incident as he had never been yelled at before. His father explained why he never yells at him through an old saying

About the clouds and the sun…

“One day the Clouds and the Sun saw a man with a coat down on earth. The Cloud and Sun entered into a competition to see who would be able to make the man take off his coat first. The Cloud tried first by creating horrible howling winds which in turn only made the man tighten his coat. The Sun tried next by shinning brightly. The man in the coat, figuring it was a nice day and that he should enjoy it, took it off. “

The moral of the story, for the subject, was that you can achieve the same effect, if not better, if you are pleasant.  In an effect, the subject’s father never yelled at the subject because he felt that he could achieve the same end by not raising his voice.

I think that the subject’s father gave the subject that illustration to capture the essence of his parenting style. We can only assume that the father used the illustration to also indicate that his father, the subject’s grandfather, had another style of parenting probably symbolized by the sun in the story.