应朋友之约，准备聊一下中美教育，哪知本周奇忙又加惰性，不想动笔回信，无奈有言在先，不好失信于人，手头正好有一篇数年前在我的学生中讲英文写作时发表过的日记，讲的是幼儿教育，先交个差，好歹也是教育，正好作引子。

    When I was studying in England, I chose to stay with an English family for the cultural experience. My hostess had a young daughter named Lily, and worked two part-time jobs, as a cleaner and as a chef. Since my host family had a young child, I hoped to observe and discuss how they would bring up their daughter, and then attempt to figure out the cultural differences between English and Chinese child-rearing practices.

    And, in the course of my stay, I discovered a lot of things that were different. Most importantly, my host family raised their daughter to be an individual – a distinct advantage in the English culture – whereas we Chinese tend to stress a happy childhood with good memories and a strong harmonious relationship with the family.

    Every day, after bathing Lily, her parents put her to bed while she was still wide awake, and then both parents went downstairs to watch TV. For Chinese parents, this practice would be unheard of. However, after about half an hour of talking to herself, Lily fell asleep without any of the bedtime routines that we Chinese might use, such as, singing or story-telling. I wish that my little daughter, affectionately named “Hippo” and one year older than Lily, were even half as good about going to bed. Instead, our little Hippo kicks up a real fuss at bedtime.

    After seeing Lily’s bedtime behavior, I couldn’t wait to call home and tell my little troublemaker about my English child-rearing discoveries and maybe make Hippo feel a little ashamed of herself. When I phoned, to my great disappointment, Hippo was totally uninterested in my findings. While at first she listened with patience, when I started to talk about Lily sleeping separately from her parents, Hippo started to become annoyed and eventually lost her temper, shouting into the phone with such a loud voice that I could imagine a real hippopotamus on the other end of the line. My attempt to influence Hippo with stories of Lily’s behavior fell on deaf ears and thus my parental lesson ended in failure.