Tara has an 11 year old and a 15 year old.
Tara’s parents were from Cambodia. They were high school graduates and
expected her to get a university degree. Her family came to Canada in 1983.
Her parents passed away when she was 15 and she grew up with her siblings. She
said, “I didn’t learn a lot from my parents; we raised ourselves.”
Tara did not remember seeing her parents writing although her mother read the
bible and her father read the newspaper daily. She recalled her parents watching
the news on television just about every night. She did not remember them singing
or rhyming with her. Tara said her “dad helped with homework but only
if I had a problem and if my older brother couldn’t help.”
She did
not recall her parents reading to her. She did recreational activities and cultural
festivities as a child but there was no public library where she grew up.
Tara is a line fitter. She graduated from high school in Cambodia and has
English as a Second Language in Canada. She did not do any on the job training.
She said, “They just put me to work and I figured it out.”
She has
not done any professional development or courses. She watches about one and
a half hours of television a day, primarily watching drama. She plays recreational
games on the internet for approximately half an hour a week.
Tara expects her daughters to graduate from university. Tara does not model writing although she does read novels and cookbooks. The family watches television together. They do not sing or rhyme.
Reading is important to the family and they have a lot of books at home. Her
daughters “have public library cards. We go every weekend. There’s
usually something on hold for my older daughter.”
Tara helps her “younger
daughter with homework when she needs it and I check after she’s done.”
She read to them every day when they were younger but stopped when they learned
to read by themselves.
Her daughters bring books home from the school library every week. Her daughters
watch about four hours of television a day, mostly watching youth cartoons.
They watch more television on the weekends. They chat on the internet for approximately
one hour a day. Tara used to go to the museum with her daughters once a month
but “we stopped when the kids got older; they found it boring.”