Eric’s child is two years old.
Eric’s parents expected him to do well in school and get his high school
diploma. His mother was a high school graduate and his father was a pipe fitter
with a technical degree. His parents modeled writing by doing bills, taxes and
writing letters. He remembered his mother read “all the time”
and
his father read the newspaper every day. Eric recalled, “We only had three
channels on TV. My parents watched the news every night.”
Eric and his
mother would sing and rhyme together. Both parents helped him with homework
if he needed help. Eric’s mother read to him three nights a week. Eric
remembered, “We occasionally went on cultural outings. Roughly twice a
year.”
Eric used the school library because the town he grew up in “didn’t
have a public library then.”
Eric is a pipe fitter. He has a high school diploma and a journeyman ticket
from NAIT. He has completed a lot of on the job training including an introductory
management course for foreman training. He usually watches documentaries and
will watch television for half an hour a day. He uses the internet for “less
than half an hour a day; more like one hour a week”
(mostly for research).
Eric expects his son to graduate from high school. Eric’s son is encouraged to read and his parents read to him every night. Eric’s wife models writing by doing the taxes, bills and letters. Eric reads the newspaper daily and will occasionally read magazines. Eric’s son sees him on the internet but does not see him watching television. They occasionally watch cartoons together. Eric’s wife sings around the house.
Eric’s son is “starting to read letters. I will purposely mess
up words in the book and he’ll correct me. It’s more pictorial though.”
They have a lot of books at home. Eric’s son will watch one hour of television
daily, mostly watching preschool programming. Eric and his son will “go
together on the internet, maybe one hour a week and will look at websites for
Sesame Street and Dora.”
They have gone to the zoo “a few times”
and the TELUS World of Science once.