Confessions of a First/Second Grader

This morning in one of the elementary schools I volunteer in as an English teacher, a little girl in the combined first and second grade class approached me before class. "Teacher, I have a secret to tell you. But you can't tell anyone else," she said in Chinese. She then drew me over to a corner of the room in which there were no other students, had me stoop over, and happily whispered in my ear that her mother had come to visit her earlier that morning at the school.

"But you can't tell my father I told you," she added. "Why not?" I asked not fully-clued in (and not yet fully awake having not yet finished my first cup of coffee). "Because he will scold me."

In Taiwanese society, after divorces kids are awarded to the fathers. Perhaps they don't like the mothers coming around to visit the kids. I was reminded later than more than half of the students in this particular school come from single-parent homes or homes in which the kids are passed on to grandparents while the parents worked in the city.