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Comment by ph0rque | Hacker News Reader

As a Russian immigrant to the US, I went through something very similar, but in reverse. A few thoughts:

* I am very glad I came from Russia (well, USSR at that time) to the accepting, everyone-is-a-winner US and not the other way around. It would have been much harder for me the other way around, especially if I had to attend public school.

* I really appreciate the forging of one's sense of self that such an experience brings. I vividly remember going back and forth between viewing myself as an American and as a Russian during my teen years. I believe my identity eventually transcended either American or Russian; I view myself as an Earthian, a world citizen now, one who can become more Russian or more American depending on the circumstances.

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Have 3 different experiences:

1. We immigrated from Russia when I was 9- didn't speak a word of English (didn't know what "who are you?" meant on the first day of class). Spent the first year in an ESL class, within a year I was speaking English freely, all my classmates were also recent immigrants from former Soviet republics so there was very little culture shock (at least in school). But because the class focused on English and little else, I lost the great math skills I had when I came from the Russian system. Took me a few years to get completely comfortable with my new language but by the 9th grade I was one of the top students in all my classes (except math, that skill or rather the interest in the subject never recovered).

2. My cousin's son was born in the US. The parents wanted to make sure his first language was Russian- they only spoke to him in Russian, he went to a Russian day-care, watched only Russian cartoons, had only Russian friends. Then for kindergarden (around the age of 4 or 5) he got sent to a normal American school. The first month or so he experienced what the writer's kids experienced- complete cultural shock, he spent the evenings at home crying that he didn't want to go to school because he couldn't understand anything, but little by little he adjusted and is now comfortable in his new environment.

3. My wife and I met in Moscow last year, she moved to the US six months ago. She's in her early 20s, very smart (finished her university with straight As), had a good job in Moscow and is used to always being the best at whatever she tries. She's studying English full time, but is having trouble adjusting to an environment where she is not independent and has to rely on me not only financially but at least initially on simple things such as grocery shopping or explaining to the women at the nail salon how she wanted her nails done. She's picking up English quickly but the first few months she was afraid of sounding dumb and refused to speak English with anyone outside of a classroom environment. I won't even go into the cultural shock and how difficult the transition has been for her from a popular, successful woman to one with no job or friends in a new country (that's a topic for another post).

Yup, I and those around me experienced very similar things.

1. I was also 9 when we arrived here, but we ended up in a rural area that did not have ESL classes, and for the longest time, we were the only Russian-speaking students in our school (long enough that I didn't feel the urge to communicate with them once they arrived, on a regular basis). My math also fell to an above-average level, but I never really cared for it beyond thinking it was nifty.

2. My brother (19 years my junior) experienced something very similar to your nephew, but we took it in stride and he adjusted very quickly.

3. My wife also came from Russia only 5 years ago, she experienced the same feelings as your wife did.

4. We also are experiencing a fourth experience: our oldest speaks Russian fluently for her age. In order for her not to experience shock when she went to kindergarten, we started speaking English with her for about half the day about six months before she started kindergarten (and really, we intentionally exposed her to English all along, but focused on Russian at first). Now that she's in kindergarten, she understands almost everything, and can communicate well enough that she doesn't need to attend ESL, although she still doesn't know all the words in English that she does in Russian.

By the way, where are you located?

I'm in San Francisco.

I had a similar experience (I was 9). The difference is that in the U.S. public system you get placed in "ESL" (English as a Second Language) program which dumbs down the entire curriculum, especially English, and tries to hand hold all the students through it.

Plus American education is in general less rigorous than the equivalent-year Russian education, and seeing as how kids in Russia learn some English in school, it's a much easier transition from Russia to U.S. than vice versa.

The struggle then is purely a social one, kids in the U.S. don't have a belief of camaraderie, whereas in Russia a classmate would rarely get someone else in trouble casually, this happened routinely in U.S. schools. Plus of course, insert all the usual teasing about not understanding or knowing the language, being a communist/capitalist, etc.

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