Active Parenting in Chinese
Helps Immigrant Families

by Diana King

Linda Bilikas (left, top) gathers with the Chinese parents who attended the first Active Parenting Today class in Chinese in Quincy, Massachusetts.

“Regardless of the language they speak, all parents want to raise responsible, caring and cooperative children,” says Linda Billikas, as she sorts through pictures of a recent parenting education class for Chinese parents. “The Chinese immigrants in our community have many of the same parenting challenges and questions as our English-speaking parents. However, at the same time they are struggling to learn a new language and culture while trying to maintain some of their native culture.”

Today the town of Quincy, located about 10 miles south of Boston, has a population of 88,000, including 17,000 Asian residents. The school system has offered Active Parenting classes in English for nine years but decided that a class in the Chinese dialects of Cantonese and Mandarin would serve a new group of families. Billikas, a parent educator and trainer who has received the Quincy Community Hero’s Award for her parenting education work, organized the class sponsored by Quincy Public Schools, The Mayor’s Commission on the Family, Impact Quincy and The Committee for Immigrants and Refugees. The Quincy Medical Center offered free meeting space.

To bridge the language gap Billikas recruited Active Parenting leaders Lana Liu, who is fluent in Mandarin, and Nellie Chan, who is fluent in Cantonese, to co-lead the class with her. “Lana and Nellie were crucial in helping the parents discuss cultural differences and appropriate parenting skills,” she says. The written language is the same for each dialect, so only one set of translated handouts was needed.

Currently the second session is underway and Billikas hopes to start another group in the spring. “For our Asian parents, good parenting is the most important job of their lives. They came to this country for their children, to give them a better future.”