| Young Children and Older Adults Do Better Together 

| Seoyeon Sohn

| The year I turned six, with both of my parents working and my mother being pregnant, we started living together with my grandparents, my uncle, and my two aunts, all in the same apartment of three bedrooms and two bathrooms. They took turns to take care of me. No systemic child care coordination was made (It was 1994, hence no smartphones). Considering that my uncle and my aunts were all in their early- to mid-20s, drinking and hanging out with their friends until 2 a.m. at a tavern all the time, I’m just thankful I did not get lost. 

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With 76.6% of the Korean households being nuclear families in 1990, living with five extended family members was not common indeed. Let’s go back a little bit. Korea had only started becoming a nuclear family society in the late 1960s. Before then, extended family structures were prevalent. My mother’s side of the family was not an exception. In a small fishing town with a high poverty rate (They burned coal briquettes for heat for 5℉ winter days), with most residents displaced from North Korea during the Korean war, my grandparents and their seven children lived in a traditional Korean house that was connected to the house of my grandfather’s brother’s family of six. The intergenerational trauma from the war lived with us, too. My grandmother cried every single day, missing her family in the North, not knowing whether they are alive or not. 

If there is intergenerational trauma, there is also intergenerational learning. 

In Korea, we take education very seriously. Sometimes too seriously. Even though my grandparents received little formal education due to Japan’s colonization and the war, the value of education never faded. Particularly, uneducated for being a female, my grandmother was able to read and write very slowly. Still, she would read books to me every day after I came home from school. She taught me to throw a half shot of Soju (a $1 Korean liquor) outside to wish good luck to ancestors. Most of all, she taught me how to take care of the community, not with fancy program evaluation and research impact but with heart and spirit. You see, Korea was impoverished by colonization and war. It took us over 70 years to go from rubble to K-Pop Demon Hunters. Through it all, community care was at the core of our survival and eventual prosperity. And my grandmother, knowing nothing of “community impact,” had my mom and aunts run errands to share food with starving neighbors without other people noticing. 

Learning happened organically. All my schoolwork became not just my busy mom’s responsibility but every adult’s in the house, not with intense efforts but with genuine curiosity and collective scaffolding. One day, I had to make a kite for a school project. I learned the basics of making it at school, but that was not enough. My grandfather and my uncle were on it. My grandfather, who had never used a bottle of Elmer’s, brought a bowl of cooked rice to “glue” the sails to the dowel along with a string. My uncle adjusted the structures. He was a fashion buyer (fun fact: I was also a fashion buyer before starting this research journey, influenced by him!), so his “aerodynamics” was more about making the lines pretty. But at the end of the day, no one really cares about how high the kite flies. We all had fun together figuring things out. And I still teach my child that rice can substitute glue. 

Early adversities felt less harsh with family. Everything in my family was chaotic, from insane mental health episodes to police investigation. Still, everyone fought for each other in the name of family. Not romanticizing the adversities here, but I’m pretty sure that the scary events did not impact me more gravely than it probably should have, because I had six adults, under the same roof, who would protect me until the end of the world. To this day, whenever something happens, I pick up the phone and call my aunt or my uncle. I know they’re always there for me as I am there for them. I am eternally grateful. 

“Social-emotional development” occurred by tagging along my aunts and uncle to their work. Wherever I go, people gave me jobs from running errands to performing as an extra. My aunt was an assistant director of an original Korean opera that covered the topic of democracy, reunification of Korea, human rights, and workers’ unions. They hung out a lot. My oh my, do opera actors and dancers know how to party. The more drunk they got, the harder they sang, danced, and laughed, in my aunt’s small office. I was always smothered with kisses and hugs. I can still smell the amalgamation of sweat, Soju breath, and cheap Korean food at hazy 2 a.m. That smell leads my life as a children’s rights advocate, an organizer, and a fighter for democracy and liberation. 

Why these values matter for all of us, at every age

I believe an act of care is a practice, though care itself may be innate. My grandmother left the Earth last year at the age of 101. People say that she lived long, because she always stayed a child as she took care of her grandchildren over the course of 20 years. My aunt and my uncle, now in their 60s, pour the same love and passion for education they received into their children. They often tell me, “Your mom and grandparents dedicated everything for us and you to learn. Guess we gotta do the same.” They also never stop learning. My aunt, at the age of 39, decided to learn opera more deeply and studied abroad at Indiana University. She still hosts opera performances in her rural hometown to share the beauty of opera with people with fewer opportunities. My uncle, at the age of 61, takes piano lessons, has become a terrarium expert, and keeps starting new businesses (even after the 10th unsuccessful try!). I believe we’ve all learned from each other to never stop learning and to support our children’s learning. All great pedagogies started from care. And the light of learning will never extinguish as long as we care.

Seoyeon Sohn is a blogger of parenting blog, Rebel Rebel, and studies playful learning in early childhood as a doctoral student at the University of Delaware. Seoyeon is committed to creating ethical and equitable learning environments that honor children’s rights in diverse communities.