106 Grief and Loss Across the Lifespan
from parents in the process of entering a new country. Sometimes one parent
is allowed to come but not the other; sometimes a child enters with a parent
he or she has hardly known growing up. Thus an immigrant child can lose not
only a secure sense of home, but also the persons who shared that home with
the child. No matter what the circumstances, immigration is almost always an
inordinately expensive process, so the chance that a child will be able to return
to his or her home country to see relatives left behind is an unrealistic prospect.
Huong immigrated to the United States when she was 8 years old; Huong did
not see her father again until she was 17.
Loss of one’s first language is often a predictable outcome of immigrat-
ing to a new country as a young child. Many in the “receiving countries”—in
this case, the United States—see this as a positive result. Teachers are often
heard to say “the more quickly they acquire English, the better off they will
be.” While achieving proficiency in English is a necessary and almost always
desirable long-term goal, in the short term it can have divisive effects on fam-
ily relationships and structure.
Jim Cummins, a well-known expert in the field of second language acqui-
sition, has termed the social language that children often acquire relatively
quickly basic interpersonal communication skills (BICS). Often termed “play-
ground language,” school-age children have a variety of contexts in which this
social register of language is used in meaningful contexts. On the other hand,
cognitive academic language proficiency (CALP), the language of instruction
and learning, is acquired almost exclusively in formal school settings and
rarely used with peers or in social situations.
BICS often takes 2 to 3 years to acquire (sometimes less depending on
a variety of personal and contextual variables) but CALP often takes at least
5 years before a student has gained proficiency. The salient point is that both
varieties of language often take parents far longer to acquire. Both immigration
policies and procedures place heavy emphasis on “self-sufficiency”—that is,
securing employment such that new members of American society are not a
“drain” on the host economy. Thus, in many immigrant families, working long
hours 7 days a week leaves little time or energy for adults to work on English
language study.
Children quickly become translators (reading written documents) and
interpreters (the use of oral communication) for their parents and family
members. While this is often a critically useful skill for families, children
are often placed in uncomfortable situations. Sometimes the subject mat-
ter is far more mature than what a child is typically exposed to—medical
matters, intricate financial concerns, or matters that are very personal in
an adult orientation. The result may be that children are under pressure to
enable adult solutions and results while still under the age of any kind of
consent.
As Huong describes so eloquently, she also lost her childhood when she
and her mother immigrated. This is one of the most poignant and disruptive
losses that an immigrant child can experience, and one that is little understood
by many.
In essence, Huong became her mother’s personal business manager—
talking to utility companies, translating bills, and helping to navigate school