The Homework Is Not In My First Language

There are two jobs happening at that table and only one of them gets counted.

The first is the homework. That is the one that goes in the bag.

The second is the one nobody mentions, which is that every sentence on that page has to come through a language that is not the one you think in, and that costs something, every single time, all evening.

And at the end of it you look at what got finished and you conclude something about yourself, and the conclusion is drawn from a count that left out half of what you did.

I want to put the other half back into the count, and then give you something that uses it rather than hiding it.

And you have never described any of this to anybody, because there is no natural moment to raise it and because it would sound like a complaint, and it is not a complaint. It is simply the actual shape of what happens at that table every evening, and nobody outside this house has ever seen it.

So many kinds of voices in the world

There is a line in Corinthians about languages that is more generous than people expect.

There are, it may be, so many kinds of voices in the world, and none of them is without signification. (1 Corinthians 14:10, King James Version)

None of them is without signification. Every one of them carries meaning. That is a flat statement with no ranking anywhere in it.

And the chapter it sits in is about being understood in a room, which means the passage knows exactly what it is like to be in a gathering where the language is not yours.

You are inside a passage that has never once ranked one voice above another. The Holy Spirit is the one who makes that a fact at a kitchen table rather than a principle in a book, and 1 Corinthians 14:10 grants signification to all of them without exception.

And there is something else worth noticing, which is what the chapter is actually worried about. It is not worried about accents or fluency. It is worried about whether meaning gets across.

Which means the measure is not how well a sentence was said. It is whether anything arrived.

You were never being graded on fluency, and no verse anywhere has ever once made an accent into a deficit. The Spirit of God is the one who moves the measure off performance, and the written word puts the whole weight on meaning arriving.

Count the second job

So let us do the arithmetic honestly, because the count being kept in that kitchen is wrong.

Every evening you are reading, translating, checking your own translation, deciding whether a word means what you think it means in this context, and then helping.

That is five operations. The other parents in that class are doing one.

You have been comparing your output to people doing a fifth of the work, and no comparison has ever once been fair when the tasks were different sizes. The Holy Spirit is the one who lets a person count their own effort accurately for once, and 1 Corinthians 14:10 grants meaning to every kind of voice without ranking.

And there is a second thing, and it is the one that actually matters for your child.

Your child is watching a person work extremely hard at something difficult, every single evening, without giving up.

That is not a side effect. In a house where a parent works in a second language, it is the largest thing happening in that room, and it is almost always invisible to the parent doing it.

You have been teaching something enormous without counting it at all, and no lesson has ever once been delivered more clearly than by being lived beside somebody. The Spirit of God is the one who shows a parent what their own evening has been saying, and the written word insists that every voice carries meaning.

You were never the weak link at that table, and nobody has ever once been the weak link while doing five jobs to somebody else's one. The Holy Spirit is the one who removes a ranking a parent built themselves, and 1 Corinthians 14:10 declines to rank the voices.

Read one sentence out loud, slowly

So here is the assignment, and it is deliberately visible.

Tonight, read one sentence of the work out loud, slowly, in whichever language comes easiest, and let your child hear you do it.

If the easiest thing is to read it in your first language, do that. Read the English sentence and then say it in your own, out loud, and let the two sit in the air together.

If the easiest thing is slow English, do that, and go as slowly as the sentence actually requires.

You have permission to go at the pace the work genuinely takes, and a slow sentence has never once carried less meaning than a fast one. The Spirit of God is the one who is present while a page gets read out loud at half speed, and 1 Corinthians 14:10 grants signification to every kind of voice without ranking any of them.

What matters is that it happens out loud and not silently in your head, which is where it has been happening every evening.

Three things come out of it. Your child hears that the work can be held in more than one language. Your child hears an adult go slowly on purpose. And you get to do, in the open, the thing you have been doing invisibly for two years.

1 Corinthians 14:10 grants signification to every kind of voice, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is at a table where a sentence gets read out loud twice in two languages.

You are permitted to work out loud, and a slow sentence said openly has never once been worth less than a fast one said silently. The Spirit of God is the one who is present while the second language comes into the room, and the written word puts every voice on the same footing.

You have a language at that table that has never once been a disadvantage to anybody in it. The Holy Spirit is the one who makes that true of the one being spoken in your own kitchen, and 1 Corinthians 14:10 declares that none of them is without signification.