The Power of Reading – How a Reading Session With My (Trilingual) Son Gave Us A Moment of Shared Emotional Connection and Love
- Ka Yee Meck
- 4 days ago
- 3 min read
In this blog post – which is based on a YouTube community post I wrote yesterday – I just want to share a true story of how reading with my son in Chinese created an extremely special moment of love, bonding and emotional connection betwen us.
Here's the original post, reproduced below.
Today’s reading session turned out to be one of the most meaningful moments I’ve had with my son since he was born…
Which is why I felt compelled to write this post.
Today, we had our usual morning Chinese reading and writing session before school. We were reading the final two pages of a book called 知了的一生 (The Life of a Cicada) – a book I’ve previously read with my daughter before, so I already knew that the ending was very poignant and would be deeply emotional for me.
The final page talks about the cicada’s final day on Earth from his perspective, as he reflects on his experience of life above ground – all the beauty of the world: the serene moonlight he so adores, and the regret he feels at not having had the chance to see the leaves turn red in autumn. It tells the story of how he moved from the small, dark home he had as a nymph to this glorious world above ground. In the last paragraph, the story ends with how, at the light of dawn, his body – light and dry as a dried leaf – falls to the ground.
As we finished reading this page, I could feel strong emotions welling up in both our hearts. I let the moment simply be… Resting my arm over his shoulder, we shared this moment of deep connection, each of us lost in our own internal emotional landscape, but nonetheless intensely connected by this shared experience of a fictional story of a cicada that also serves as a metaphor for life – the journey through life of every sentient being on this Earth.
But this was not all!
As we re-read the pages together to consolidate his vocabulary, we came across a sentence that read: 他的一生没有白过. He asked me, “What does 白过 mean?”
(This conversation took place in Chinese, but for the purpose of this post I’ll narrate everything in English.)
I clumsily explained to him that… well, imagine if you spend all day just eating, drinking, and scrolling on your phone, and then one day you get hit by a car and die – you might have 白过了一生 (loosely translated: wasted your life / lived your life in vain). But imagine if you work hard every day, look after your children, and then one day you get hit by a car and die… then, well, you haven’t lived your life in vain, because you’ve given life to your children and looked after them.
At this, my son – aged 9, a “cool-dude”-type pre-teen who doesn’t typically display very strong emotions, let alone talk about them – started tearing up.
I started tearing up.
His tears wouldn't stop – I could tell he was trying hard to hold them back, but he was so overcome with emotions that the tears just kept flowing down his cheeks as he reached for some tissues...
I hugged him close and told him it’s okay, that whatever he’s feeling, it’s okay – it’s okay if you’re feeling sad, or moved, or something else.
We held each other and simply sat with our feelings, enveloped by the profound emotional connection that held us together…
Somehow, a reading session turned into a conversation about life and death, and the purpose of our existence.
This was NOT expected.
We didn’t get to do any writing in the end, but what we gained was something far, far more precious. Something indelible in my memory. How often, in our busy lives, do we get to connect with our children in this way? How often do we get to confront our deepest human emotions?
Sometimes, it takes a beautiful story and some quiet time with a loved one to unlock this rich inner world.
Sorry, this is not my usual “5 tips for raising a bilingual kid”-type post, but I felt I had to share this personal story with you to illustrate the power of reading with your child.
It’s one of the most precious gifts we can give – not just to our children, but to ourselves as well.
Lots of love,
Ka Yee xxx
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