Parent Involvement

There are various reasons why Hmong parents are not as involved in their child’s education. A lot of it has to do with finances. According to Ngo and Lee (2007) based on the 2000 census, Hmong families averaged the lowest income of $6,613 among the Southeast Asian groups (Vietnamese, Thai, Cambodian, and Laotian). Even though Hmong parents want their children to achieve high academics and have high expectations for their children to do well, their instinct is to survive. Therefore, having food and a roof over their head is more important than academic achievements. Oftentimes Hmong families are sharing a house with another Hmong family to be able to pay for rent (Thao, 2005).

Another reason is due to Hmong parents not having a formal education. Without a formal education background, they do not know how to support their children at home with their academic needs. This leads Hmong students to go to school preliterate (Vang, 2005).

The language barrier is another reason why Hmong parents are likely to be uninvolved with their children’s school events and academics. Hmong parents assume that schools and teachers know what they are doing and believe that they will equip their children with employment skills, academic skills, and cultural skills to survive in American society (Thao, 2003; Vang, 2005).

Here are a few practices and strategies that school personnel can encourage parents to do to be involved with their child’s academics.

1. Bliatout, Downing, Lewis, Yang (1988), Kohnert et. al. (2005), and Thao (2003) suggested collaborating with parents to create a parent training program to help support students with their home language. Professionals would work directly with parents on techniques that can support home language development. Strategies that would be taught to parents would be modeling, imitation, responsive feedback, role-playing, demonstration, and or coaching (Kohnert et. al., 2005).

2. Spycher, Girard, Moua (2020), and Thao (2004) stated that having community members that speak students' home language coming into the school, allows students to explore and discuss issues within their community. This is a great way to motivate students to practice using their home language and academic language based on discussions or projects that go along with it.

3. Parents are encouraged to speak to their children in their home language and teach them to read and write in their home language. When parents speak to their children in their home language at a young age it helps them to build cognitive skills. Speaking in a language that you are not strong in may limit the quantity and quality of verbal interactions between parents and children (Bliaout, Downing, Lewis & Yang, 1988).

4. Many researchers suggest that parents can read books, storytell, or sing in their home language to their children to help them maintain and retain their home language (Kohnert et al., 2005; Mahowald & Loughnane, 2016; Vang, 2005; Thao, 2003). Thao (2003) also suggested that students can read to their parents in English, and they can discuss the story in Hmong, this way parents can be involved. This strategy allows Hmong students to practice their English skills and Hmong skills.