Lucy Flores, a preschool teacher from California, is also teaching her father how to read and write.
“I was thinking to myself, I’m able to teach these children how to read and write, why am I not teaching my own father how to read and write?” Lucy Flores told “Good Morning America.”
She said she started working with her father on his writing and letters for “three to four months now.”
Luciano Flores, Lucy Flores’ father, is originally from Mexico. He moved to the United States with Lucy and her three other siblings when she was only three years old.
As a child, Luciano Flores only completed the first grade so that he could start working to provide for his family.
When Luciano Flores moved to the United States he began working in construction, which according to Lucy Flores didn’t really require reading and writing skills.
“Because he worked in construction, it’s not something where you have to sign things, and it’s more math, which he’s really good at,” she said.
Lucy Flores told “Good Morning America” that her father said that “he didn’t even tell his friends or anyone around him that he didn’t have this ability” to read and write and that’s how he “got by.”
Lucy Flores and her family would also help her father by translating for him as well.
When she was younger, Lucy Flores attempted to teach her father how to read and write but was unsuccessful at the time.
After becoming the first person in her family to graduate college, Lucy Flores used her teaching background to try to help teach her father once again and she said this time around he was “excited” to learn. However, he was hesitant.
“That first day, I told him to write his name and he didn’t want to do it,” she said. “He chose to sit at the dining room table by himself, nowhere near us, because he didn’t want anyone to see.”
After diligently working with her father for months, Lucy Flores said that he now knows his vowels, can write his own name, and is reading some books on his own.
While teaching her father, Lucy would share his progress on TikTok to over 91,000 of her followers.
“I don’t know to this day if he understands how many people are watching him and following him,” she said. “But I took it as an opportunity that would encourage him even more. I know that it has.”
Exodus 20:12 tells us, “Honor your father and mother. Then you will live a long, full life in the land the Lord your God is giving you.”
Growing up, Lucy Flores said she never judged her father knowing he didn’t know how to read and write. She wanted to teach him but just didn’t know how.
“I think this is the perfect way of letting people know that it doesn’t matter how young you are, you could teach someone. It’s about the willingness that that person wants to do it and to know that you’re on their time to be really patient,” she said.