I tried to teach English to a 4-year-old kid in his house during 2 months. I truly gave my best but the kid simply didn't want to learn and was speaking Korean all the time (even insulting me and telling me to go away). Every time I arrived to the house, he was in a defensive manner. The thing is that her mother was all the fucking time around and didn't let him breathe. He wouldn't focus on me and would run to her mother as soon as he got uncomfortable.

Fortunately, during the last week I started to get to him and we got really close during that time, he even hugged me a few times and tried to repeat everything I was saying in English. I felt he was truly learning with a friend, not a teacher.

Guess what. The parents "fired" me because I don't know Korean. They said they couldn't feel any progress and that it would be better they hired a Korean person. I could have explained that the kid was making progress towards the end, but I was actually relieved that they let me go.

What I want to say with this is that both the parents and kids have to be interested in the language. The parents play a really important role and sometimes it seems they have no fucking clue and they prefer to spend a fortune in Hagwons or private teachers before trying to do something by themselves. Kids at those ages are copycats, if they see their parents doing something, they will try to do it as well. But if they see that their parents have zero interest in English, why would they bother?