International Nesties
Dear Community,
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
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Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
@ bilingual (or more) babies
In our house, I of course speak English to minibini and so does my family. DH speaks his native language, Amharic. At his day care they speak to him in Spanish.
Is this going to seriously confuse him? Will his speaking be delayed or something from this? I know in the long run its supposed to be good for them to be raised speaking multiple languages. I just don't want him struggling in preschool or kindergarten because he doesn't know which words are which!
Are there books you'd recommend about raising multilingual kiddos?
Re: @ bilingual (or more) babies
Disclaimer: I do not have children so I can't speak from personal experience.
But my boss's daughter in NOLA was in speech therapy for delayed speech. Her parents spoke English to her, her grandmother spoke German and her nanny spoke only Spanish. Her comprehension of all three languages was excellent, but her speech was delayed. The therapist commented that delayed speech was common in multi-lingual children. When she did start talking, she spoke all three languages, it was just a bit later than the development charts indicated it should have been. She was speaking normally and had no problems when she started pre-school.
I speak English to DD and DH and his family speak Swiss German to her. She's 2.5 and she's not confused at all. She understands everything in both languages. Right now, even though she understands everything in Swiss German she responds exclusively in English. I'm sure this will change when she's around more Swiss kids, but right now her best friends are the children of my other expat friends, so it's all English for her.
I don't know if your DS's speaking will be delayed, but if it is, it will only be slightly and he'll be fine by the time he's in preschool.
That's my experience anyway.
I?ve read several books on raising bilingual kids, talked to our pediatrician about it, and there is no real hard evidence that bilingual or trilingual kids have speach delays. Every child is different, and if you note the range in speach development in monolingual kids, it?s about the same as those in children who speak two or more languages. Minibini will not be warped. He may mix his languages for a while, usually around two years in age from what I?ve read, but he will get it sorted out.
There is an excellent book on raising bilingual kids written by a French woman who lives in the US. It?s called "Bilingual By Choice: Raising Kids in Two (or more!) Languages, by Virginie Raguen. This was probably my favorite of all the bilingual books. I did not like "Growing Up with Two Languages" by Una Cunninham. Both are available on Kindle, and there were also a couple of other choices for the Kindle, but I can?t comment on them.
I speak to M in English and sometimes French (if he asks me something in French) and H speaks to him in French, English and Farsi. He goes to school full time in french with a couple hours of English a week.
His speech was not delayed. Right now he is about 50-50 with French and English and he understands Farsi pretty well, but doesn't speak much of it.
I think he will pick up Japanese pretty easily has his favourite films are Miyasaki and he only watches them in OV - Japanese - LOL
It's great that your H is speaking with minibini in Amharic!
Minibini will be fine! So cool that a baby be raised with many languages in the States- he will be at a huge advantage when he grows up
Ready for some resources?
This video on TED is fantastic. Watch it.
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/patricia_kuhl_the_linguistic_genius_of_babies.html
And this article just came out a couple days ago:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/story/2012/01/17/baby-lip-read-talk.html?cmp=rss
Also these two sites are helpful and interesting:
http://www.multilingualliving.com/
http://www.incultureparent.com/
(one of the INs suggested inculture awhile back, can't remember who)
To sum up, it's great that Mini is being exposed to so many languages right away. Some people even argue (I've read academic journals on this topic) that bilingual children have a higher cognitive potential than monolingual children. But maybe we're just biased : ).
Here is a fabulous website about raising children multiple cultures/languages:
In Culture Parent
There is no hard evidence that bilingualism/trilingualism/etc. causes speech delays. In addition, I just want to point out that there's a big difference between an actual speech "delay" and talking on the later end of the spectrum, but within normal boundaries. I have anecdotal evidence, based on DD and other kids in my immediate circle/family, that kids exposed to several languages at once will start talking on the later side, but this is NOT considered a speech delay. In DD's case, when she finally did start talking, she was talking a storm. It was like she was puzzling through all these things in her brain silently that other kids were saying out loud and she basically reached the same point they did verbally at the same age, roughly, without really going through the "baby talk" first.
And now that DD spent 3.5 years exposed to Spanish and English on a daily basis, she is jumping right into French. She has only been at school for 4 days here in France and she can already say quite a few phrases. I credit her exposure to other languages, but who really knows.
I hope that all made sense. I've had a long, tiring, stressful day.
Well, my brother and I were raised in a bilingual household. My mother spohouseholder Hungarian and my father spoke English. My brother's speech was delayed (the family joke was that he just didn't have anything to say yet), and I was speaking very early.
My niece is also being raised the same way, since her mama is Hungarian. Right now she prefers Hungarian, but we figure she'll pick up on English pretty quick once she's in school (they live in the UK).
So, IMHO, it depends on the child. If minibini has a stressier personality, then things will be more stressful in life in general. That said, studies have shown increased gray matter density in children who learn multiple languages at a young age, so good on you for giving your minibini such a good start in life
My food blog
What I'm looking forward to in 2012:
Eating our way through (northern) Italy on vacation
<a href="http://www.thenest.com/?utm_source=ticker&utm_medium=HTML&utm_campaign=tickers" title="Home DThis is purely anecdotal, but one of W's best friends is half Czech and half English. I'd say he was behind in his English until they started nursery school in September, but he shot forward and is fine. I dont' think he was actually behind in anything, but his Czech was stronger, as that was what his mums peaks to him.
Interestingly, we're not a bilingual family, but there are theories (of random clueless British health visitors) that W's speach was confused by my accent. (His comprehension and vocab were always really great, but his clarity was on the bottom end fo the curve for a while, and could still do with help with pronunciation of S's and F's, etc.)
Occasional lurker checking in to ditto JalapenoMel. Because DS had fewer than the ideal number of words at 24 and 30 mos., I was concerned about DS's speech development (English in particular: we did have an assessment just to rule out hearing and other issues and everything's fine: he's just talking a little later than the average.)
I've been reassured by several coworkers who have bi- and trilingual kids that speaking later was the norm for their kids, too, but that within a couple of years of beginning to speak, the differences between them and their peers was negligible.