I Want Bu Yao He Nilk

Today, I wanted to write about the wonders of raising children in a bilingual environment. There have been many pieces written on this topic - some strongly supporting teaching two languages, yet others thoroughly panning the practice.

The two schools of thought revolve around the following premises. Those who support teaching two languages believe that young children are best equipped to acquire a second language, as they do not have the pre-existing notions of language that cause many adults to struggle when it comes to accepting various aspects of foreign languages, ranging from how to pronounce words to grammar and sentence structure, which can obviously differ quite a bit, especially when the two languages do not share the same root. Often, supporters of teaching two languages speak another language themselves due to their heritage and are driven by a desire for their children to keep that heritage.

Watching some videos

Conversely, those who oppose teaching two languages to their children are convinced that it will confuse the children and cause them to be weak in learning the "primary" language - or the language that they expect will be taught in school. I've seen this view perpetuated primarily by immigrant parents, who struggled learning English on their own and admirably want to help their children avoid their struggles, but worse, I have heard of school teachers who subscribe to this view as well, which I find is just irresponsible. If I may be so bold, the "opposition" notion is a hugely flawed and ignorant. I have observed multiple cases of people who were raised by immigrant parents, but were not allowed to speak or otherwise were not taught their parents' languages, who not only cannot speak their parents' language, but whose English is also weak. I surmise that this result came about by the immigrant parents (who may not have had the opportunity to learn English well) passing on their poor English habits/knowledge to their kids. A particularly amusing example comes to mind: one of my more distant friends was raised by Vietnamese parents. He does not speak a lick of Vietnamese, and yet, he speaks English with a Vietnamese accent! Clearly, this approach is not a sure-fire way to ensure sterling English skills.

However, I can confirm that teaching two languages is not without struggles. As you can surmise from my prologue, I am staunchly in the "For" camp of teaching two languages, especially when the child is very young and just learning to communicate. Thus far, we have had pretty good success in familiarizing Fifi with both English and Chinese, as she is now able to recognize over 200 written Chinese phrases and about 100 English words, which as a whole largely represent her functional vocabulary at this point in her life (just over two and a half years old).

That said, her primary language is clearly Chinese when it comes to things such as grammar and sentence structure, while she knows many object and activity names (picture, TV, milk, meat, exercise, etc.) by their English names. This is by design, as my take on the subject is that she will have less and less time once she goes to school to practice Chinese, so it is best to get her used to the Chinese grammar now. However, we do not ignore English, and so, Fifi is aware that she uses two different systems. Most of the time, she keeps it pretty straight, but sometimes, she will still say some funny things. For example, though she seems to know to speak English to non-Chinese speakers, sometimes she simply doesn't know how else to say things, so she will still say them in Chinese. We try to mitigate this issue by subsequently teaching her the English phrase.

Even more amusing, or perhaps concerning, is she has started to blend the two languages in some instances. The most common example of this is the namesake of this post:

I Want 不要喝 (bu2 yao4 he1- or "don't want to drink") Nilk ("milk", in baby-ese).

Somehow, she has ingrained this (admittedly logical) sentence structure of "I want [don't want] to ____" and she applies it in most any instance where she doesn't want to do something! We've corrected her several times on this, and she seems to understand it, but, perhaps like Tim Tebow's infamous throwing motion, when under fire, she reverts to her old habits without fail...

So, as mentioned above, there are certainly some challenges to learning two languages, but I still maintain that it is by far the superior of the two options, and that it is much easier for young children to learn.

Case in point, about three weeks ago, my colleagues brought back this (and other) children's books back from China. After just a week, Fifi was able to read two of the three stories she reads in the video below!

The child's mind is an amazing thing!

Baby Lukas Milestones, Entry No. 2: Moving Out

Well, after nearly four months of not publishing a "Baby Lukas Milestones" post, we have back-to-back milestones posts!

In the last few posts about Lukas, I've noted how he seemed to have forgotten how to flip over. Well, that's no longer the case - in the last few days, he's become quite proficient not only at flipping over, but rolling around as well. And scooting "upwards". So much so, in fact, that he often rolls right out of sight, under a table or a bed. As a result, we have to keep a better eye on him now!

Rollin'! Rollin'! Rollin' on the river!

Rolling around is a nice achievement, but the big milestone this time around is Lukas moving into his own room! On Sunday (coincidentally, Father's Day and Cherry's birthday this year), we cleaned out what used to be Fifi's play room (and, prior to that, the guest room) and moved Lukas's crib and changing table into it. So now, he is sleeping all by his lonesome in his very own room! As mentioned in the previous Milestones post, this is basically something that Fifi didn't ever achieve. So long as he's well fed and properly wrapped up, Lukas will smile at us and go to sleep all by himself for essentially the full night, and now, in his own room to boot!

Unfortunately, I still can't really get a full night's sleep because Fifi has been a bit fussy at night recently and needs one of us to sleep next to her!

Until next time, I'll close this post with this adorable photo of Lukas getting squashed by his sister!

"... help!"

Baby Lukas Milestones, Entry No. 1: The Basics

Well, it's been almost four months since Baby Lukas joined the clan - so it's high time that we give him his very first Milestones post!

As discussed in the Baby Lukas Milestones "prequel" in the previous post, generally speaking, Lukas has been more pleasant to take care of than Baby Fifi was. In many ways, he requires less attention than Fifi does even today!

Case in point - most of the time, when Lukas gets tired, all we have to do is wrap him up in his very handy "SwaddleMe" blanket (these things are awesome - it's much harder for babies to break out of these than a regular receiving blanket, and it helps the baby calm down tremendously for bedtime) and place him in his crib. A far cry from the hours of rocking and, even worse, walking up and down the halls with Fifi back in the day! (To her credit, Fifi was actually capable of going to sleep on her own at about 3-4 months old as well - however, due to her skin issues - which were later attributed to food allergy - she often was very uncomfortable and could not stay asleep).On the other side of the spectrum, Fifi usually still asks one of us to sleep next to her at night, although she will take naps on her own now.

Continuing on the topic of sleep, Lukas shares Fifi's proficiency at sleeping through the night. He's routinely hit 8-9 hours continuously without needing to feed. In fact, I think he doesn't really like feeding at night - we've had to waste a few bottles of milk due to incorrectly assuming he was hungry. Sometimes, he will wake up and whine a little bit, but in most cases, he will start sucking on his fingers (I'm not sure how he escapes the SwaddleMe blanket, but he does) and go right back to sleep. Very thoughtful of him, if I may say so myself!

Lukas also went on his first trip out of town this past weekend, as we went to South Florida to visit my mom, dad, and Melinda before they headed out of town for much of the rest of the summer. Lukas handled the car ride extremely well - Fifi did not like riding in cars at all. I remember on her first trip to Orlando, driving back to the resort from Downtown Disney, Fifi bawled the whole way back, giving Cherry and her mom (who can't stand to see babies cry) fits. Lukas didn't so much as make a peep for the whole 2.5 hrs each way!

Some pics of the weekend below:

Fifi loves bubbles!

Grandma taking Lukas out for a walk. He looks really big in this picture!

Lukas checking out the fun

I mentioned in the previous post how responsive Lukas was our provocations. Well, in the past several weeks, he has grown to very reliably smile and laugh when we play with him!

Fifi is probably more excited than Lukas here!

Some video of aforementioned baby laughs!

Of course, Fifi had to try it herself - but she clearly knew that it would not be reasonable for her to lift her brother...

Fifi mimicking my playing with Lukas using her friend Stitch

Stay tuned for more milestones!