French Mother and Baby group

[HideiLu]

There was an article on local news tonight about a French speaking mother and baby group - with all the songs and activites in French! It's aimed at developing the language. My family are French, though my abiliy to speak it is embaressingly slack, so I'm going to sign Jack and I up!

Is any one else bringing up a child bilingual? Or do you think i's all a waste of time so early on?

 

[kalia]

What do you mean by a waste of time? There are many things we do with our children that could be classed as that but are not. If you do lots of stuff in French now but from a few years old he is never exposed to the language he almost certainly won't remember it but that doesn't mean it's a waste.

For what it's worth, I'm a French teacher and I speak French to DD and we have lots of French books and I have French stories on CD and Disney DVDs and stuff so it's not just my voice and accent she hears. I don't speak enough for her to be bilingual by any stretch of the imagination but then she can't speak English yet so I guess it doesn't matter too much I'd like to be able to ave conversations with her in French (in say 5 years time) but I find it hard to introduce without alienating others. The most common way to bring up a child as bilingual is to have one parent (or both) only speak in the foreign language and as OH doesn't speak French it would just be rude a lot of the time, IMO. I have known bilingual children and there is no confusion and they are perfectly capable in either language.

I've read reports on it and the stimulation of being immersed in 2 languages (so not just an occasional song or story but fully immersed for prolonged periods of time, the rubbish chatty language as well as the song words if you like) is supposed to be very good for their brain power and stuff. Being immersed in 3 languages can delay the start of their speech but is not detrimental to their intelligence or ability.

Go along, it will be fun!!!

 

[kelsey]

My children speak english and welsh and no its not a waste of time hun.

Also I know that Squigs speaks 2 languages and her oh her eldest speaks 3 (i think) so she'd have some good knowledge on the subject.

 

[daftscotslass]

We are raising DD speaking both English and Dutch. OH is Dutch and only speaks Dutch to her. We speak to each other in English but when Becky and OH are together we use as much Dutch as possible obviously because everything else around her is in English.

One of my mum's neighbours is German (hubby is Scottish) and her children (2 and 4) both speak both languages fluently. They speak German with mum, English with dad and what is very sweet is that they talk to each other in both languages interchangeably!

It's definitely better for them to learn when very young as then you don't have the hurdle of trying to translate everything in your head as you often end up doing as an adult learner of a language.

 

[Kylie1007]

You wont be wasting your time - in the long run you will be doing your baby a big favour! You might find that Jack says things a little later than other children but that's because he's got to think whether the word he needs is chair or chaise and so on. I'm a French teacher by trade but not bilingual. My friend is S African and only speaks Afrikaans to her little boy - she's hoping he'll pick up English by being around us Brits.
http://humanities.byu.edu/bilingua/faq.html#question02

 

[Sammystar]

Mine are bi-lingual, English and German. The earlier you start, the easier it is!

 

[HideiLu]

I only mentioned the 'waste of time' bit as they put that comment forward on the news stories.

I personally think it's great and agree it's best early on. When my Mum had my older brother, she spoke no English, I was born 2 years later and we were both being brought up mainly French, but when my brother started school, his English was a bit behind and school told my Mum she needed to speak English to us more, and from then on it became our main language. He is still better at French than me, and his eldest who is now 7 has been speaking basic French for a few years. I would like Jack to learn bits so when I visit family he can speak to them too (apart from my Mum, no one else speaks English).

 

[Squiglet]

Tia's billingual... no doubt about it after the swearing match she gave one of the kids at her school for being rough with the baby the other day She speaks Spanish, English and Valenciano...Lil miss on the other had receives a bombardment of languages Spanish, English, Swedish and Finnish... So she will probably end up speaking around 5 or 6 languages by the time she finishes school. Buts its mainly our situation that creates this glut in languages... We live in Spain, my family only speak English to the baby, my OH is a Swedish speaking Finn so his family speak Swedish to lil miss and her grandfather whos a Finnish speaking Finn... speaks Finnish to lil miss...

I don't think it hinders her at all...but there is a consistency on what and who speaks languages to her. I will only speak English in the house with the girls...but only Spanish when we are out. DH only speaks Swedish to lil miss when they are alone together... Grandma (well Farmor) only ever speaks Swedish to her...and Farfar speaks Finnish..

English and Spanish will be her predominate languages though.

 

[purplebluered]

Gosh Squiglet that's brilliant...so lil miss will be able to have her pick of lots of countries in europe when she's older then

I really want Isaac to be bilingual, I'm deaf with equal use of british sign language and english. Problem I have at the moment is that Isaac doesn't really focus on me and there's not many times I have both hands free in front of him to be able to sign properly to him. Only time I am consistent is when I tell him he's having his nappy changed

british sign is a language of its own with own grammar and syntax so I can't speak and sign at the same time. I guess eventually I'll only sign to Isaac and DH will only speak to isaac and who knows how me and DH will talk to each other...

 

[daddychris]

Parents who are bilingual or have two languages in the family worry about their childrens language. There is a great web site called "talk to your baby" from the national literacy trust that gives advice for parents where english may not be the first language. Its at http://www.literacytrust.org.uk/talktoyourbaby/Bilingual.html
The site also gives lots of useful info on encouraging language with all babies and children, I use it a lot at work.

 

[lea m]

I think that's a great idea and only wish they had something similar around here!
My children learnt basic French in school and took really well to it so I would think would take to it even easier if exposed to other languages from birth so to speak!