Kid update. Morgan (2 years, 7 months) has reached the "why" stage. Kids must be programmed that way. Just like at a certain age, infants will grab things and refuse to let go. Every infant; no exceptions.
Though with Morgan, sometimes I think maybe we just asked him "why" he wants to do something one too many times, and instead of coyly replying, "sellepärast" (because) -- which was his habit for a few weeks -- he decided to turn the tables on us. Now all of his questions start, "but why is/are/does..."?
And of course, we adults don't always know why.
A couple times I have been sent nearly running to the encyclopaedia, before staging a quick recovery. For example, I am particularly proud of my performance when asked "why we shouldn't eat salt in mass quantities": sucks the water out of your cells and you wither away and Emme and Issi would be very sad.
You can't shelter the young uns too much. Science is a harsh, harsh world. Often the answers to scientific questions end in a certain way -- for example, what happens if you go into space without a space suit? Well, I'm not going to lie to them.
Life in the 21st century...it's tough. Life in space -- that's tough, too. But at 2, kids are or should still be such receptive love sponges that you can't mess them up this way. You'll just get one more "why" on top of your last "because" .
I was a little worried at M's glibness with a stranger on a tram when someone asked him where he was going, and he practically gave our home address. Luckily it was a older woman, not an old drunk like the one I encountered last year when I was picking M up from a toddlers' song and dance class. This one was a weird bird.
But it will soon be time to have a talk about strangers.
We don't expose him to any TV -- just one DVD, Lotte, an Estonian cartoon, which seems pretty clever and safe. I am a little cautious, as it seems a little obsessive, as with most things 2-year-olds do. Watching the one-hour film sometimes seems to be the highlight of his day. But he incorporates the scenes from the animation into his playing.
Morgan's English is not keeping pace with Estonian, I am sorry to say. Father tongue (I speak exclusively English with him) is not keeping pace with mother tongue. To an increasing extent he will talk Estonian to me, and I sort of prod him gently to reformulate it in English. It's kind of hard to take a stand. I understand him perfectly in Estonian; so why go through the masquerade? But we read a book about bilingual children a while back, which held that the proper way was to keep the languages segregated.
There is English audio on the Lotte DVD, BTW. Unfortunately, the producers hit on the ludicrous idea of having Anu Lamp, who is the grand old lady of Estonian cartoon voices and really talented, ALSO do the voices in English. Her accent is a weird Finnish-Russian combination that is all but incomprehensible to me and will threaten to seriously fuscrew up Morgan's English.
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top ten things about eesti
- [reader-editable version ]
- 1. Vote from your cell phone soon. Free WiFi.
- 2. Applied art, design and architecture
- 3. One of the best-preserved medieval old towns anywhere
- 4. (Effectively) no corporate income tax on retained earnings
- 5. Biodiversity and semi-natural/symbiotic landscapes
- 6. Thousands of mIles of wild coastline
- 7. Just about everyone speaks at least three languages (yes, even Russian)
- 8. Smart women who know how to walk in heels
- 9. Libertarian tradition, partly individualism, partly as a reaction to Soviet occupation
- 10. Cheap beets, great bread and dairy products
top ten things about america
- [reader-editable version]
- 1. Melting pot culture
- 2. Visual culture and flair
- 3. Curious electric syncopated fusion of European and African musics
- 4. Tradition of making a clean start without reinventing the wheel
- 5. Roadless wilderness areas
- 6. Freedom of information
- 7. Microbrewed beer selection
- 8. The roads and highway network
- 9. Farmers' markets and other manifestations of bourgeois bohemianism
- 10. Mexico and Canada
reminder
PAID
Chaos lies ahead. What is the best way to hedge against it?
@WIKI
26 comments:
They say that you can tell gifted children from the rest by that they don't ask "why?" but "how?". Big difference.
Not there yet to get disappointed myself. But I am anxious as ours is growing up in a tri-linqual atmosphere. Somebody should follow us around with the camera to document what happens to a human being under such circumstances.
By tri-linqual I meant that there's mommy's language then daddy's language and then the language mommy and daddy speak to each other and that's the one that is also on television and elsewhere.
My daughter asked me what "hands" are for. What would you say?
Though we tried to keep both language for the children balanced it was not possible in the home country. Now we moved to the other side on a different continent, and after half a year they changed their preferred language. Now I gonna lose.
We have talked (not very seriously) about enrolling him in a Russian school. There shouldn't be much doubt he will be patriotic enough, so why not get a third language he doesn't get at home?
By tri-linqual I meant that there's mommy's language then daddy's language and then the language mommy and daddy speak to each other and that's the one that is also on television and elsewhere.
I'd guess that Mommy speaks Estonian, Daddy speaks a Germanic tongue and they speak English to each other.
My daughter asked me what "hands" are for. What would you say?
I'm pretty sure I wouldn't give him a simple answer.
Although I'd be sorely tempted to say they are "for giving" (never miss a chance to reinforce parental propaganda -- values like "touching objects gently" and "sharing".)
I don't remember what suggested it, but I did try to teach him the game "rock paper scissors", but I don't think he got it back then, still on pattycake for a few more weeks or months.
Hm. I do not know much about your family. But our worries about language are quite similar. The country we are living in is crazy about English. That would be the third language. In Europe we had a lot of English speaking friends visiting our home. But here they spend billions of dollars to learn this tongue. So we try to encourage it. With a little help of Dr. Seuss and stuff like this.
My assessment is that nationalist feelings are cute and cuddly, but if your kid grows up without knowing fluent English he/she has a clear disadvantage to succeed in today's world.
So when my kid speaks back to me in un-accented English, it simultatenously breaks my heart and makes me rejoyce.
That's one thing I neglected to mention -- so far he has an accent and his word order in English is purely Estonian ("Where you are?"). He's translating as he goes, in other words. What is emotionally tough on me is that I don't see another way to combat it other than to spend another big chunk of time living in the States, and my wife would be against that.
It is so cool to see that there will be all kinds of Estonians in the next generation. No longer will we be just "maarahvas". We'll be cosmopolitan, hip, well-spoken, well-travelled, well educated, well-mannered. This is exactly what papa Jannsen and other "2rkamisaja" minds would have wanted. It is happening. Now. Finally.
We're doing the English/Estonian bilingual thing as well, though at just shy of three months, the little one isn't saying anything coherent. Though she is trying and I just swear I heard "Daddy" this morning. I do hope I can manage to minimize any accent she has when speaking English.
My wife and I both also have a good understanding of German and watch quite a lot of German TV programs on cable. So we're exposing her to hearing as much of that as we can as well.
I've read that people underestimate how much a small child's brain can absorb and retain, so we'll see how it all works out.
I expect living in Estonia, she'll need to learn some Russian as a practical matter, but she's likely to pick up on much of that naturally seeing and hearing so much of it in Estonia, and mommy speaks Russian as well, so there is home support in that language if needed.
I don't know Alex. I guess your expectations for your three month old are a little bit too high even that she IS a child of such extraordinarily gifted parents liek yourselves.
If I were you, I'd be happy if she did not burp out the breastmilk too often and save the worry about how she pronounces Cabernet Savignon for later. At least for a month? Eh? ;-)
I think all the concern about raising a bilingual child is way overboard. Give the kids a break, they are still babies. They will figure it out totally in a few months/years. My son was equally fluent and proficient in 2 languages by the time he was 3 or 4...my advice, just chill and leave the kids alone, they will handle it quite well if you don't stress them out too much by worrying about it!
I also have a comment about an earlier post stating that in Estonia they only do C-Sections in case of life threatening danger to either mother or child. Yet further on you say 26% of births in Est. are by C-section. Isn't that an awfully high mortality risk rate for a very natural function?
C-sections are only supposed to be done when the life of the mother or child is in danger or "vaginal birth is not possible". You can't just schedule one here without a medical indication, in other words.
If it has been a long time since a woman's bag of waters have broken and she is not dilated at all, the call is made for a C-section. Otherwise, the kid will be in distress or the mother will be exposed to infection.
Since Estonian medicine is big on inducing labour 10 days after the due date, this may have something to do with the high rate. But the latter is simply opinion.
Another question about birth. What is the mother's age? I am to lazy to look for the numbers when Estonians get theirs childs.
As a former speech teacher I have to point out that there is no such thing as "un-accented English". Even if you are a native English speaker, you will speak with an accent that gives other native English speakers some cause for confusion.
I should know. For some reason, even though I was born and raised in Australia, I can't speak with an Australian accent. Whenever I try, it just ends up sounding like a mis-pronounced mutilation of cockney.
My family likes to blame television. As a child I watched a lot of British, American and Canadian children's television on the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Commission/Corporation), and they think I soaked up the accents like a sponge, creating a weird fusion of all the different voices I heard. I only saw about an hour or two a day during my formative years, but it was enough.
However, I can (thanks to several years of study) produce a decent "home counties" English accent when I'm trying to speak clearly. I can also manage Mid-Western American for a short period of time, but eventually I slip into something halfway between Canadian and British (and my accent varies as widely as the accents you find in both of those countries depending on who I've been listening too lately).
The European students at the university love me because I can speak with the kind of British accent they heard when they were learning English instead of the muffled Australian accent, the Asian students seem to like it when I slip towards American vowel sounds, meanwhile my fellow countrymen tend to assume I'm a foreign tourist.
The point I guess I'm trying to make is: "un-accented" English has an accent. You have to think which accent has the most value to you (and why) before you start celebrating or tearing your hair out over the accent your children might produce. You should also get your children to think about what accent they are using and what that might mean to someone listening to them speak.
Oh, and I suppose a secondary point would be: let your kids watch television if you want them to pick up on language patterns. Trust me, a few years watching Sesame Street and Canadian cartoons can accomplish more than you'd think.
PS:
Where did you buy the Lotte DVD? Do they have an online store? I've been trying to find Estonian children's films and television to try and improve my own burgeoning language skills...
Sharon: Interesting -- instead of picking languages for kids to study/play with, maybe also pick accents?
Being able to connect with people and have them identify with you, as you describe, is so important.
(Not to mention being the life of the party by pulling out a truly good Scottish or Caribbean accent, which always seem popular.)
I don't have any talent at it. Even trained actors seem to struggle (Hugh Laurie's masterful American one being the exception). Maybe they started too late in life.
And TV does level things out. I sometimes worry about English accents disappearing (more than I do about American regionalisms). Occasionally I'll hear someone on the BBC with wonderful old-fashioned professorial inflections and I will silently rejoice.
The Southern US accent seems to be an invasive species. To my untrained ear, many folks in places like Indiana and even Kansas sounded like they were from Tennessee. (I was also a bit puzzled why so many houses in West Virginia and Pennsylvania seemed to be flying the Confederate flag). Only when I hit South Dakota or Wyoming did I hear people with the flatter (mid)western accent critics are always celebrating in Americans such as Bob Dylan, William Burroughs, cowboys.
In fact I've come to view Southern as a path-of-least-resistance way of talking. Though there are perfectly lovely regional Southern accents.
Jens-Olaf: getting more like the Western model (wait and work for a long time before having kids).
As parents, I think that we're still relatively ancient by Estonian standards -- both of us over 30.
Alex: Yeah, except one thing that I heard all the time when Morgan was that age was not to have too much background talk (radio playing) as that could actually make him begin talking a little later. That, for a little while at least, it would keep him from making the connection between speech and action. Not that this would really matter in the long run.
In general I do subscribe to the idea of maximum exposure to stimuli.
I think Gracie is right on in saying that it will turn out OK anyway. I don't think we sweated it too much. But it is a little weird to hear Morgan speaking with an accent that sounds like my late first generation Estonian grandparents -- even though Morgan has practically never heard English spoken incorrectly or by a non-native speaker.
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