Bilingualism at 23 months, III

One interesting component of A.’s recent speech development is that he now sings! Music has always been a strong presence in his life, I always played lot’s of music for him and sang to him. He never used a pacifier, or a comfort object or anything like that, all he needs to calm down and be reassured is a couple of songs. Until recently he would hum the tune of some songs he liked, and he danced a lot (he’s so funny when he dances!). But now he sings and often enough he starts singing on his own! He doesn’t sing the whole song of course, just the key words of the songs he loves best, like Happy Birthday (right now it’s Happy Birthday every day), Twinkle Twinkle little star, Old MacDonald, Yuppy Ya Ya, Hey diddle diddle and few more.

This is great, for two reasons:

• We have great fun, we both love it!
• It’s an easy and effective way to stimulate him to talk. We sing a song and then I stop and let him finish the line, I might repeat the trick a few times until he catches it and starts using the right word to complete it. And then we have a good laugh.

These are great moments of sharing and complicity for us, but also an excellent opportunity for him to learn new words without even realizing. Incidentally, I never ask him to “repeat” words when we talk, I stimulate him by repeating words to him at any possible opportunity, but I don’t urge him to actually say them. The one and only thing I taught him by “nagging” is to answer the question “How old are you?”

Now that I think about it, I believe that asking him to SAY a certain word would be really annoying, but singing is a completely different story. My view is that the child doesn’t feel any pleasure in repeating a word, what’s the point? However singing and completing a line is not only very satisfying, it’s almost compulsive! Do you remember Roger Rabbit when he can’t resist to the tune “Shave and a haircut…” and has to jump out to finish it with “two bits!”, well, something like that! (I can’t find the video, pity…)

A very picky person, like me, could still observe that singing might be very different from using the language actively. One thing is to say Apple because I want an apple, another one is to sing diddle diddle or ia ia hoooo because that’s how the song goes, without having any clue about the meaning of these “sounds”.  I thought about but couldn’t find any literature on this, so I can’t say anything for sure, however i do have a view. I think that in fact some words are just sounds that the child sings just because he learnt the song. Other words though are daily words, that he normally hears and understands, for this words singing might be the first way to try them out, to actually say them, but from there to using them in speech it shouldn’t take much. I’ll see how it goes and I’ll let you know…

See here for Bilingualsim at 23 months, I and Bilingualism at 23 months, II

BILINGUALISM STEP BY STEP

Today’s homework is, easy enough to guess, to sing. In the minority language of course…. If you don’t normally sing this is a great opportunity to start. Buy a CD (here some suggestions in English, French and German ), listen to it few times, choose few songs both you and your children like, look the words up on Google and there you go. Sing them, anytime: in the car, when bathing the kids, before going to bed, etc.

If you already do that, start using the songs to stimulate your children to talk. Just sing and stop before the last word of the line.

By the way: children have their own taste. They won’t hear about some songs, no matter how nice, and they’ll love others. Listen to them, watch them, and go for the songs they like best, don’t force music on them.

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