The Carnival is at Mummy Do That! and it’s great read!

No related posts.

I’m keeping the promise I made to Blogging on Bilingualism (or rather the blogger behind it) and I want to come back on the topic of non native parents raising bilingual children, or rather parents raising children bilingual in a language that is not their mother tongue.

All non native parents are not equal. Whether the minority language is the mothertongue of some family members, at least one, does make a big difference, in many ways.

Just to clarify, some parents, like myself, speak to their children in a language they master well but where not raised in, and no native speakers live with the family. Other parents, like Eve from Blogging on Bilingualism, speak to their children their partner’s mothertongue in order to raise them bilingual, often using the MLAH method.

Yes we are both using with our children a language that is not our native one, but there are strong differences among us.

1) Social acceptance. All parents of bilingual children happening to speak a minority language in public are occasionally, or often, frowned upon by opinionated and often monolingual neighbors, friends, colleagues, name it. If they will explain that that language is the language of part of the family they might get some understanding, or at least tolerance, but if this is not the case they are much more likely to encounter open criticism. In fact I often use this factor to buy some comprehension, my child’s

2) Inner motivation. Motivation is key in most situations, not last when raising a bilingual child, particularly when the child starts to answer you back in the majority language. If the minority language is the language of part of the child’s family you know very well why you’re doing this, you are doing something really important for the development of your child and the building of his identity. But if this is just a foreign language why should you go through all this pain? You learnt foreign languages the usual way and you are doing ok, sure enough your child will manage too, may be later in life, won’t he?

3) Language input. Languages are alive. They need to be nurtured, stimulated, cared for. Some people who live abroad with time have problems in speaking even their mothertongue, imagine what happens with foreign languages then… Sure there are many ways to keep a language fresh, things like books, TV, internet, family, friends, holidays even work can help tremendously. Still, a native speaker partner comes really handy…

However, I want to end this post with a positive note. So let me tell how I address these 3 issues.

1) Social acceptance. I don’t care, really. If people are genuinely interested and nice I might as well explain to them how English plays a key role in my life, has been my dominant language for about 10 years and is strongly associated to a whole part of me and of my life I just couldn’t express and transmit to my child in Italian. I might also add that English is my child’s father language. However, if the person is judgmental and opinionated I shrug and move on, people are entitled to their opinions and I can live without their approval.

2) Inner motivation. My motivation is extremely strong, else I just couldn’t carry on with this. I know very well I don’t want my child to grow into the typical spoiled italian boy, who knows and cares nothing about the rest of the world. In full honesty I shall also add that it helps, in terms of motivation, the fact that English is the language my child needs to communicate with his father, even if he’s not part of our daily lives.

3) Language input. I believe,  and this is my personal and unproved opinion, that there are 2 kinds of people. Those who learn languages fast and forget them just as easily and those that learn slowly (sometimes painfully) but then retain everything they have learned with no effort. I belong to the second group. That said, I also read plenty of stuff in English every day (blogs, news, books, newspapers) and have many opportunities to speak it with people.

Thoughts anybody?

Image by A Journey Round my Skull

Related posts:

1. 8 reasons why you don’t have to be a native speaker to teach your child a language
2. Bilingual children in non bilingual families
3. Summer vacation options for Italian-English bilingual children

here we are for another Carnival. The family of bloggers involved is growing really nicely and this is really contributing to creating a debate on bilingualism and sharing ideas, doubts, tips and tricks. Most of all I think we can all feel less lonely on our journey, and that is of tremendous help when you need to find in yourself the motivation to stick to your plans and speak that language that nobody else around you is speaking, often enough not even your own children!

So let’s go for it once again, and feel free to join us. You can submit your own posts to the Carnival or you can host the Carnival yourself, you’ll find all the info here. Also, to be always up to date  with the Carnival, deadlines for submitting, new issues, etc please subscribe to the newsletter. You will receive only one or two emails per month, just for coordinating the carnival.

Here we go!

Sarah, from Bringing up Baby Bilingual, shares a truly inspiring story. Clarisse and her family are raising 28 months old Julia quadrilingual. What is really inspiring, and makes me feel slightly envious, is not the number of languages, but where they live, which languages they chose and how they are exposing the child to the languages. And the picture in the background too! This is just like a dream….

Sandra from bxlsprout is raising her child trilingual, which I understand is the bare minimum necessary to guarantee survival in Bruxelles, where they live (I’m kidding, but just a bit). Her point of view is very interesting and quite unusual. Contrary to most parents of bilingual children, who were raised monolingual, Sandra was raised as a bilingual child herself, so she’s looking at her child’s experience through the lens of her own experience.

Mamapoekie from Authentic parenting gives us a different view of Belgium and Brussels, and indeed the experience of living there is very different depending on whether you are a local or an expat. Why in such a multilingual country is bilingualism and cultural differences among the Flemish and the French “side” still considered an issue? Or is it really? Mamapokie reminds us that languages are often used and abused.

Melanie from Multilingualmania hosts Sandrine, who’s raising her children trilingual in a rather hostile environment. If you think raising a bilingual child is hard for you in your settings, try to imagine what it would be like to raise an autistic child trilingual. No I don’t think we can even begin to imagine, but we can read Sandrine’s story, admire her focus and determination and share similar stories on our blogs, because bilingualism is a gift for all children, also those with disabilities, but their parents all too often feel isolated and criticized for their efforts.

Smashedpea from intrepidlybilingual shares one of those moments when you finally  feel you’ve done something right. All your efforts, and doubts and wondering and trying and trying some more were worth it. As I’ve been reading her blog since she started on her journey I’m really happy for her, but also, I think we can learn a lot by sharing the journey with each other. Once you’ve achieved something everything looks obvious and easy, but to keep going when you don’t know where you are going, this is the tough part, let’s just be aware that applies to virtually everybody and let’s share the burden.

Janis from mumversuskids at times finds raising a bilingual child rather demanding, specifically when they start asking really specific questions, which by the way, most parents wouldn’t be able to answer anyway, no matter in which language!

Jan and Souad from babelkid made me laugh. Their child manages to speak Arabic with hardly a whole arabic word in the sentence, yet in her view she is speaking arabic! This is also an opportunity for parents to spend some thought on code mixing and code switching, it’s difficult to expect children not to mix if parents do it.

Maria from Fabmums has a brilliant idea! “Learn though play” and because the kind of game your bilingual child might not be ready available just make it yourself. There you go, really smart!

Eve from Blogging on Bilingualism (last minute entry, my fault) is packed with info and practical advice about traveling with children. It is indeed possible, and it can even be fun, really! all you have to do is make sure you have everything you need. This is a post I’ll go back to over and over in the future!

And finally there’s me, Letizia, here on Bilingual for Fun. I want to question your definition of a bilingual family. More and more families are raising bilingual children against all odds and with plenty of initiative and creativity and a pinch of risk taking. Who are these families? How do they do it? What do experts think of them?

I’m sure you’ll enjoy reading all these posts and getting to know the families behind them. Before I close I have a suggestion to make, I find Twitter a really powerful tool. It’s much more flexible than Facebook and it allows you to stay on top of what’s going on and to connect in a very effective way. I swear i receive no money whatsoever for saying this, it’s just that I’m looking for your blogs on Twitter so I can follow you there but most of you aren’t on Twitter please, give it a chance, try it. At first it’s rather awkward, but after few days you’ll get used and you’ll soon realize how effective it is. If you have questions feel free to ask, at bilinguepergioco AT yahoo DOT com. Or find me a bilingualforfun or bilinguexgioco.

Finally don’t forget to subscribe the newsletter, so you won’t miss any carnival, do it now, here. And please let us know if you’s like to host, here you’ll find schedule and info.

Next Carnival will be hosted at Mummy do that, those registered to the newsletter will receive a reminder, if not just email sbach AT cartside DOT co DOT uk.

Read, comment, share, think, laugh and try something new. In short have fun!

Image from A Journey Round my Skull

Related posts:

1. Second Blogging Carnival on Bilingualism
2. 5 ways to react when Bilingual Children mix languages
3. 10 bloggers and a Carnival, on Bilingualism

Since I started talking about bilingual children in non bilingual families, mostly on my italian blog Bilingue per Gioco, I have been flooded with testimonials from non native speaker parents who are going through this experience. It was really a great surprise, this is a form of bilingualism nobody talks about, there’s absolutely no research done on this and the same people involved are normally not very vocal about it, not until now at least.

I think it would be interesting to share some observations and ideas.

What does it mean to raise bilingual children in non bilingual families?

Basically what happens is that parents,  or other relatives, who don’t define themselves as bilingual because they were raised monolingual, but who now speak a second or more languages, teach these language(s) to their children starting in early infancy. The parents’ proficiency in the second language can vary, so do the methods they use to teach their children the second language. Some parents go as far as speaking only the second language to their children (that’s my case), others make this language parts of their lives through songs, books, games or similar, with varying degrees of systematic approach.

Is this bilingualism?

Well, experts seem to think so. Any frequent early exposure to a second language is bilingualism, even half an hour of daily playing or reading in the second language. The question is whether this will lead to a balanced bilingualism, but as you all know, as parents of bilingual children, balanced bilingualism is more a dream than a fact, and anyway passive bilingualism is very important too and can lead to active bilingualism when the conditions arise (say a trip abroad).

Is it dangerous for the child to be deprived of the parent’s mothertoungue?

That’s more than fair a question. The answer is not known at the moment, because as I said no research has been done on this specific form of bilingualism, hence we can only be guided from common sense and opinions can vary. I have also asked two experts on bilingualism to give their view and they are both supportive, they are Sabine Pirchio from University la Sapienza, Rome, and Antonella Sorace from University of Edimburgh.

I think we should consider two dimensions in which this could potentially affect the child negatively: 1) if s/he doesn’t learn properly the language that should be his mothertongue, 2) if the parent-child relationship is disturbed by the fact that the parent is not comfortable with the language s/he using.

The former risk in most cases doesn’t exist, these children live in their parents’ home country and are surrounded by the native language in many ways, plus normally only one of the parents uses the second language and only in some cases s/he uses always the second language. So for all these children their mothertongue seems to develop normally, from what most parents say (again this is not the result of a research but a consideration).

The second risk, the parent-child relationship being affected, exists in principle if the parent uses only the second language, but we can’t say whether it is a real concern. This would be really an interesting topic for research! What I personally believe, and recommend, is that parents don’t take drastic decisions unless they feel 100% right for them and they feel totally comfortable, and also that they dedicate lot’s of attention to all channels of communication with their children, eye and body language included. In fact on my italian blog we talk a lot about how to communicate with children and self-motivate them, a quest for bilingualism often becomes a journey into a deeper understanding of the child and of parent-child dynamics. I think that parents who are so concerned and sensitive, as well as willing to question and understand everything they do, face a very low risk of anything going wrong.

In any case, the guiding principle should be to do only what feels right, for most families that means finding a regular but confined place in their lives for the second language, with this approach things can’t go wrong, particularly if parents are creative in the tools they use to propose the language and make it fun and enjoyable.

What about accent?

Yes, what about it? I think that the relevance of accent in language learning has been highly overestimated. Don’t get me wrong, if these children had a chance to learn the language from native speakers parents would be crazy to forgo that opportunity, the reality though is that this is seldom a chance. Even when a native speaker teacher can be fund, s/he normally can do one hour a week at most, way too little for children to learn the language, they need exposure, exposure, exposure. On the other side, if they have an understanding of the language from early on, later they’ll be less likely to say no to things like movies in original language (in Italy movies are normally dubbed), summer camps abroad, theater in the second language, holidays, anything is fact that can give them a chance to interact with native speakers and improve their accents. Language competencies are not static, they develop, so these children stand a very good chance to become really fluent in the second language just because they started early on.

The topic is a really interesting a large one, so it is impossible to cover all the aspects now, but I would like to know what the international community thinks about this, and I’ll be happy to come back on this.

Picture by A Journey Round my Skull

Related posts:

1. All non native parents are not equal
2. 8 reasons why you don’t have to be a native speaker to teach your child a language
3. Bilingualism Makes Children Smarter

I owe you an explanation, I know… What’s up with me? Lot’s actually…

Now as most of you know, to be true to my mission to bilingualism I run two blogs, Bilingual for Fun, in EN, and Bilingue per Gioco, in Italian. Well I realised I wasn’t getting what I wanted out of either and decided to invest time and energy to bring at least on of the two blogs to the next level, to make something really impactful out of it. I chose Bilingue per Gioco because I felt that’s where I could make the most difference. There are great bloggers on bilingualism in English, but it’s a virtually unknown subject in Italy.

I think I can now say the efforts where well worth it! Please have a look and judge yourself: www.bilinguepergioco.com. Have a look even if you don’t speak/read italian, just to see what it’s like, please! I promise I’ll soon put the same work into Bilingual for Fun too, just give me the time to recover…

I am also starting a couple of projects in Italy, making playgroups a reality, and that takes a tremendous amount of work and passion and a vision. And quite a bit of stupidity too one might say, at least that’s what I say when I feel overwhelmed. I do happen to feel overwhelmed a lot lately, so you get the drift…

And I have written an E-Book!!! Yes I did! It’s in Italian though… I’d love to get it translated. It went out yesterday and I’m checking emails and stuff like crazy. The title is In che lingua giochiamo? Which in English would read something like Which language shall we play in? In other words it’s one those things that really don’t translate well. I’d have to find a decent English title, ideas welcome… Anyway as you can imagine it’s a book on bilingualism, specifically on all the incredible tool we have (but rarely use) to give children exposure to the minority language in a fun and natural way. It’s 66 pages, including Cover, Index, and Bibliography, granted, but still…!

I am giving away the Ebook for free to those who are registered in Bilingue per Gioco’s newsletter as a way to say Thank-you-for-sharing-the-journey-with-me, but I know that also among Bilingual for Fun’s readers there are quite a few people who read Italian, so I’ll give away a copy here too. To get the copy just comment on this post or on FB and share the link to this page In che lingua giochiamo? with your contacts on FB, Twitter, blogs, anything by Sunday next week, Jan 31st. Which happens to be my birthday too… Go figure! I’ll then do the usual thing of picking a lucky winner!

What else… I’ve been missing my fellow bloggers a lot. I’ve been missing the Carnivals and all the really interesting interactions I used to have with the broad bloggers community. I’m back, and looking forward to this new year!

Thanks for everything, I hope you are all well!

Related posts:

1. Summer vacation options for Italian-English bilingual children
2. English, French, German (etc.) Playgroups for Bilingual Children in Italy
3. Learning a second language is good childhood mind medicine, studies find

Have a look!

Related posts:

1. Second Blogging Carnival on Bilingualism
2. Blogging Carnival on Bilingualism, April
3. 10 bloggers and a Carnival, on Bilingualism

Today my 2 year old had a tantrum, or rather I thought he had a tantrum, until I read this definition of tantrum.

Ok so let’s say that today my 2 year old made a fuss, and I don’t like fussy children, and at first I got a bit annoyed, then I ignored him, then I got rid of it with 1 question! It was the first time I ever tried this trick and it worked wonders… So what did I say? Bear with me and let me explain…

I was giving him his yogurt, he had a toy in his hands, a duck. He threw the duck up in the air and the thing landed on the floor. I stopped and said quitely he should pick the toy up, NO. I talked to him to explain that he can’t throw things in the air and expect others to pick them up… , NO. I then refused to give him the rest of his yogurt and the thing started.

He started to cry and scream and wouldn’t stop, eventually I allowed him to reach for the yogurt and said he could help himself with it, but he kept crying holding his yogurt…

And then I remembered about Active Listening, and I thought to myself, ok, let’s try it…:

Mum: You are angry, aren’t you?
A.: Si (yes), crying
M: and why are you angry?
A.: crying some more…
M: are you angry because mummy is not playing with you?
A.: Yogurt, crying..
M: oh you are angry because mummy is not giving you the yogurt?
A.: Si
M: and do you know why mummy is not giving you the yogurt?
A. stops crying… looks at the duck on the floor…: Duck
M.: right, mummy was angry because you threw the duck and you should pick it up, shouldn’t you?
A.: Si’. now calm, he goes, pickes the duck up, puts it on the shelf (a step I hadn’t even requested), and comes back happy and smiling.
and then Mummy and A. happy again start eating yogurt together in full armony.

So simple! All it took was one question: You are really angry, aren’t you?

WOW!

Many people talked about Active Listening, I learned the trick from this book which I highly recommend: How to talk so kids will listen and listen so kids will talk, by Faber and Mazlish. By the way, Active Listening works at any age, in fact it is widely used also in professional environments.

Image from A Journey Round my Skull

Related posts:

1. How to praise to boost motivation

Playgroups are kicking off in Rome, at  S.Saba, thursdays at 17.30.

Playgroups motivate children to speak the minority language, which is normally the language spoken just by mom or dad and becomes instead the language spoken by children too as well as a necessary means to communicate in an environment where no other language is spoken.

However Playgrous are important for parents too, as they find an opportunity to share experiences about raising bilingual children and boost their own motivation. In fact demotivation and the consequent inconsistency in applying the chosen method is the main reason why many families are disappointed about their children’s bilingualism.

The Playgroups are for preschooler, i.e. up to 6 years old, max 7, and take place on Thursday at 17.30 in S. Saba, Rome of course.

For more information please contant Bilingue Per Gioco at 320 1156419 or bilinguepergioco AT yahoo DOT com.

Image from A Journey Round My Skull

Related posts:

1. English, French, German (etc.) Playgroups for Bilingual Children in Italy
2. More information about Playgroups. What, When, Where and most of all Who
3. Tv, children and language, part 2

This is a very interesting article, it shows that as they are born children already “speak” their mothertongue, i.e. the way they cry depends on the language they have been exposed to in the womb: The crying song.

Now this is very interesting for me… I’ve been living in London and speaking practically only English throughout my pregnancy, so really English is my son’s mothertongue… Or was he born bilingual? hmmmm…

I’ve seen the article mentioned on Blogging On Bilingualism, so let me give them credit for finfing it out.

Image from A Journey Round My Skull

Related posts:

1. English Speaking Playgroups Starting in S. Saba, Rome
2. Bilingual children in non bilingual families
3. Tv, children and language, part 2

Raising bilingual children is seldom as straightforward as one would think, or hope, and it can be a bit lonely if you live in a monolingual society, however we also came to realise that the experience of raising a bilingual child has some common aspects no matter where one lives and which languages one speaks. So by sharing our views, doubts and tricks we all grow wiser, stronger, more motivated, which implies that growing up bilingual should be a better experience for our own children (conditional in not an optional here, those little things can be sneaky!).

Every month the Carnival is hosted at a different blog, here you can find the schedule and book your turn for hosting (next available slot seems to be March, so if you’re interested you should let us know as soon as possible). If you’d like to be updated about future issues, know when and how to submit your posts to the carnival, or just make sure you won’t miss any, please sign up to this newsletter, which will be used only for the bare minimum of communication needed to get the Carnival going, normally 2 emails per month, nothing else.

Excellent let’s start! Today we have a rich Carnival!

0. Well, It’s not quite 10 bloggers, but 10+1, because I managed to leave one out by mistake. How silly… And the point is that this is a VERY GOOD post, and it touches a point that is often overlooked but can be really tricky. What if your child’s second language is taught also in school and your child has a better command of the language than the teacher? It’s very common, and difficult to handle.  Kathryn from ourprivateblog talks about her experience with a her boy speaking a better, although less formal, English than his English teacher. Sorry Kathryn.

1. Laura from Bububooks with her post gave us much more info than she thought, I believe. The really astonishing piece on information is that in Illinois there are publicly funded Bilingual Parents Advisory Councils, where parents go to receive advice on raising their children bilingual. The second very valuable piece of information is that they also publish tip sheets, like the one Laura is posting.  It’s simple but effective advice and it shows a real committment to bilingualism.
2. Maria from Fabmums talks of a really tough problem that sooner or later will hit all bilingual families: ok we kind of manage the understanding and talking bit, but how about literacy? When and how should a child learn to read and write in the minority language? Maria got her answer sorted.
3. Eve from Blogging on Bilingualism made a list of all the things they do to support French, the minority language. Now that’s a really interesting idea! Just by going through the list you realize how diversified is their approach, how much effort and thinking they put into raising their children bilingual, and how this results in their kids having a rich exposure to the language, both in terms of quantity and quality. A good food for thought.  
4. Jan and Souad from Babelkid tell us quite an amazing story. Their little girl managed to form a 4 words long sentence using 4 different languages (that’d make the One Word One Language approach, wouldn’t it?) AND, here comes the really interesting bit, without breaking any grammatical rule in any of the 4 languages. Isn’t that something? Go here for the most impressive 4 words sentence ever.
5. Than there’s my post here at Bilingual For Fun. I want to challenge your assumptions. Raising a bilingual child can only be done if your mothetoungue is different from the majority language? Who said so?  As a matter of fact many non native speaker parents are raising bilingual children, and here are 8 reasons why anybody could raise a bilingual child (providing they want it hard enough).
6. Steffi at Mummy do that! went home, like back home, for 4 days. Now 4 days aren’t that long, but when you go back home and bring your child with you and are seeing your family and and and… then those 4 days expand, grow  and become a really important experience, for language developmenttoo, among other things…   
7. Deanna from Bilingual Readers touches on a point that is as important as widely underestimated: the powerful impact of playing pretend. She brings to us reasearch that shows how playing pretend, using imagination and storytelling are really important for the linguistic development of a child, on top of being fun and etertaining that is.
8. Smashedpea from Intrepidly Bilingual has a lot of thinking going… Choosing the schooling system and the actual school for a bilingual child can be really difficult, there are lot’s of criteria to take into consideration and way too many questions for which there isn’t a clear cut answer. I’m sure that reading this post many families will recognize their own dilemmas.
9. Ana from Spanglishbaby has a really important message, no matter how much effort you put into raising a child bilingual at home, that’s not enough, you need to give the child opportunities to speak the language also outside the house and manage carefully the child’s perception of the language status (or coolness).
10. Sylke from Sylkeweb seems to be pretty sorted, for once. Bilingualism works just fine in their family but they also allowed time for things to develop.

Before you leave make sure you register  sign up to the Blogging Carnival on Bilingualism  newsletter, so that’s you’ll know about next issues and will be able to contribute if you wish. The schedule is here, next Carnival will be November 30th at Babelkid, so make sure you don’t miss it!

Please ReTweet the carnival, you can find me @bilingualforfun.

Image by A Journey Round My Skull

Related posts:

1. Second Blogging Carnival on Bilingualism
2. Blogging Carnival on Bilingualism, April
3. January’s Carnival on Bilingualism!