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

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

Children will speak a language, any language, only if they have a reason to, in other words if they are motivated, and one of the trickiest parts of raising a bilingual child is to understand what motivation is and how to trigger it. Praise and reward certainly stand out among the tools most used to motivate children at present, just as punishment was until some time ago. However praise and rewards are not always effective, and can even become counterproductive, particularly in the long run. This doesn’t mean that praise is wrong, but  certainly it needs to be handled with care.

The good news is that if used properly praise actually becomes quite powerful, only, what does “use properly mean”? There are a couple of theories on this, and they all make perfect sense, in fact they are very closely related, so keep reading and try to find what will work best for you and your family. These different theories, or methods, all have the same objective: find a way to praise that will enhance the positive effect, Encouragement, and limit the side effects, Judgment. In fact when we praise someone, as well as when we criticise them, we are judging them and claiming the right to decide what is right or wrong about them. And this can be very disturbing, the idea that anyone, even Mom, can say whether I am right or wrong is not necessarily a pleasant feeling.

So here are few alternative ways to praise without judging, they have been described to promote a balanced education of children, but apply just as well to the education of bilingual children. •

• Active Listening This is one of the most powerful tools described by Gordon in his book PET and is widely utilized in any environment, from family therapy to business training. Active listening basically means to step in another person’s shoes, make a real and sincere effort to understand what they feel (anger, frustration, fear, etc) and say it. The last passage is the key one, it’s not enough to think what the other person feels, you have to spell it out loud (you might be wrong, in that case you’ll just give it another try). BILINGUAL CHILDREN: say the child doesn’t want to speak German, or insists that Mom should speak German to him, then mom could just say: “you don’t like me to speak German to you because you don’t understand everything I say”. This technique is explained very well in this article, based on a really book I strongly recommend: How to talk so kids will listen and listen so kids will talk by Faber e Mazlish
• Praise effort, not results : if a child doesn’t believe in his ability to learn and overcome difficulties he won’t have enough confidence to try and put some effort into it. Funny enough this happens quite often to high performing children, who grow up hearing that they are good and have a natural gift may be, but think they know and they don’t know that they can learn. See this article. BILINGUAL CHILDREN: don’t praise them for what they say and how they say, but for their improvements and for how they are learning
• Descriptive Praise this comes from the Montessori school and the teaching is that instead of evaluating what children do we should just describe it. This has two implications: the child can accept praise without embarrassment, because it is not a judgement but the statement of a fact (you did this and that), secondly this way the child will learn to observe what he has done and elaborate his own judgement. see this article on Descriptive Praise. BILINGUAL CHILDREN: Mummy spoke to you in French and you answered in French. You sang the whole song on your own. This sentence you just said was correct, remember last week you got it wrong? 
• Reflective Listening is very similar to Active Listening, in fact the only reason I list it here is because I find this article very well written, and if you still have the energy definitely worth a look.

As you can see these techniques are very similar, they all point at avoiding judgment and helping the child understand and evaluate what he has done , boosting in self confidence and ability to decide. Punishment and criticism are different issues, we’ll come back to that.

BILINGUALISM STEP BY STEP

Your homework today, I’m sure you guessed already, is to think about these alternative approaches and analyze your own behaviour at the light of these info. Is there something you’d like to change in the way you praise your children? What? Make few specific examples of situation you would now address differently. As usual don’t make vague statements about how you will change everything, clearly identify few specific situations and decide what you will say when they arise.

Picture by A Journey Round My Skull

Related posts:

1. Pro and Contra of Praise
2. How to I brought my child from crying real tears to a happy smile with one question
3. Is praise always a good thing?

 We have already seen that praise, like punishment, is a means of external control. That is, I parent do this because I then expect the child do that. But the ultimate purpose of education is to help children develop a form of internal control, i.e. to do certain things because they’ are right and don’t do others because they are wrong. (See article by Gordon on forms of control). Different yet is the case of bilingualism, we do not expect a child to make a moral decision about speaking one language or another but we would like them to speak them spontaneously, without even thinking about it and and certainly not “to please mom” (this is what I think at least). Is praising the child the right way to go to achieve this? That’s for you to decide. But I would encourage you to think about it, because Praise is a tricky thing.

 Pros and Cons of Praise

PRO

• Praising a child shows what he did is evaluated positively by the adult, gives him the clue that he’s on the right track and is making mom or dad happy
• Praising a child makes the adult feel good too. It’s a means to express their consent and satisfaction (when my son says a new word in English I’m really happy, and to be honest I am pleased with him and ME, praising him I’m actually celebrating my own success)

CONTRA

• Praise can motivate as a prize, but it works only as long as the child wants this reward. It works very well with small children, but when they grow up and become less dependent, or even openly rebellious or independent (sooner or later it will happen, oh dear…), they might not think much of parents’ praise or even dislike it. See article by Gordon on the mechanisms of reward and punishment
• Praise can cause a child (or an adult for what matters) to feel uncomfortable. Most likely you know the uncomfortable feeling of hearing “You are so beautiful!”, “you are so clever!” and the like…
• Praise is addictive. If you praise me every time I say a word in English I actually expect you to praise me every time I do it, and with increasing enthusiasm, else it just won’t cut it. How creative you can you become in praising a child?
• The absence of praise is perceived as a punishment. If you praise me every time I open my mouth and today you don’t I must have said something wrong, but what?
• Praise creates pressure, the child may feel evaluated on the basis of his performance and forced to do even better. Imagine that I always said to A., and others in his presence, that A. and is a really good boy because he speaks really good English. This would put him in the position of having to speak really good English to meet the mom’s expectation. It’s not the same as speaking English because he likes it or because speaking it is natural to him. Definitely not the same thing…
• The child does not learn to evaluate his actions and abilities and to be proud of his achievements, but rather to depend on an external evaluation.

Well I guess what you’re thinking here, the same I thought at first: “What the hell! I just said “Well done” to my son, it can’t be that bad!!” It certainly isn’t, but there is some truth in all these points. For example it is true that being praised can be annoying. Or that praise often seems a unsincere and manipulative. However do not despair. There are ways to praise a child and at the same time avoid all these problems. More than one way in fact, we will see them later and you can receive them automatically by clicking here.

BILINGUALISM STEP BY STEP

Here is the task today: look at the dynamics of praise in your family. Behave in an absolutely normal way, do not try to change your behavior, and observe: How often do you praise your children? In which occasions? How do they react? Mom and dad have different behaviours? How children react to each parent? And above all, what function does praise have in the development of bilingualism in your family?

Related posts:

1. Is praise always a good thing?
2. How to praise to boost motivation
3. 7 Strategies to use when a bilingual child doesn’t want to speak a language

Your 3 year old says a whole new sentence in …. (fill in with your minority language), what do you do? Jump with joy? Open a bottle of champagne? Head for the toy shop to buy him a reward gift?

I bet most parents, like me, would at least be very happy and proud and praise the child, just so s/he knows s/he did a good thing. But actually… is this the best way to go about it?

I started a very light-hearted post, just few thoughts about the importance of praising children for their results, and before I knew I realised I had hit one of the single most critical yet underestimated factors about bilingual education and upbringing: the impact of praise on children’s motivation. There is much more to praise than we might think, and actually praise might not be the smartest way to motivate a child, or an adult for what matters. I think these are very important points, they certainly are for me. I know the reflections I’m doing writing these posts will have a dramatic impact on my parenting style and on A.’s bilingual education. And I think you should all take some time to think about it, and not because I say so, but because some of the brightest minds spent really a lot of time (and money) researching and exploring the dynamics of reward and punishment, so most likely they had some valid points to make.

Who are these minds anyway? People like Thomas Gordon and Maria Montessori to start with.

Thomas Gordon was an American psychologist who developed a model for relationship management based on effective and non confrontational communication. Initially he elaborated a model for optimizing family dynamics and communication, which developed into the Parent Effectiveness Training courses and later in the best seller Parent Effectiveness Training book.  Later the same concepts and techniques have been exported to all areas of communications and relationship management, particularly in professional environments, think topics like team management and leadership and rest assured that they are built on his work. His work had such a major impact that he has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize three times.

There two things I find slightly disturbing about the PET thing: that it is based on the assumption that parenting can and should be taught and that today it is really a big business. That said, these two factors don’t alter the fact that Gordon had some brilliant and powerful ideas, and that familiarizing yourself with his techniques is more likely to make you a better communicator, hence a happier person, parent, friend, professional, name it.

Maria Montessori made a quite but long lasting revolution. She put the child, and the child’s skills and needs, at the center of her pedagogic approach and laid the foundations for a scientific pedagogy, i.e. a pedagogy based on scientific methods and rigour, not on opinions. She brought attention to the importance of freedom (certainly an innovative concept at the beginning of XX century). The child’s freedom according to het is important not only to stimulate and nurture his/her creativity, but also, in less obvious ways, to help him/her gain self regulation and eventually discipline.

So the first interesting thing is that both Gordon and Montessori address the issue of praise (reward) and punishment as one. But one’d normally think they are very different things, aren’t they? Let’s see…

What is Praise?

When a child does a good thing we make sure he knows, we reward him with our praise, we are sincerely happy about his success and share our happiness with him and with others. This way, we think, he’ll feel good about what he has done and will be inclined to do more of the same.

So what is punishment instead? Let’s change few words…

When a child does a bad thing we make sure he knows, we punish him with our disapproval; we are sincerely disappointed about his failure and share our disappointment with him and with others. This way, we think, he’ll feel bad about what he has done and will not be inclined to do more of the same.

Well, there isn’t so much difference between praise and punishment then! Praise and punishment are two sides of the same coin and they share very similar mechanisms. I had never thought about it and I personally find the idea quite shocking, or at least thought provoking. Because I was under the impression that punishment is bad and praise is good. But if they are so similar may be their effects are similar too and I have to reconsider my assumptions (and trust me, I am).

I want to explore this topic in depth, and I will do it on the next few posts so if you want to receive them just click here.

BILINGUALISM STEP BY STEP

This is thinking time more than action time, and I would encourage you to spend some time thinking about these issues to, because you can’t overestimate the importance of praise and reward in children’s education, and in bilingual education specifically.

So today’s homework is to spend some time to think about what impact praise has on YOU, not on your children.

Have you ever been praised and:

• Felt embarrassed or annoyed?
• Felt they were making fun of you?
• Didn’t believe what you were hearing?
• Had a poor opinion of the person who was praising you?
• Felt pressure to deliver or perform above your abilities and capabilities?
• Felt manipulated?
• Thought there was no need to put more effort given that what you had done was already good enough?

If you answered yes to at least one of these questions you start to see that praise can have drawbacks too. We’ll see later all the pro and contras and how subtle changes can make our praise more effective, in all senses. To receive the updates click here.

Picture by annthrop

Related posts:

1. Pro and Contra of Praise
2. How to praise to boost motivation
3. The Importance of a Social Context (think Playgroup) for Bilingual Children