The Parenting Thread

[GoktimusPrime]

JOY!

Man... it must be baby season now. My cousin (well his wife) had a baby in late December, and just last week a friend of mine had a baby too!

[Bartrim]

Something to make my fellow nerds jealous (a co-workers husband has already shown his envy) Josh is a binary baby. His date and time of birth is 10/01/10 at 10:10

[Tabias Prime]

Something to make my fellow nerds jealous (a co-workers husband has already shown his envy) Josh is a binary baby. His date and time of birth is 10/01/10 at 10:10

Truely a Bill Gates in the making...

[GoktimusPrime]

lol!11100100010111!~

[kup]

Just want to announce to everyone that Joshua Noah Puglisi was born today at 10:10am

Congratulations!

[Lambert29]

I've heard that it is better to teach your kid one language during his/her to avoid confusion on his/her part, which language will he/she needs to use. Then you can eventually teach them another language when they reach the age when they can already process things easily. Around 8 years old or above maybe.

[GoktimusPrime]

That's a misconception that occurs because in the early years multilingual children will confuse words between languages. This is because during infancy children are often unaware that the different languages that they're speaking are actually different languages, thus they will mix them up, leading adults to think that they're becoming "confused." For example they might ask you, "Daddy, where's mein Buch?" ("Daddy, where's my book?") - in this case blending English and German into the same sentence. The child may not be aware that it's unconventional to blend languages together like that. After all, they're still learning about the conventions of the adult world; but give them time and they'll quickly learn to separate the two.

And this is where the "une personne une langue" (one person one language) principle becomes useful; getting one parent to consistently speak in one language to the child, and another parent to speak another language to that child. For example, the father may speak only German while the mother may speak only Spanish. The key is to keep things consistent and the child learns to switch between the languages as a form of code switching.

Around 8 years old or above maybe.

Not necessary IMO. I once met a family who had a 7 year old daughter. Her father always spoke to her in German and her mother always spoke to her in Chinese. Father and mother spoke to each other in English. By age 7 their daughter was already fluent in English, German and Chinese. We were taking a road trip and they were sitting in the back seat with the daughter in the middle. At one stage she turned to her father and asked him, "Ich möchte Wasser trinken?" (asking to drink some water), and he told her, "fragen Sie Ihre Mutter." ("ask your mother"), so she turned to mummy and asked her, "媽媽，我想要喝水". This 7 year old girl switched between speaking to Daddy in German and Mummy in Chinese _effortlessly_. I was quite amazed at how she could do this, and her father explained that both he and his wife have been applying Une personne une langue since she was born.

I've spoken to other parents who told me that they decided to try and teach other languages to their children later, but found that it was too late because by something like age 8 you've already firmly established family habits, routines, rules/expectations etc. I'm not saying it's impossible, but it could be quite difficult, unless the language you're instructing happens to be a dominantly spoken community language (in the case of living in Australia; English, e.g.: a migrant family switching to speaking English at home after speaking another language for the earlier years of a child's life). Because what you're suggesting is to enforce a language dominance shift in a child. Possible, but teaching a child multiple languages from infancy means that a dominance shift is unnecessary.

This site lists the advantages and disadvantages of raising children multilingually; as far as the child is concerned, there are only advantages. The disadvantage is that it's more effort (and possibly money in education) for the parent. I can understand the money part. Our daughter is only 7 months old now and already we have an entire bookcase dedicated to her that we intend to gradually fill with her books in three languages. I've already started looking for a Community Language Saturday School to enrol her in the future (I've already found one that's not too far from where we live, but I've yet to go and check the place out). But even if you can't afford books and tuition fees, simply speaking to the child in the target language is sufficient enough for them to become fluent (if not literate). Lots of children in developing countries are able to speak multiple languages even despite being illiterate in them. e.g.: a poor Tanzanian child who speaks Swahili and Arabic fluently (although may not be able to read/write).

See also:
+ Cognitive Advantages to Bilingualism; "Current research leads to the belief that (fluency in two languages) can add to the cognitive flexibility of the child." / "results showed that...biliterates had the highest levels of literacy"
+ Multilingualism: "Despite the differences in theories, most studies agree that the earlier children learn a second language, the better off they are (cognitively speaking)"

[blackoptimus]

Curious to know, is it legal to have a kid at 16?

[Bartrim]

Curious to know, is it legal to have a kid at 16?

I think so... even though it shouldn't be.

[GoktimusPrime]

I believe you need to be 18 years or over in order to have legal custody/guardianship of a minor. I often come across students who are living with legal guardians/caregivers who aren't their parents, and I'm quite sure that they must be 18 or over. Laws may differ across states/territories.