Comments for Cherry Blossom Adventures

Comment on No method… by Miss Behaving

Miss Behaving — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 12:04:58 +0000

I agree with the sentiment whatever works for your family.
To be honest I didn’t really think about it too much when my first child was born, I couldn’t speak Japanese when I came here so we spoke all English at home. Both DDs speak good English both DSs do not. One son, could not care less about eigo ( dai kirai) he can barely read and write either. Other son when I remind him to speak E he will but it’s a mish mash, but he reads and writes fairly well and he is interested, I see him as a WIP. What happened in the middle was Japanese took over our house, their friends in the house, my friends in, we tried to preserve an English environment but as they went to school it got harder to do that, (or it did for me anyway). Both my sons went to Japanese daycare from age 1 and Japanese was their dominant language from the get go. My Dds both speak to me in English but to each other in Japanese.
It is what it is, I wish I’d tried harder with my sons when they were little but life got in the way.

Comment on No method… by Jane

Jane — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 06:06:21 +0000

I don’t have kids, but this is something I think about a lot. After being around friends and cousins that are bilingual (Laotion/English) and trilingual (French/English/Haitian Creole), they have said that what to do when the kid starts speaking to you in Japanese is to ignore them. Of course, not if it is an emergency, but as if they were to say, “Oishi, ne!” Just pretend as if they didn’t say anything. They said usually the kid gets pretty frustrated but that eventually they come around. And of course this sets in at a certain age. A smaller child won’t get it but once you feel they are old enough, set the rule and stick to it.

Another friend did the whole, “Daddy is sad because he is away from home so please speak to him in English. ” Sounds a bit cheap/cheesey but the little boy actually told me once (after I had commented on his English), “I have to speak English because daddy needs an English friend.” This probably works better with a OPOL household, although the mom spoke great English too. the boy is only five so not sure if he will buy it when he is older, but maybe by then he’ll be so used to English that he won’t think about it.

Also, if you are worried about exposure/practice, set up skype dates with cousins, grandparents, other bilingual kids, etc. Do pen pals with another MIJ family as all kids LOVE mail! Don’t force it but make it casual, like, “Wouldn’t it be fun to call grandma tomorrow!! You can tell her all about the new shirt you got at JUSCO.” Or, “Wouldn’t it be fun to send postcards to so and so!”

And if possible, get them alone with people who only speak English. That sounds weird, but what I mean is take an chance you have to send them out with Grandma, etc. When my Haitian cousins were growing up, they would fly with one parent to America. That parent would stay a few days and then leave them with the family. They would spend a month with us only speaking English and would soon be pretty fluent. Then the second parent came to pick them up. Of course this started when they were like 10 I think. And then when they got to high school they came for a whole year, kind of like being a home-stay kid.

Comment on No method… by Jen

Jen — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 05:03:49 +0000

I don’t think we had a method in mind before having kids. Actually, I am pretty sure that I didn’t think much about it, just figured that my kids would be bilingual because we spoke both Japanese and English. I was pretty ignorant to the amount of work bilingualism (and kids!) takes.

Now we try hard to do ML@H, but my husband does speak a lot of Japanese. It’s a work in progress.

Everything in parenting is about what works for you! No method is perfect, it’s all a work in progress I think.

Comment on Goals & intentions {SYL12: Week 6} by Deb @ Home life simplified

Deb @ Home life simplified — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 04:22:16 +0000

I agree that being realistic (ie with the exercise etc) is great – it’s also great that some of your goals are ones that you can knock off in 1 hit (rather than ongoing processes – the savings account is one example). Good luck!!

Comment on Vision board {SYL12: week 7}… by Deb @ Home life simplified

Deb @ Home life simplified — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 04:16:43 +0000

Great board – so many great phrases and love that you put your mission statement as part of it – I have kept journals on and off for 27 years! I find it is so helpful but I have not devoted enough time to it since I had kids and only got back into it regularly last year – love that it has finally become my bedtime ritual (i am currently doing a journal where i write in a few sentences a day – some gratitude, some reflections, some documenting moments in time)

Comment on No method… by Alyce {Blossom Heart}

Alyce {Blossom Heart} — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 03:39:05 +0000

Really interesting to read this! And all the comments. Jonathan will be going to kindy speaking a few words, and understanding more (and presumable even more once we get there) so I’m really interested to see how much he’ll learn from there. Me too for that matter, lol.

Comment on No method… by Samantha

Samantha — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 13:16:49 +0000

At first we started with opol but after I noticed Alex speaking so much Japanese (like, 7 out of 10 words he could say.. Lol) I changed it abruptly. Now we are about 75% minority at home. Yuki isn’t actually home that much but Alex loves to copy what he says.
I’ve also got Alex in english school obviously… Aside from all of this Japanese still continues to be pretty big for him. I’ve come to the conclusion that a lot of Japanese baby words are way easier to say than English words so I feel that’s a big factor. One thing I’m starting to notice with him is that he’s beginning to differinciate between the two. He will tell a Japanese person samui yo and will tell a non Japanese or someone he knows speaks English cold. He’s starting to mix the two together to form sentences like “look! Kyuukyuusha coming soon!! Are? Coming nai yo.” or something like that. He will tell me come on and tell yuki oide, he will tell me wait and he will tell yuki matte. It’s definitely interesting but I spend a lot of time talking to Alex about everything that’s going on or just talking about nothing… I hope it works out. If all else fails I’ll take him to the states for a year straight and then let him come back… Lol

Comment on No method… by Melanie

Melanie — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 12:34:15 +0000

Up until now we have mostly been OPOL but since the majority (99.9%, that stupid おいしい keeps trying to make an appearance) is English, he does use English words with her (more, kiss, bread). But I told Taka if I was going to go back to work and she was going to go into daycare then I wanted us to use as much English at home as possible so that he better get used to trying to use English at home.

I think if he actually learns along with Misora, he will be ok. He knows more English than he speaks but its getting him to actually speak it thats the problem.

We`ll see how it goes. I managed to get Misora to stop saying the Japanese words she knew and the only thing I changed was the fact that we stopped watching morning Japanese TV.

Comment on No method… by illahee

illahee — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 12:21:03 +0000

we do minority language at home. i’ve always wanted to do that. yoshi speaks excellent english, so this works out really well for us. in our family, i seem to be the only one who never worried about this. i know that the PIL were a bit sad when hiro (and then sasha) couldn’t really speak to them at 2 and 3 years old, but that is no longer a problem.

i don’t know if it’s because i studied linguistics at university and actually had classes on language acquisition, but i knew that if they had english at home and japanese at school, as long as there were no learning disabilities, they would be fine. and they all are.

the other day i was talking with an australian man, who is married to a japanese woman and they have a son together. somehow (as it always does), the subject of their being bilingual came up and i told him that we only speak english at home. that hiro actually went to preschool without a word of japanese. and he found that very strange. he said he had never heard of that before. and that brought me up short. really? did hiro really have no japanese when he started school? i guess he did *know* a couple of words, like arigatou or whatever (from spending time with PIL) but he honestly didn’t speak a word of japanese when he started school. and he picked it up so fast. by his second year of preschool he was correcting *my* japanese (which isn’t perfect by any means!) and i knew he would be alright.

i am not trying to say that my way is the only right way. studies show that ML@H and OPOL work equally well. there are so many dynamics in this that i really don’t think you can say my way (generically speaking) is better than your way. even the kids themselves are a factor. tommy speaks so much japanese at home right now it isn’t even funny. my newest phrase around the house is, “english, please!” but i still think that all three of my kids are stronger in english than japanese. i don’t know how much longer that will last.

Comment on No method… by Nay

Nay — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 11:40:20 +0000

It’s going to be interesting reading what other people have to say about this topic…

I never know if the decision Naoki and I made to do ML@H is in the best interest of Leilah or not. But we are consistant with it and for now it seems to be working… I don’t know what the future is going to hold and I honestly think I would be devasted if Leilah started using Japanese with me. Only because our relationship has always been in English. It would just seem off…