Best4Future Blog: Bringing Up Baby Bilingual

Baby’s growth, month 20

Like a Pandora box was opened, once DD found there was such thing called crayon in the world, she couldn’t stop drawing with it, everywhere! When I chased her from one room to another to wipe out her scribbles, I kept thinking: at least, this is better than painting with milk (see Baby’s growth, month 15).

This month, DD fell in love with everything I had. She attempted to put on my coat, hat and glasses. In particular, she loved to try on my shoes. She literally stepped in my shoes and walked around cumbersomely.

I also noticed her pretend playing with toy animals and her dolly. She took over the “mommy” role by feeding her dolly milk or oranges (and making a mess at the same time), carrying the teddy bear wherever she went, helping the stuffed giraffe walk, or giving her toys and dolly big hugs and kisses. I was happy to see these signs that she was learning to empathize with others.

She continued to show affection as she grew up. She loved to sit beside me when I read stories to her. She continued to help me with household chores, everything from handing Daddy the towel when he was done with the shower, to taking groceries upstairs, to emptying the dishwasher.

A budding artist?
Experts say that drawing with a crayon involves fine motor skills such as grasping and holding, as well as hand-eye coordination and imagination. Therefore drawing should be encouraged, not banned. And parents should count to ten before responding to their mini-Michelangelo’s artistic expression.

It was easy to say than to do, especially when I caught DD in the midst of redecorating. To make things even annoying, she didn’t like drawing onto a piece of paper. Instead she enjoyed expressing her artistic nature on the wall, the table, the back of her highchair and the refrigerator.

But, still, instead of assailing her artistic creation, I tried to be a supportive mother. I cleaned up her scribbles, directed her to a special book that was reserved just for her to draw on, and kept an eye on her as soon as she had crayons.

The strategy worked fine until one day I found some scratches on the front and the side of the refrigerator.

They were not made by crayons, since I took them out of her reach. They were made by….a chisel! DD doodle on the refrigerator with a chisel since she couldn’t find her crayons. And she was out of my sight no more than 30 seconds!

At that time, all I could say was: great art (in this case, maybe) comes from great pain (my pain, for sure)!

Mommy, mommy, follow me!
This month, DD fell in love with everything I had. She attempted to put on my coat, hat and glasses. She wanted to use my tooth paste to brush her teeth. She was fascinated with my handbag and was always digging inside it for treasure. She opened my purse and shuffled all the cards. In particular, she loved to try on my shoes. She literally stepped in my shoes and walked around cumbersomely.

Besides, she demanded my undivided attention. Now she was not satisfied at walking around like a general or admiral alone (see Baby’s growth, month 14), she wanted followers. At first, I was fine with following her. After several rounds, I was bit of tired and also I wanted to return to the sink to finish the dishes. So I escaped from the cycle and went back to do my chores.

Quickly DD found out her follower went astray, she was not happy. She moaned and dragged me back to the line.

“Mommy has to do dishes.” I said to her.

She looked at me, like saying “that is not my business”. This time, to make sure I would not sneak out, she kept looking back to check me.

What could I do?

We Chinese have a cute colloquium: when the higher authorities have polices, the lower localities will have their counter-measures.

Since DD, the higher authority, demanded me to follow her lead, my counter-measure was to pick up the phone and call my mom, while following her. I chatted with my mother and we had a good conversation before our little general finally got tired and dismissed me.

Now who was the one who laughs last?

A cat-and-mouse game
One day, when I followed DD to circle the living room. I suddenly had an idea.

I paused in the middle of the loop, turned around, walked in the opposite direction and caught DD in surprise. She was quite excited to run into me. She giggled and laughed. Then I followed her and sought for another opportunity to do it again.

She liked this game, and quickly she learned to play this game.

One night, Grandma and Grandpa came to visit. DD dragged Grandma to join in her walk. Grandma was new to this game, so she was happy to circle the living room after our proud little general.

After a while Grandma had an idea. She paused in the middle of the loop, turned around, walked in the opposite direction and caught DD in surprise. DD burst into laughing.

But when Grandma played the same trick, she couldn’t find DD.

DD was not coming as she was supposed to be. Where was she?

We all got up to look for her.

There she is! I found her hiding behind the chair, smiling at us.

Instead of circling the room as she always did and being expected to be caught, she sneaked out of the loop and turned herself from a mouse to a cat.

What a smart little mouse (see My baby is a rat)!

I want to make friends, but grandma is mine!
According to Heidi’s What to Expect the Toddler Years , most young toddlers aren’t capable of sociality in the adult sense. They are still playing side-by-side (known as “parallel play”) instead of with each other. Furthermore, the majority of toddlers don’t yet possess enough empathy for others to work or play harmoniously in pairs or groups.

Therefore, I was really happy to see DD approach other kids to make friends, but I didn’t apply any pressure or get personally involved. Instead, most of time, I stayed neutral (and nearby at the same time), and let DD socialize with other kids in her own nature and at her own pace.

Every Tuesday, if the weather permitted, Grandma and I would take DD to the local library to attend the story time organized by the local school district. DD was thrilled to see so many kids around her age running, playing, talking, and laughing together. It was a perfect opportunity for her to socialize with other children.

Normally, when she approached them, trying to touch their shirts or shoes silently, most kids looked at her without saying anything either. One time, one girl, approximately three year old, gave her a smile when DD touched her shirt. That smile encouraged DD to make further movements.

DD sat down beside the little girl and her sister during the story time. Although DD didn’t say anything, she was trying to be friendly to them. When the story time ended, the little girl gave DD a big hug.

DD was not prepared for this kind of emotional gesture coming suddenly from a stranger. But she quickly adapted the situation and extended her arms and gave that little girl a big hug too.

Later, when she spotted that little girl’s sister sitting near a window, she came over and sat close to her. They sat side by site for few minutes. Although there was no language exchange between them, I could tell DD was as content as she could be.

DD was eager to make friends, but she had limits.

One day, after the story time, grandma took DD to the kid room in the library. There is a green toy tree hanging on the wall. The tree branch can be spanned to show the alphabetic letters hidden under and the tree truck has a door which has animal pictures inside.

Grandma rotated the tree branch to show DD the letters. But she was more fascinated by other toys, so she walked to another end of the room. While she was not interested, another boy was. So grandma read him the letter while whirling the tree and showed him the animals when she opened the door on the tree truck.

DD was playing by herself in the other end of the room. Suddenly, she marched back to the toy tree and slammed the door on the tree trunk. Then she pushed the boy. That was the first time I saw DD doing aggressive behavior to another child.

The boy looked at her, confused. Seeing that boy not moving, DD pushed that boy again. Grandma immediately noticed the situation. She took DD away from the boy and quickly distracted her with a new activity.

“She must be jealous”, Grandma told me later on.

I agreed. Obviously friendship was joyful, but Grandma cannot be shared.

Tags: Baby’s growth, month 20 |

Baby's Growth, From Mommy, Second Year | mommy |

March 2, 2010 4:39 pm |

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How to help children learn Chinese characters? (Method 1)

How to help children learn Chinese characters?

That is another one-million-dollar question (find out more one-million-dollar questions in this blog!). And I am sure this one has long intrigued linguists, biologist, psychologists, educators and alike as well, since Chinese characters, which comprise the world’s longest continuously used writing system, are often thought of as overly complex.

The fact is, they are complicated!

First of all, let’s figure out which standard sets of Chinese characters children should learn, traditional Chinese or simplified Chinese?

Essentially, traditional Chinese and simplified Chinese are the same language. The main difference lies in their written appearance, although the grammatical structure and spoken form are basically the same.

Traditional Chinese characters are currently used in Taiwan (Republic of China), Hong Kong and Macau. They were also used in mainland China before the People’s Republic of China (PRC) simplified them in the 1950s and 1960s. Some of these characters are extremely complex, composed of more than 25 strokes.

When the Communists took power in Mainland China in 1949, the new government initiated a reform of written characters with the aim to eliminate illiteracy. The reform was based mostly on popular cursive forms embodying graphic or phonetic simplifications of the traditional forms.

Hence, simplified Chinese is, in fact, a simplification of traditional Chinese characters, mainly through the elimination of the complex variants and reduction of the number of the strokes of which a complex character is composed.

Some characters were simplified by applying regular rules; for example, by replacing all occurrences of a certain component with a simpler variant, such as

Some characters were simplified by Changing the phonetic. For example,

Some simplified characters omit entire components and are very dissimilar to and unpredictable from traditional characters. Like,

And some were reformed by merging several characters into a newly created and simpler character. For an instance,

Finally, many characters were left untouched by simplification, and are thus identical between the traditional and simplified Chinese orthographies.

In this process, some 13,500 traditional characters were replaced by around 7,000 simplified characters.

At present, simplfied Chinese is the official language of the People’s Republic of China (PRC or mainland China) and Singapore. In general, schools in Mainland China, Malaysia and Singapore use simplified characters exclusively, while schools in Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan use traditional characters mainly.

Until this point, the question still remains: which standard sets of Chinese characters children should learn, traditional Chinese or simplified Chinese?

My advice would be to learn simplified Chinese rather than traditional Chinese. And here are my reasons:

Firstly, as you can see, it will take a significantly extra amount of time and effort to learn traditional Chinese, not to mention to master the full range of characters.

Secondly, as I said in Why children should learn Chinese?, China is rising. Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Fogel predicted early in 2010 that China’s economy alone would hit $123 trillion in 2040, three times what the entire world produced in 2000 and more than twice the world’s current output. Per-capita income will be $85000, more than triple that in the European Union. (Data comes from Investor Business Daily, A10, Tuesday, January 12, 2010.)

With reported average GDP 9.5% growth of 10% (even in 2009, during a global financial crisis, China reportedly grew at an 8% pace and is predicted to grow 9.5% in 2010), that is a real possibility. Ten percent growth leads to a doubling of the economy in just seven years. At 2.5%, where the U.S. is now, it takes about 29 years. (Data comes from Investor Business Daily, A10, Tuesday, January 12, 2010.)

Remember, simplified Chinese is mainland China’s official written language. Besides, outside Mainland China, most Chinese speakers in the world use simplified characters.

Therefore, from a strategical, economical, practical and cultural point of view, let your children learn simplified Chinese characters.

Related post:
Why children should learn Chinese?

Tags: How to help children learn Chinese characters? (Method 1), How to learn Chinese characters? (Part 1), learn simplified Chinese characters |

Bilingual Baby, From Mommy, Second Year | mommy |

February 25, 2010 7:55 pm |

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