Tuesday 4 March 2008

Color me bilingual

My mother's recent visit has proved its added bilingual value with Suzanne's delayed reaction. In the week since my mother left, Suzanne has made huge advances in her English. Funny how worried I always am about her hearing too much French because, to be honest, I can't name many things she says in French at this point, barring sentence structure which I guess is pretty important.

Much to our surprise, Suzanne knows her colors. All of a sudden. Two weeks ago she could more or less identify red, yellow and blue. Last week she could identify pink and green. And then this morning, out of the blue (no pun intended), she was sitting on the floor "reading" ABC by Bruno Munari and pointing to various pictures as I got her clothes out: eye, mouth, banana, hello? (aka a xylophone. Phone. Telephone. Clever, huh?) boat, yellow. And I look down and see she's pointing to the yellow yacht. Then she closes the book and says "ABC". So I ask her where the A is. She shows me. Where's the B. She shows me. Where's the C. She shows me. I'm flabbergasted.

Ok ok, all parents think their kids are smart. But are all parents dreading the day their child comes home from school with a project about Clovis and the beginning of France because there's no way you'll be able to answer all their questions and may not even understand half of what they're saying? Thank you internet for making bilingual child-rearing so much easier.

1 comment:

Sarah @ Baby Bilingual said...

She sounds perfectly brilliant! I love the "hello-xylophone" connection.

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