Readers !

Oh dear, as my daughter would say with a fake British accent....it's been 6 months since my last post!

But I just had to share my joy ! What joy and pride the mother of a bilingual child feels when they catch not one but BOTH children reading in the minority language!

Reading for both kids has been a challenge.

For Max, almost 8, it's been more of a laziness thing. He's known how to read since he was 5. He taught himself to read in English at the same time. But he just simply refused to acknowledge that he actually knew how to read. Until about 6 months ago when he got hooked on a series of French books, Les Mystérieuses Cité d'Or. Max is an organized little dude and likes to know the next step. So I think he finds it reassuring to read series. I finish book 1 and then there's book 2. So I was surprised when he kept resisting the Magic Tree House...but then I began reading him one a couple days ago. He finished alone in bed last night and this morning went to the book case, took out the next 5 books in the series, and brought 2 to school "just in case I get bored".

So after finding Max in his bed reading in English alone, I went down to see Suzanne (now 11) who was reading Percy Jackson in ENGLISH on her kindle. I was like, WHAAAAT???? And I had to high five myself  and then high five my husband.

Suzanne is not a "reader". She loves books, but doesn't have the patience or the confidence. I think she believes she isn't a good reader because that's what they tell her at school. But I remember being that same kid. I was in the lower level reading group because I was a slow reader. The message that sends to you is "you don't read well" so you end up not wanting to read.

When we gave Suzanne a kindle for her birthday, the purpose was twofold. First, she wanted to be able to play her music in her room which meant an internet connection but we didn't want to give her an ipod or other. Second, we thought hey she can download books. So my husband found her Percy Jackson in English. This past year at school, she studied and loved Greek mythology. And now she can't put Percy down! She doesn't understand all the words, but I tell my kids that that's ok. For instance, she asked me what a "card came" is. It turns out she didn't understand "report card came". So there are cultural limits but who cares! My kids are readers. In French. In English!

Next year, Max will begin at Sophie Germain in the international section where Suzanne has been the past 3 years. Suzanne will be starting collège, French middle school, which I am extremely traumatized about (but that's for another post). She'll be in the section britanique doing 3 extra hours of English a week. I am really pleased with the system so far, considering it's public school. But I petrified...

OPOL still lives

November...has it been THAT long since my last post? Oh my...

I love this blog and want to keep it up, but my brain can only do so many things at once. And right now it's working on a cookbook for kids. I'm working with LittleBilingues, publishers of bilingual books for kids, to make an English cookbook to help kids learn English. It's so much fun! and a lot of work! and requires a lot of brain power...

But back to what I love about this blog...documenting my kids' bilingual adventures, both for posterity but also for anyone who may be raising their kids bilingual and needs some advice or a push or some inspiration...

Suzanne is turning 9 in May. NINE! She has entered the second half of her first year in Section Internationale. She loves Thursdays most because she learns in French, Dutch (30 minutes a week) and English (3 hours a week). The older she gets, the more I realize that English as Suzanne's first language was not a fluke. She has always preferred English, even though I am working and the majority of her time has always been in French. But as she gets older, socializes almost only in French and starts to appreciate reading more and more (she's always loved books. In fact, book was one of her first words!), I realize that the girl is just really good in languages. Her English capacity is beyond my wildest dreams. I never imagined that she'd be so fluent without spending more time in an English speaking environment, needless to say I never imagined she'd  teach her self to read in English! At any given time, she's working on at least 3 books...mostly in English! I think changing schools and integrating the section internationale was good for her self confidence for many reasons. But mostly, she realized that she speaks English really well and it's not bad for a kids to be the best at something! (to see stories on Suzanne's linguistic progress over the years, click here).

Max is 5 1/2 already...and he continues to be all boy. In the past year, he has discovered legos. And just as legos require a certain amount of structure and analysis, he applies the same logic to reading. Max can read better than Suzanne did at the same age because he likes systems. He's a very intelligent little boy with a lot of energy. Personally, I think he's bored in school...he's punished a lot because he likes to talk...A LOT. Max likes to understand things. And then he likes to explain the things he's understood to anyone who will listen to him. He knows everything you could possibly want to know about super heroes and is very proud to know all their names in both French and English.  You may remember that Max's English was a struggle for a while. But now it's solid. He continues to have a cute little accent, but like his sister, he speaks only English to me. And he uses such precise language in both French and English, which is part and parcel of his personality. The other day, he said, "Mom, I managed to ...something something." and that's exactly what he meant. He managed to do it. He didn't just do it.

This post from 2012 documented how each of the kids deals with bilingualism, fitting it into their own personal rules and order. And looking back at it, it all still holds true! I had some cool insight back then (when I had time to think about all this more!)

Some general observations I'd like to share, after all these years of strict OPOL:

• the hard work continues to pay off! The system is so ingrained in their minds, that they have trouble speaking French to me when their friends are there
• I am no longer scared of them speaking French to me because I know it's not a permanent thing.
• authenticity is important to the kids. When they tell me what happened during the day, and what so and so said, they tell me in French because that's what the kid said! For them, it would be artificial to translate from French to English. 
•  correcting them is frustrating. I was always so scared of them not speaking correctly, that I got in the habit of correcting them mid-sentence. This is a huge point of frustration for my daughter. I'm trying to stop it, and just let her go on, and correct after, but old habits die hard...
• homework is challenging. At first, I did my daughter's homework in English. But I'm finding that sometimes, when it's a stressful topic like math, then I have to switch into French. And it's ok! It doesn't impinge on our English speaking at all. 

What it feels like to be made fun of by a 7 year old

I think about this blog often, I really do. But I just don't get those early morning flashes of inspiration I used to get. Those flashes now go to my new venture which I will write more about some other time.

That  said, I have a lot to report about my bilingual babies who are no longer babies, but are real people now! They are sometimes annoying people, sometimes funny people, but they are always my favorite people.

The bilingual barriers are breaking down while other ones are built up. It's still a constant battle, but an enjoyable one that I no longer worry about losing. I'm not ready to say yet that I won, but I can definitely say that I am on the winner's team :)

Suzanne is now 7 1/2 years old and full of surprises. When she opens her mouth to speak English, she sounds like a small version of me, New Jersey drawl and all. Although her English speaking has never been a problem, she was very daunted by reading in French so I didn't try to teach her to read of write in English. But now, she has taught herself. Much of it is based on French phonetics, but she's doing it and we owe a lot of thanks to the magazine, I love English for Kids which we started getting at the public library. She loves reading the magazine while listening to the CDs at the same time.

Max is 4 1/2. His Germanic accent in both of his languages has evolved. He now speaks with a perfect little French accent in both French and English. My husband and I have various theories about why this is : maybe he's copying his father (who doesn't have a French accent in English), maybe he's lazy, maybe he doesn't have good ears, or maybe he's more focused on the precision of the word choice than on the actual pronunciation.

The hardest part at the moment is making the time to read to them in English. Nightly reading in English has always been a keystone for me and the kids. But with homework, later working hours, and the kids growing up, it's getting harder and harder to find the time. This is more of a weak point in Max's English education than Suzanne's since she got a solid 5 years of it while Max only had 3.

Another point that is becoming increasingly difficult for me is homework. I struggle about how to do homework with Suzanne : English or French? I am a real OPOL purist and speaking French to my kids just seems wrong. But I've had to adapt. For example, when Suzanne has math homework, I can't very well say "eighty-five + thirty = one hundred and fifteen" when she's still trying to figure out the difference between "quatre-vingt-cinq" and "quatre-vingt quinze" (85 and 95, respectively). BUT (and there's always a but), when I do her homework with her, she comments on my accent which she finds very amusing. So it's hard to keep your concentration and authority in a foreign language when your 7 year old is making fun of you...

Second language literacy

This post from Bilingual Monkeys really caught my eye. Adam is an American father raising his kids bilingually in Japan with his Japanese wife. As I go through his blog posts, it constantly reassures me that my strict approach to my children’s bilingualism is the biggest ingredient in their bilingual success. Adam has also been really strict, maybe even more strict than I am!

I’ve mentioned previously, that I chose not to introduce reading in English until my daughter, Suzanne, had mastered French reading. This does not mean that I do not read to her in English or teach her sight words or answer her English spelling questions.  It simply means that I have not taught her about spelling and grammar and punctuation. I have not taught her that bout “th” or “sh” or the difference between “see” and “sea”.  But since she is an inquisitive little girl, she went and looked for it herself. In her own words, “I have a lot of questions in my head and I need to ask them”.

So during our recent trip back to New Jersey for Halloween and fall, I told Suzanne I would bring her to a bookstore to get her some English books. But during the week leading up to the big bookstore trip, Suzanne surprised me by reading signs all around her, asking me about words she’d seen in magazines and even reading entire books (easy readers) to herself! She wrote notes to her father and her grandparents in English; she played restaurant with her grandmother and wrote out full menus. And when we got back to France yesterday, she asked me why the word butter has a “t” in it when we pronounce it “budder”.

I am so thoroughly impressed with my little girl and her reading abilities in French. And even more impressed with her self-taught reading in English!

 

Although Suzanne is much more fluid in French reading, her English reading is coming along. As for her speaking, you would never be able to guess English was her "weaker" language just from speaking to her. Where her little brother has a slight French accent (not sure if this is an improvement over the Germanic accent he used to have), Suzanne's English is all me (ie a toned down NJ).

 

This week, we will be meeting with the director  of Ecole Sophie Germain, the public school in Lille which hosts the bilingual class my daughter will be going into next year (3rd grade/CE2).

 

PS If you haven't yet visited Bilingual Monkeys, you should do so. It's a fun and inspiring site for bilingual parents.

No doubt bilingualism

I have doubts about lots of things in life; I second guess myself; I ruminate; I repeat....

But one thing I no longer have doubts about is how I'm raising my children bilingually. I purposely said "I" and not "we" because, although my husband is wonderful and supportive, he has admitted himself that I am the one doing the work since all he has to do is speak French (and use some extra brain power to cut through franglais from time to time).

Over the weekend we  got together with a couple of bilingual families, all of us with 7 year old daughters who just entered 2nd grade in the French school system. This timely gathering (which ended with a lot of empty bottles of wine and beer) had a purpose : the discuss the pros and cons of putting our girls in the classe bilingue at Ecole Sophie Germain as of next September. What exceptional about this class is that the kids are mostly real bilinguals, learning together in a public school (which we fully support!), with 5 extra hours of English per week. In the end, what's pushing us toward the classe bilingue is not so much the extra English (since it's not that much in the end) but the additional social benefit that our daughter will gain by being with other kids "like her". By this, I mean other kids with a dual culture, dual language and all the complications and complexities that go with it. And, let's be honest here, kids with a certain something different that makes them not as French as the others.

I see this difference every morning when I drop my kids off. I give Suzanne a kiss and say, "have a good day!" while I hear most of the French parents saying, "travaille bien" to their kids. It's not the same thing. The way I speak - both in terms of word choice and structure - has effected Suzanne and Max's thinking patterns in a way that monolingual French kids can't understand. I'm not debasing my monolingual peers; I'm just saying that my kids are different and I want them to be PROUD of that difference because it's not easy being different (take it from this ex-spaz).

So if you have read my updates on my kids' bilingualism over the past 5 years, you'll know that this is truly a success story that I am very proud of. I am proud of my kids for being so incredibly smart and patient. I am proud of my husband for being so supportive of all the language and cultural choices he's helped me with. And I am proud of myself for sticking it out through the tough times (when Max would only speak French and when Suzanne called me maman).

Am I bilingual?

The Meriam Webster dictionary defines bilingual as "using or able to use two languages especially with equal fluency". According to this definition, I am bilingual.

According to the Common European Framework, I am level C2, proficient user, in French because I can:

•  understand with ease virtually everything heard or read.
•  summarise information from different spoken and written sources, reconstructing arguments and accounts in a coherent presentation.
• express him/herself spontaneously, very fluently and precisely, differentiating finer shades of meaning even in the most complex situations.

The people in my French neighborhood think I'm bilingual. Yet, I would never call myself that. Yes, my children are bilingual because they have grown up speaking two different languages. But not me. I learned French at school in New Jersey, came to France to study, did a Masters in France and started my life here. I now speak English most of the time : at home (where we are OPOL), at work where the working language is English, and socially where my closest friends are native English speakers.

When I first came to France in 1996 until I started my current job in 2003, I spoke French 75% of the time. When I started my current job, the amount of time I spoke French per day dropped to about 30%. And since my first child was born in 2006, the amount of English I speak per day has climbed to the point where there are days I don't utter a single word of French. It even got to the point where I barely hear French, except for the French half of our family conversations (ie when my husband speaks to the kids or me).

But during our vacation this summer - we stayed in France and didn't see any English speakers - I noticed a few phenomenons:

• I am so used to our family's linguistic gymnastics that I do not realize that I speak English to people who I should be speaking French to
• After having a couple weeks in a Franco-French environment, my English became "tainted" and I had trouble finding some English words and mixed them up with french expressions.
• And finally, reading in French came back quickly. After a hiatus of too many years to count, I picked up a book in French and began reading it. Although it was slow going for the first hundred pages. After a while, I was reading in the same way I read in English. And just like in English, there were certain words I don't know the precise definition of but I could read in the context.

So am I bilingual? I don't know. I'm more bilingual that most Americans. But I have an accent, I make mistakes in French and my kids are constantly correcting me. I still can't pronounce words like soleil (sun) and bouilloire (electric kettle) but I can read 600 page books in French.

So what is bilingualism? Do you consider yourself bilingual?

Mommy, don't eat grave

During vacation, the kids get to watch tv in the morning. And we get to sleep a little more.

The kids were more than happy to sit in front of bad 21st century versions of my favorite 20th century cartoons like Garfield and Scooby Doo. And they were also happy to learn about consumerism.

I started to worry when they started chatting to each other about the chocolate cereal and how funny the rabbit was. And last week, my just-4 year old boy looked at me and said, "Mommy, you shouldn't eat trop grave." So I asked him for an explanation since I wasn't quite sure what he was talking about since grave in French means serious.

"Mommy, il ne faut pas manger trop grave, trop sucré ou trop salé".  (You shouldn't eat too serious, too sweet or too salty). So I asked him where he heard that? On Ludo of course (the kids' program): Manger-Bouger is the add campaign for healthy eating, kind of like the Time for Timer public service announcement back in the last century.

 I had to ask him what grave meant. He replied that it meant when you eat too much food that makes you fat. I see...gras like grease ie fat.

He then went on to tell me I had a big belly.

The candor of 4 year olds.

Max: almost 4 years old

Vacation 2013 is almost half over already. Unlike last year which was American filled, this time is purely franco-French, except for the thousands of Dutch and English tourists we've encountered along the way.

I would love to write about the beautiful beaches in Saint Palais sur Mer on the Atlantic coast, going for a morning run along what turned out to be a nudist beach, the oysters which I definitely do not like, the drive South, the mirabelle tree, Suzanne learning how to swim, Max jumping in the pool, the beautiful running paths in the woods, the cheese, the duck, the fresh local melons...but that's not the point of this post.

The point, as I sit at a café in Caussade, France  is to do a quick bilan on my kids' bilingualism.

Suzanne : 7 years and 2 months

There is no doubt that she is bilingual, and fairly balanced at that. The main change I've noticed recently is that she sometimes speaks to me in French, just because it's easier. IT's never more than a simple sentence, and usually just to tell me something very precise. On the other hand, she still needs French translations for some words that she only knows in English, usually food or emotion related. 

For the past 6 months, we've been working on the same fossilized mistake exemplified by the following: "What is it like ice cream?". She continues to use the French construction "C'est quoi comme glace" to ask "what kind of". I try to catch her each time. And she repeats it back.

We've talked to her about changing schools and going into the bilingual section of the public school starting from 3rd grade. And she's actually really excited to meet more English speaking kids and to have teachers who actually speak English, not like Mme G, she says, "because she's French and doesn't say orange right."  

Suzanne continues to devour books in French which translates into her teaching herself to read in English which just totally dumbfounds me. 

Max: 3 years and 11.5 months

Max continues to be black and white in everything he does. He has a true anal streak to him, meaning everything he does and says is precise and compartmentalized, which is a little scary when you see him freaking out because he dropped his hat on the floor and now it's so dirty (it's not!)

Max's current English problem also has to do with "like". Over the past couple of weeks, I've heard him say "It's like I..." dozens of times and I couldn't figure out what was wrong with it.

It's like I'm scared, I need a hug

I need a towel, It's like I'm cold

It's like I want Papa....

Then I got it! He's also using a French construction: "C'est comme je...Veux papa, j'ai peur, j'ai froid"...

I've been trying to correct him as well, but he's much less patient, more stubborn that his sister and does not systematically repeat back the correct sentence. 

I understand how frustrating it is to be cut off mid sentence to be corrected...believe me, I've been there, but I still think it's the best way to do it since they aren't autocorrecting themselves. I'm hoping that they will begin to auto-correct as they did with other fossilized errors in the past.

All in all, I'm so extremely proud and still utterly amazed at my children's bilingualism and their capactity in general to interpret their surroundings, partuially due to their bilingualism and partially due to the fact that they are so damn smart. 

Amazing...the power to read !

Of all the things my kids have done - learning to walk, talk, dress themselves, use an ipad! -nothing amazes me as much as watching my daughter learn to read.

This school year has been full of lots of worry, stress and patience. My daughter is far from being a stupid kid but she's a perfectionist who's scared of doing things wrong. So instead of launching herself into reading the way she did with speaking, she waited. And waited. And waited while her friends starting reading by themselves. (Ironically she was writing which seems to be a much harder skill!)
And I was starting to wonder (and worry).

And then in April, we saw the Matilda the Musical in London and she was inspired by the little girl who reads. She got home and tried to read. But then gave up.

Then one day about a 2 weeks ago, she came to me with a book in her hand and said she'd read 2 pages. Then last week, we went into her room to wake her up and her glasses were on, her light was on and she had a pile of books next to her. My little girl has turned into a book addict who wakes up in the middle of the night to read just one more page....she can't stay awake at school but she knows how to read!

From the bilingual side, it's amazing to see her transferring her decoding in French to her reading in English. I can hear her sounding the word out in French and then transforming it into English.

Amazing...simply amazing.

Some of her favorites : Princesse Academy (in French), La Famille Trop d'filles, Mademoiselle Zazie, any graphic novel she can get her hands on....

Unbalanced bilinguals

Towards the beginning of my two month long stay in the US this summer, I wrote about Max's confused relationship with English.

Although both of my kids are bilingual, their relationship with their second language, English, is visibly different. To start with, Suzanne spoke English before she spoke French despite the fact that she always heard more French than English (80/20 ratio of French to English). Max on the other hand, always had a closer tie to French which I personally think is due to the fact that he was in nursery school and not with a nanny so he had much more group interaction than Suzanne did at the same age. Max's great English awekening happened last summer (when Max was 2) during my mother's annual summer 3 week visit. Until then, Max spoke English but mostly French. At the same age, Suzanne spoke English AND French.

So it wasn't surprising to see that Suzanne slipped right into the English world whereas Max took some time to figure out the rules. When the kids started day camp on our second week in the US, Suzanne came home interspersing her sentences with "like" while Max continued to speak with a French accent. When my husband arrived during week 3, both kids continued speaking English with him despite the fact that they only speak French with him in home. Thus the power of the community language!

We've now been home for about 2 weeks, the kids have been in French summer camp for a week and a half,  and I've observed a couple things:

• they continue to speak English with each other
• they spontaneously speak English to the father; when he addresses them in French, they respond in French.
• Max is interspersing his French with English, which is something he never did before
• Max is also using English syntax and translating from English when speaking French. For example, he said "Quoi tu fais Papa?" (What are you doing Papa?) instead of Qu'est-ce que tu fais?
• Both of their accents have changed. Suzanne still has a NJ twang (which I'm very proud of) and although Max continues to have an accent in both French (almost German-like) and English, his English accent is less French than it was when we first arrived in NJ. 

The part that I find most intersting is how this whole experience really brought out the relationship each child has with their two languages. Suzanne, for the moment, has more of a balanced relationship with both French and English. She can more easily flip back and forth between the two. Max, on the other hand, is obviously much closer to French and especially to the French global surroundings of our daily lives (maybe because he's a very social creature and the nursery school environment?). In any case, the two months in the US were definitely a linguistic success for my kids. And it's something I hope will help carry them both through the school year. Next Tuesday, Max will start school and Suzanne will start CP (French 1st grade). Oy vey!

Open letter to the wine salesman.

"C'est marrant. Vous lui parlez en américain et il vous réponde en français. C'est comme moi avec mes clients anglais". This was at the wine store...

Yes, I'm glad my bilingual charades are amusing to you Mr. Nicolas*, but I find it really frustrating. I know I should not be angry at you, it's not your fault! You are not grappling with two cultures, two languages and a very stubborn 21 month old.

It may seem like I take this all too seriously, and I probably do because that's how I am, but I can't fathom the idea of either of my children speaking to me in French. It's fine if they speak franglais (or frenglish) but the mere thought of them speaking a full sentence to me in French makes my heart sink. Language is more than just words; it's intrinsically connected to your heart and anchored at the center of who you are.

Words can't describe how happy I am when Max says 'Isee" or "Iwant" or "Idon'tknow" or how my heart sinks when I ask him what this or that is and he replies "poisson" or "escargot" or "qu'est-cequec'est". I feel mixed emotions everytime I'm with Max. I'm proud of all the progress he's made and all the things he can say in both languages, but sad that he's not preferring English like his sister did.

I am constantly reminding myself that Max and Suzanne are different kids. They have different benchmarks which are keys to their language development. Suzanne spent 3 years surrounded by a single adult and 2 children all day long; Max spends all day surrounded by 2 dozen kids and 5 adults. It's logical that he's speaking more French because he hears more conversation at any given time. Whereas Suzanne, heard only a single adult voice during the day and spent the rest of her waking hours hearing English (since I am more verbal than her father) so of course her first language was English.

And then I wonder what I could be doing differently or what I did differently with Suzanne to reinforce her English. And it brings me back to one of the hardest things I've done so far as a parent: ignoring my toddler as she tried to speak to me. She insisted on speaking French, so I ignored her until she spoke the word in English. I've tried the technique with Max from time to time - but not consistently - and it's hit or miss. And I wonder if I should be stronger about it and pretend not to understand French the way I did with Suzanne. When I say to Max, "what does Mommy say?" when he speaks to me in French, he raises his hand to his chest and rubs it in a circle to do the sign and says "please". I can't help but melt...

But it doesnt work. Because unlike with Suzanne, Max hears me speaking French fairly often. When I pick her up at the neighbor's after school, I stay for tea and chatter in French to my friend and speak English to Max. That's the one constant - I still refuse to speak directly to my children in anything other than English.

Kids aren't stupid. And I'm too hard on myself. And I don't want language to be an issue with them. But it's an issue with me....

So, sorry Mr. Nicolas. Sorry for not smiling because you think my bilingual children are cute. It's a lot of work and it's a lot of frustration. And I hope, one day, it will pay off.

* Nicolas is the name of the chain of wine stores in France.