With so many toddlers and children under 5 (in my experience) showing serious language delays (receptive and expressive) are we really doing anyone a favour by trying to teach infants a foreign language (from 9 months “when the synapses are at their optimum†as was recently quoted to me).
Our programme contains numerous children and their siblings who are growing up speaking Spanish-only whilst attending a daycare programme that is currently English-only. They learn Spanish from their parents, their nannies and from other family members. We also have, and have had, adopted children from China and Korea who are sent to our centre within a few months of their adoption. That’s really scary! No one knows their primary language!
There seems to be a prevailing opinion that we must pump babies and young children with as much information as possible, all the while forgetting that it is our obligation to teach them how to behave towards their schoolmates, teachers, other people and school materials, how to eat independently and with utensils, dress themselves, toilet training and, by the way, teach reading and writing at an even earlier age!
Historically at our facility behaviour modification has been very high on all our teachers’ lists. Thus behaviour is an issue we infant teachers focus on. Yesterday I tried to teach a one year old how to ‘put’ items into (‘in’) a basket. He currently goes around our shelves and dumps everything on the floor!
‘Put’ is in my vocabulary because I consider ‘take’ to be insufficient. As in the directive “Take your lunchbox to the corner”. The majority of 2, 3 and 4 year olds I’ve observed reach the corner and promptly ‘throw’ their lunchboxes on the floor! If they are shown how to ‘put’ their lunchbox down gently the noise level and generally surly behaviour is reigned in.
Perhaps the directive should be “Take your lunchbox to the corner and put it down quietly”. Language needs to be clearly and precisely taught in order to be clearly understood.
Now back to our infants. The infant who grew up with us from 6 weeks old and turned into the child with the best receptive language (English only at home and at school) absolutely understood everything we asked him to do. He also did it with humour, which is further remarkable and indicated his trust in us.
Our current one year old oldest infant (the ‘in’ and ‘out’ boy, above) has been containerised (just think about the range of baby containers for a moment) for most of his young life and his physical and mental development shows it — he is also rarely happy unless over stimulated by an adult (squeals to communicate and then it is hard to read his needs). He is of course also used to the hyper-stimulation of various types of baby TV and DVD’s, in the car and at home. How can we compete?
Which brings me back to learning language. Many of our Spanish-only speaking children have behavioural anomalies. They have had little or no background or foundation in speaking English and I believe they do not clearly understand what we are asking of them. They also appear to come from a laissez-faire parenting style. That could be a cultural difference.
The idea of creating a bilingual child needs to start at birth…with the parents. The best idea seems to be that one parent communicates in one language and the other in the second language — all the time. However, when both parents are working they need to decide which of their child’s multiple carers is going to teach their child the two languages they want. If you send your baby to an English speaking facility what language do you think they will understand better while there for 10 hours a day 5 days a week? English!
It is the parents’ job to teach their child whatever foreign language they desire and the best way to do that is — be at home with their child. I don’t consider it possible for children to learn English from someone who doesn’t speak it clearly and I don’t consider it possible for an English speaking child to learn that person’s primary language either.
It just becomes an advertising ploy to say that “Our toddler teacher speaks Portuguese” and “One of our infant teachers speaks Spanish”. Such statements may aid the selling of the programme but in my experience young children can learn neither of those languages simply because those teachers only have fluency in their native language – not in English, the language of the majority of their teachers and the language of the rest of their education — we do live in America after all!
Let’s at least ensure that a child learns one language really well! If we deny the need for receptive language — in the child’s daily primary language — in order to comply with daycare rules, customs and to learn, we are overlooking the basis of learning to speak.
Let’s drop the ‘second language’ idea at daycare unless all speakers in a facility are totally fluent in the two languages preferred!