When I am with my children I almost always speak English to them. I sometimes speak Japanese to them if I am speaking to a Japanese person. When people around us here me speaking English to my children they always ask me:

“Is your child Bilingual?”

“Does your child speak English?”

“Does your child speak Japanese?”

For our oldest child, 5 years old, the answer is yes. She speaks both Japanese and English and understands both languages. Our second child started speaking more and more English this year. She is very proud of her English ability and often shouts “I can speak English.” or 「私は英語を喋るよ！」Our youngest child is only 1 and a half.　He understands both languages but still only has a small vocabulary.

At home I speak only English to my children. My wife also does that but she often also uses Japanese. Since they all go to kindergarten they get lots of practice speaking Japanese. My oldest used to get very upset with us speaking English in the home. We were really worried she wouldn’t want to learn English. We showed her lots of English shows but it wasn’t until we went to Australia that she realised that not everyone speaks Japanese. After the trip she said “I have to learn English so I can speak to my cousins.”

It has been much easier with our second child. She sees our oldest talking English all the time with me and wants to copy.  Recently my oldest said “Why do we have to speak English at home?” Our second child copied her and started complaining about it too. I’m not worried though because I know she is just copying what her sister says. When they say they don’t want to speak English I just tell them, “OK, I’ll stop speaking English too. That means no more stories, no more singing.” That usually gives them something to think about.

Do you want your children to be bilingual? Why? Why not?

Questions:

What does my second child often say?

What helped my first child want to learn English?

What do I say when my children say they don’t want to learn English?

It’s been a while. I’ve got three children now. A soon to be five year old, a two year old and a recently turned one year old. I haven’t really posted anything about my experience as a parent because I didn’t really have anything to post about. Now though I suddenly have quite a lot to post about. I guess I’ve been reflecting more on my own childhood as well as fundamental parenting believes I had that have changed or solidified with time.

This post will be about the former. Memories from my own childhood. I’ve often heard people say, ‘Don’t worry they won’t remember it anyway.’ Referring to the early childhood years. I’ve always had a problem with this. Well several problems with it, but the main one is that I do remember it. I have several memories from when I was so young that I can’t actually tell you how old I was. One thing i remember is the yellow automatic swing that I loved. My mum explained my ability to remember that away with the fact that we have a photo of it. However there are a few other memories that there are no photos of.  The reason we have no photos of them is because they weren’t with my family. There are probably photos but i don’t have access to them.

My parents both worked at a time where there was no daycare. In order for my mother to continue working she needed to find someone to look after me, it was the same for my older siblings too. Thus for a sizable amount of my most formative years I was looked after by an Indian woman who lived in the neighbourhood. It’s funny, my mother would often point out where she lived to me later in life and I’m fairly certain I could drive there right now if I was in the neighbourhood. I’ve never been inclined to seek her out though until now. Last night I was thinking about how truly influential the first few years of life are to a person’s sense of the world and how to live in it. It made me wonder what was her parenting philosophy? I only ever remember her being kind and understanding. Never angry, always there but also going about doing the housework. I know that’s where i get my love of Asian food but what else did she teach me? Is she the reason why I feel a strong connection to Buddhism despite my family being firmly atheist? Side note, those don’t actually connect because Buddhism is an atheist believe structure. Well fundamentally it is anyway. That’s a different discussion. My point is from birth to five we form some of our core believes on what it means to be human. I understand my own parents’ views on what it means to be human but I don’t know my Indian mother’s core values except in that there is probably some mirror of those values in my own views of reality. I’m now quite excited to try and meet her again and talk to her about parenting.

I kind of digressed though. This blog is titled memories of a four year old. There are several memories that often float up to the surface of that time. I have always cherished those memories but never really reflected on them. Just enjoyed them. I can distinctly map out the living room space on the second story of the house that I had crawled and walked in so many times. I can remember my first experience of Indian spices in the form of Bombay mix and my desperate attempts later in my childhood to find that flavour again. I remember playing with a helium filled fish balloon. I was telling a story to myself in which I was fighting to keep hold of it because I knew it would fly off into the sky. Of course I ended up letting go of it for real and was devastated by the turn of events. Fortunately my Indian mother was there to console me. Which brings me to my final memory. A memory which is more the memory of a feeling. The memory of her own son coming home from school and how that made me feel. It’s the memory of a feeling i have often recalled but never really contemplated until now. you see I keep on saying my Indian mother because in my memories that is who she was. At least until her son came home. Then I remember a strong cocktail of emotions. First was the territorial emotions coming from the entrance of a rival. Then came the guilt, for lack of a better word, coming from knowing that she wasn’t my mother. That this was her son. Then to a strong feeling that I should hide or get away from this son. I never befriended him. It wasn’t until only a few moments ago that I thought how interesting that series of feelings is. Of course I haven’t been able to understand that series of feelings until now. Now that I can see similar thought patterns arising in my own children.

I didn’t really have a point to this blog except that you shouldn’t dismiss your children’s memories.