Hi Cam,

When the baby is born, she does not recognized if there are so many different languages in the world. When we talk to them, they only recognize sounds with a particular pattern. Have you ever try to teach your daughter to read in German ?  If you want her to know the different between "katze" in German and "cat" in English, then you should show the word "katze" and pronounce correctly in German. Most of the time, when teaching their children to read parents are expecting their children to speak as they read not they hear. For language with completely different sound and writing, such as English and Vietnamese, or German and Vietnamese, our babies can surely distinguish the different right away both audio and visual. For language with more less similar sound, however, they can only distinguish the writing/visual right away, but not the sound/audio. They need to listen to the sounds over and over again (with a correct pronunciation) before they can distinguish which sound refer to which language. But before teaching her reading in German, I suggest finish the English first. This way she has better understanding in one audio and visual language at a time.

Hope this explain and can be an answer to your concern.

Cheers !

 

Hi justbeinmommy,

Don't worry regarding your daughter hasn't read fluently in the end of the 2nd semester of LR. As the parents, please try to be patient in teaching our babies/ toddler. Please do not put our babies as if they are in the race and competing with others. Every children is different. If our children have not read fluently, simply we just repeat the lesson. If she doesn't read fluently, may be because she doesn't here the word clearly. If she doesn't hear/listen the word clearly, she will not be able to pronounce the word correctly. Even if she listen clearly, it doesn't mean that she will automatically be able to pronounce correctly. In this situation, we should help/guide her how to pronounce correctly.

Again, please be patient with our children. Do not worry about the output, but concentrate more with the input. The important thing is that learning (including reading) must be fun. Do not ask the children for the result. You will see the result whenever your daughter ready to show it.

Brgds,
BNB

 

Learning must be fun. Don't worry about the phonics or games. Just skip it if he doesn't see the interest or just answer it right away. No need to give explanation even if it is wrong. It is not necessary to introduce the game at this point. For now, just expose the part that he has interest with. At this moment, focus on the input, not the output. By the time your son have enough input, the output will be done by himself automatically. The games are just the media to check by himself (not us) whether he already know the words. Do not ask him to point the word as we expect the spontaneous reaction for him to answer. If he is ready to answer, you will be amazed how quick he will give the answer.

In my opinion, babies do not know about the languages when they were born. What they recognize are just sounds. When they hear people speaking in a particular language, the babies are just hear it as a sound with a certain pattern. In their mind, they don't have any clue if the sounds are called English, Mandarin, French, or any other languages. Not until we inform them so.

When introducing multiple languages at the same time, I suggest that we speak to our babies clearly and not too fast. Do not mix one language with the other when speaking in complete sentence(s) as eventually we expect our child to speak correctly in that language. Leaving in South East Asia, our local language here is not English or Mandarin. However, we introduced English to our son (3 years old now) as his first language. We introduced Mandarin next, and our local language, Indonesia, last. Indonesian language is more like Spanish, I think. We never taught our son to read in Indonesia, but somehow he found his own way reading it. We still have to lead him with the grammar as it is not the same as English. The interesting thing happen is that sometimes he translates our question from one language to the other instead of answering it. What we are paying attention is when he is pronouncing our local language. If he pronounce it incorrectly, then we must inform him immediately and correct it.

I agree that fluency would come as our children practice, listen, and read. After all, the limit is not on our babies, but it is more on us as the parents...
 
 

Hi mam,

I also have 2 boys. My oldest boy is 3 years old now and my youngest is 2 years old. In my opinion, babies and toddlers do not recognize what a language is. What they recognize are just sounds. A language is a form of sound with patterns.

In your cases, you do not have to worry about how many English words should you start couples and phrases as the Little Reader program with lead your kids to read from a single word to a couplet, then a phrase. From a short phrase until a sentence. From a short sentence to a long sentence. Then eventually to complete short and long stories.

You also don't have to worry that your little girl will get bored if she will repeat the lesson when you introduce the Little Reader to her baby brother. I also repeated the lessons for my youngest son, but his big brother still paying attention and eager to read what he had learned before. If you see the lesson in Little reader, it is initially start in very short time/duration, so I doubt it is harmful for your baby boy. Frankly speaking, it takes significantly amount of time to use the flashcards unless you really have extra time to do so.

As for the math, it is considered to be another form of language, so you can introduce to them together with English or your local language. You just have to manage the time so the program not becoming too long if you play them consecutively that make them bored.

As for my advice, do not mix the sentence from one language with others when we speaking to our baby and toddler. What they hear are what the gonna talk/speak. If we spoke incorrectly, they will also hear incorrectly which eventually, they will also speak incorrectly.

Hopefully, this answers your questions.

Brgds,
BNB