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Hi_Bears posted:We do but I don’t think they’re designed for toddlers, that’s definitely something I want to try down the line but I need to set him up to start understanding it so he isn’t totally resistant to Chinese school later on. I already feel like I’m starting too late and should have spoken to him more when he was an infant. I know using it in everyday conversation is best but I guess I just feel awkward doing it? I heard that maybe setting aside certain times of the day (like during meals) to only speak the second language is a good way to force both of us to use it. Yeah, definitely don't give in to your 2 year old grumping about you speaking in Chinese. If you give the impression that speaking Chinese isn't normal or natural, they will be resistant. If they are constantly exposed to English everywhere else but your language lessons, they will be resistant.
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Jun 26, 2018 21:28
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well said, you have to let the kids be themselves
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Jun 26, 2018 23:35
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Hi_Bears posted:I have a question - what is the best way to introduce a second language to a 2.5 year old? My son is communicating well in English, says full sentences and understands everything. I've tried here and there to teach him some Chinese words but to be honest I'm way more comfortable in English so I always default to that. But parents and in-laws are both laying on the guilt trip that I'm depriving him of a second language, the earlier he can learn it the better, etc. But I am not committed enough to speak to him only in Chinese (my husband doesn't speak it at all), and the times that I randomly switch to Chinese he glares at me and asks me to stop. Kind of the first rule is only one language per context. So if you and your husband are together, or you're with any other non-Chinese speaking person, you're going to have to just stick with English. However when you're one on one, just go ahead and speak Chinese with him. The "random switching" thing is something that should be avoided in general (it's called "code switching" in linguistics). As people have mentioned above, kids at this age are linguistic sponges. You could send him to kindergarten/pre-k with absolutely no knowledge of the language and will pick it up absolutely no problem. It can be really awkward talking to a baby in a language that you're not all that comfortable in, but it comes with practice. As someone mentioned, be firm and just make it just a fact of life that with you, the language is Chinese. A REALLY great way to introduce the language is books, specifically picture books that both tell a narrative and has objects that you can point to. "Point to the XYZ." <- but in Chinese.Unfortunately a tv just doesn't seem to cut it, as far as teaching a language is concerned. For reinforcing language it's quite helpful. I don't think there are any studies about whether Skyping with grandparents can work, but my gut case is that it's a) not as good as the real thing b) better than nothing. I'll take time to dispel the "one parent one language" rule, which is not hard and true. It's more about contexts. In your case it just has to be that one-on-one with you it's Chinese. But for example if both parents speak a language and it's different from the outside world, it's often an in-the-house-language and out-of-the-house. And let's say that you wanted to raise a tri-lingual child. You would want to have a dinner-table/kitchen language, rest of the house language and an outside language. I know a couple parents who take this opportunity to learn another language (their partner's native language, for example) at the same time while raising their baby. Then you could turn it into a dinner-table language. My parents are both white-bread Americans, so I only grew up speaking English. I've since learned another language that I share with my native-speaker-wife, but I live in the country where it's spoken so I don't really have to speak it with him, yet. But my father said to me that his single regret in raising me was that I wasn't raised bilingually. The window for a kid to "just pick up" a language kind of closes around 5-7 years old, just a heads up.
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Jun 27, 2018 09:30
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I thought recent studies show that "only kids can really pick up a second language" is more of a myth. The big thing with language development is they have to learn at least one language by a certain age or the ability to really learn language is atrophied. I can ask my husband for some research on it that he's read. He's the one studying it for himself. He decided to challenge himself and learn Japanese and he is the type of person to spend a long time prior to starting by researching best methods and practices for learning something. In less than a year he's already memorized the 5000 common kanji list. Alterian fucked around with this message at 10:34 on Jun 27, 2018 |
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Jun 27, 2018 10:31
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My 6-year-old cracks me up sometimes. She has a habit of coming out of her room after bedtime, sometimes for good reasons, sometimes for bullshit reasons. My wife has very short patience for when she does this, due to the often bullshit category of reason. We bought my daughter some ear defenders a while back for when we go to fireworks displays. Recently I was sitting in the living room about 8pm, and my daughter appears, wearing her ear defenders, giving me her reason for being out of bed (I forget what it was). Bemused, I asked her why she was wearing the ear defenders. Her response was, "When I come out of my room, mummy sometimes shouts at me, so I wore these in case she turns up." I should point out that while my wife could sometimes be a bit more patient, she is hardly a raging dragon, but in any case now half the time when my daughter comes out of bed she is wearing the ear defenders.
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Jun 27, 2018 10:34
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Alterian posted:I thought recent studies show that "only kids can really pick up a second language" is more of a myth. The big thing with language development is they have to learn at least one language by a certain age or the ability to really learn language is atrophied. Yeah the 'critical window' is definitely bunk. I was saying more of a passive vs active method of learning a second language . Like a 0-6 year old can kind of just absorb a language by exposure, older than that and you kind of have to teach/learn it. But honestly I just think it's just more of a factor of adults having less plastic brains and not being in a situation where they can be passive observers of language. I want to be very clear that it is 100% possible (for anyone, not just people who are "good at languages") to become fluent, as fluent as a native speaker, above the age of 7, it's just going to take much more work. In addition, if you were never exposed to the phonetics of the other language as a child, it is going to be much tougher (not impossible) to speak an unaccented second language. So the 'you have to have had a language or you'll never have it' is borderline impossible to test. Mainly because the kids who grow up without a language are mostly just really abused kids and are stunted in just about every way it means to be a cognitive, emotional or social being. And it's basically the definition of unethical to just raise someone without a language. The closest we can get is the deaf children of speaking parents who are just ignored, but again its inconclusive. Here's something cool: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicaraguan_Sign_Language bollig fucked around with this message at 12:05 on Jun 27, 2018 |
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Jun 27, 2018 11:59
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bollig posted:Yeah the 'critical window' is definitely bunk. I was saying more of a passive vs active method of learning a second language . Like a 0-6 year old can kind of just absorb a language by exposure, older than that and you kind of have to teach/learn it. But honestly I just think it's just more of a factor of adults having less plastic brains and not being in a situation where they can be passive observers of language. IIRC as a kid you have loads and loads of "extra" neurons that you will shed as you develop neural connections. And that's a big reason for the plasticity. Why is code switching to be avoided? My SO speaks to the kids in both her languages, though she doesn't randomly swap between them once speaking that I've noticed.... Which she does do when speaking with her sisters on the phone, then it's a weird mix of vietnamese and swedish words.
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Jun 27, 2018 12:23
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bollig posted:Here's something cool: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicaraguan_Sign_Language Thanks for this, really interesting.
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Jun 27, 2018 17:35
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His Divine Shadow posted:weird mix of vietnamese and swedish words. As an American monolinguist, I have a morbid curiosity as to how this sounds.
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Jun 27, 2018 17:42
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His Divine Shadow posted:
Yeah that would be pretty dope to hear. One of the ways that we learn language, semantics specifically, is by inferring the meaning from context. So when a vietnamese word is in a swedish context, it can be quite confusing for an infant to get the incorrect context. It's pretty helpful to establish that the languages are two separate things, with separate rules and a separate vocabulary. That having been said, they'll figure it out; it's just a best practices thing, but it helps a lot. In many ways, it can appear that an infant being raised bilingually has a slower language development, but that's just because they have a wider net to cast. Also the vocabulary is limited as a function of time, so by day 30 or whatever, they only have room for 500 words total, in both languages. I should also mention that time and time again it has been shown that linguistic development is in no way an indicator of intelligence. For example my dad, a relatively smart man, didn't talk until he was around two years old. During a hurricane he was looking out of a window with his mother and said his first words: "Don't want that tree fall down".
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Jun 27, 2018 19:36
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What do those studies on bilingualism count? I only saw one study , for kids raised with Spanish and English in the US. They were counting the kids’ vocabulary and only counted the English words the kids knew. This seems like a great way to undercount a kid’s vocabulary.
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Jun 27, 2018 20:47
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TacoNight posted:What do those studies on bilingualism count? I only saw one study , for kids raised with Spanish and English in the US. They were counting the kids’ vocabulary and only counted the English words the kids knew. This seems like a great way to undercount a kid’s vocabulary. I can dig up all of this stuff; these are my takeaways from a class and research I did a year and a half ago. As I remember it they did a pretty specific attempt to answer the question: is your vocabulary a function of the amount of words in that language that you hear. And one of the side-findings, which I'm 90% sure was confirmed, was that having a more diverse linguistic input doesn't increase the number of words you know, very early on, rather the volume. One thing I'm trying to remember is whether or not very young children tend to learn the same word in different languages or not. The study of bilingualism is really tough because, historically, bilingual families tend to be of 'lower socioeconomic status', a state of being that has unfortunately shown to have a less rich linguistic experience, for whatever reason. So it's been very hard to separate the economic status of a family from the bilingual status of the kids. If you have that study, I would like to take a look at it, because that sounds like a crazy omission. Although, I asked in class whether the field is reconsidering a lot of its past research because of this replication crisis in social psychology and they gave me the runaround. So all of this could be bunk. Here is another fun study that was done at Case Western University. So clearly parents and guardians have like a 'baby-talk' or 'parentese' that they use with their baby. The question the researchers were asking was 'is this universal?' Or, would a random person, when presented with a baby that they have nothing in common with, use typical baby-talk with it? The way they tested this was they enlisted the football team, and one by one sent their football players into a room. In that room was an infant, and they observed through a camera, I think, their interactions with the baby. And it turns out that football players use the same sort of babytalk as a parent or guardian.
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Jun 27, 2018 22:17
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I am glad we’re past the solstice. I am more than ready for the sun to get back to going down at bedtime, rather than an hour and a half later.
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Jun 28, 2018 02:34
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Axiem posted:I am glad we’re past the solstice. I am more than ready for the sun to get back to going down at bedtime, rather than an hour and a half later. I forgot what thread this was and thought this was some person in my local thread complaining because they went to bed at 7:00 and it was too bright for them to sleep.
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Jun 28, 2018 03:01
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Try putting a toddler to bed when “sunset” is at 11pm and get back to me.
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Jun 28, 2018 03:36
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Axiem posted:I am glad we’re past the solstice. I am more than ready for the sun to get back to going down at bedtime, rather than an hour and a half later. The sun hasn't been completely gone all night, even when it dipped under the horizon you can see it's glow. It rules. But yeah it helped when we got blackout curtains for the kids bedroom.
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Jun 28, 2018 04:31
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bollig posted:Yeah that would be pretty dope to hear. Our kids have not been as quick on the language development front but they said their first words around age 1 so that was pretty on time. But development afterwards has not gone as rapidly. Infact we got assigned speech therapists for them by their doctor. They speak clearly when they speak and they are speaking more all the time, but they're clearly lagging to other kids, maybe it's all the languages, maybe it's because they were premies and have had medical issues and multiple surgeries, maybe it's because they were twins (IIRC I read somewhere they developed language slower). They've learned numbers and alphabet in english from youtube videos + in swedish in daycare from songs and such. Over here in a very swedish speaking part of Finland most people will speak swedish, english and finnish and then add vietnamese to that. So they're likely gonna have to become quadrilingual.
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Jun 28, 2018 04:40
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bollig posted:I can dig up all of this stuff; these are my takeaways from a class and research I did a year and a half ago. As I remember it they did a pretty specific attempt to answer the question: is your vocabulary a function of the amount of words in that language that you hear. And one of the side-findings, which I'm 90% sure was confirmed, was that having a more diverse linguistic input doesn't increase the number of words you know, very early on, rather the volume. One thing I'm trying to remember is whether or not very young children tend to learn the same word in different languages or not. One question, what do you mean "number of words" vs "volume"? As to whether they learn the same word in different languages, mine learned pretty early on different words for the same thing, though she would use the easier word of the two languages ("tetine" is easier to say than "pacifier").
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Jun 28, 2018 05:23
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TacoNight posted:One question, what do you mean "number of words" vs "volume"? YEah I meant diversity vs volume. Very interesting. His Divine Shadow posted:Our kids have not been as quick on the language development front but they said their first words around age 1 so that was pretty on time. But development afterwards has not gone as rapidly. Infact we got assigned speech therapists for them by their doctor. Oh wild. That is going to be awesome. I am going to look up 'twins and language development', sounds cool.
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Jun 28, 2018 07:35
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His Divine Shadow posted:The sun hasn't been completely gone all night, even when it dipped under the horizon you can see it's glow. It rules. We've got two layers of blackout curtains. We find that the sunlight doesn't really hurt when putting her to bed, but she does tend to wake up at 4am, when the sun is well over the horizon, all "IT'S GO TIME MOTHERFUCKERS" and get really upset and confused when I try to put her back to sleep. loving arctic. Four months of way too much sunlight and four months of basically none. Just... a wrong amount of sunlight. We need to fix this god drat axial tilt. Seasons are bullshit.
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Jun 28, 2018 08:25
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I really love how it's so bright all the time in summer, if I could have it my way it'd be like that year round. Still without axial tilt, we'd have like october-ish autumn 24/7/365. That would be the worst.
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Jun 28, 2018 11:54
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His Divine Shadow posted:I really love how it's so bright all the time in summer, if I could have it my way it'd be like that year round. Still without axial tilt, we'd have like october-ish autumn 24/7/365. That would be the
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Jun 28, 2018 14:58
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Slimy Hog posted:I really love how it's so bright all the time in summer, if I could have it my way it'd be like that year round. Still without axial tilt, we'd have like october-ish autumn 24/7/365. That would be the 
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Jun 28, 2018 16:29
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None of you guys must have experienced October in Finland if you think that.... Few degrees above zero most days, freezing during nights, sleet and maybe snow too.
His Divine Shadow fucked around with this message at 16:50 on Jun 28, 2018 |
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Jun 28, 2018 16:47
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His Divine Shadow posted:None of you guys must have experienced October in Finland if you think that.... Few degrees above zero most days, freezing during nights, sleet and maybe snow too. That's what you get for living in Finland I guess? 
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Jun 28, 2018 17:00
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I like it when it's dark by 7pm and doesn't get bright until 8am.
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Jun 28, 2018 17:09
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When I lived in Thailand it was pretty much 6am-7pm daylight all year round. That was really handy for bedtimes, way more than I appreciated. Then we came back to live in the UK, and now it's the middle of summer and doesn't get dark until 9.30pm and I had to invest in shutters and blackout curtains or my son just doesn't sleep.
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Jun 28, 2018 18:33
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What’s so hard about getting blackout curtains? We use them for naps too so would have them regardless of when the sun sets. I like having more daylight, the adults can still go out and enjoy a beer on the deck after bedtime 
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Jun 29, 2018 00:30
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Oh nothing, I enjoy the longer days too, it was just something that I didn't realize we'd have to adjust to after years of living near the equator. 
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Jun 29, 2018 01:09
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Yeah we have had blackout curtains since my son was born and he goes to sleep at his normal time even when it's light out until 9pm.
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Jun 29, 2018 01:42
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My ideal setup would be blackout curtains at night that open up so the sun comes in in the morning.
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Jun 29, 2018 07:41
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So my nearly 3mo son is officially sleeping through the night. It's great. What isn't great is how fiercely he fights day naps now. I know "how can i make my baby sleep" is maybe the most common question new parents have, but we've tried everything. The best I can explain it is that one day he realized the world exists. Seemingly overnight he became super interested in looking around, in us, etc. But since that day every trick we used to put him to sleep during the day has failed Car rides don't work. Babywearing doesn't work. No cribs, no rock-and-plays, certainly no swing. Nothing. We have blackout curtains for the bedroom but we can't get it the same level of pitch black as we do as night. If he does sleep it's after he's nursed, but even then it's for 20min or less, and he wakes up very fussy. This wouldn't be an issue if he didn't so obviously need a nap, but he does. I don't know. Any thoughts? Feels like half our day is spent trying to get him to sleep
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Jun 30, 2018 08:26
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WarpDogs posted:Counterpoint: I've matured more in the last 3 months of being a father than in the previous 3 (or more) years combined. I was told the same advice as Leng with the clarification that the people you consider "yours" is going to drastically change like everything else in your life. It's the same advice my parents gave me in college and they were 100% right Levitate posted:the people I consider "mine" 100% did not change after having a kid so that advice is probably dependent on the person receiving it and the situation they're in. umbrage posted:In defense of the party planners...just suggesting a different way to empathize with them. Yeah, I get the whole pageantry/wish fulfilment aspect of it. Certainly there are some things that I am guilty of in that respect. I'm just feeling very at odds and out of place in this group of predominantly white European affluent fashionable Instagram moms. It's not like any explicit thing, just an accumulation of small choices - but at this stage all you really talk about are the small choices because how else do you bond with someone who's a random stranger but for the coincidental timing of the birth of your respective children in the same geographical region really? Here is a short but fairly illustrative list of differences in small parenting choices by them  vs me  :On nappies - disposables - clothOn baby clothes - designer baby clothes with proper styling, etc - family hand-me-downs, second hand bundes and discount rack stuff from Kmart/TargetOn baby furniture - $100-$1000+ cribs/bassinets/cots and high chairs - $0-$100 secondhand cot and high chairOn baby transportation - predominantly $1000-$2000 prams, occasional Baby Bjorn style babywearing - ring slings/woven wraps, occasional use of a $50 secondhand pramOn baby toys - new toys, every week - many from high end boutique toy stores - 1 new toy per special occasion - regular toys are household items like spoons, bowls, etc and the occasional second hand toy from Craigslist equivalentsOn baby health - essential oils, atomiser, over the counter medicines at the first sign of possible illness - none of that, reallyOn baby screen time - a good and useful baby sitting device - avoid at all costsOn baby posts in public social media feeds - Daily/weekly Instagram #inspiration #darlingbaby #mylittleone #milestone - I posted one photo the day she was bornOn baby playdate times - on a regular basis - anyone free in the morning? - working in the mornings  - anyone free in the afternoon? - it's baby's naptime, sorry, no can doOn baby sleeping - cry it out is The Way - cry it out is NOT The WayAnd the last thing that just happened - which I'm pretty sure (kind of) was done unintentionally and without malice - is they changed the Facebook cover photo to a photo of all the white babies, without the two Asian babies. I...just...I mean even if it's unintentional, it's pretty hard not to feel out of place. Hi_Bears posted:No, you need to find your people.Finding parent/mom friends is so much like dating: there are a lot of one time playdates, texting banter that never leads to more, awkward falling outs, etc. but when you find your people it makes you feel so understood, and so much less alone on this journey. It's hard work putting yourself out there and going through the motions of mom dating, but you will know when you really click with someone. Bonus if your kids get along. (Also joining a readymade mom group never worked out for me. I had to cultivate my friends slowly by chatting with people at the library, park, music class and then awkwardly asking for their digits.) VorpalBunny posted:Finding other parents who share your vibe can be hard, but when you strike gold you feel like a huge weight is lifted because you really can't be that crazy if there's another parent like you out there. Yeah. I did not think of it like dating, but now that you have put it in this way, I can't think of it in any other way. I guess it is time. Ugh. Parent/mom dating sounds worse than actual dating.1up posted:In my experience, inviting people to an outing at the place we met or a nearby park has the highest success rate and in worst case scenarios, if they don't show, meh, we're still at a fun place. I'll try twice before just assuming they only gave me their number to be polite and move on to bothering the next person. This is good advice. I will try and do more of this. To contribute: WarpDogs posted:So my nearly 3mo son is officially sleeping through the night. It's great. This was me 10 months ago. It has always regularly taken anywhere from 30 mins to 3 hours to put her down to sleep. It hasn't really gotten better. The sleep regressions at 4/6/8/9/12 months hit really hard. She then dropped from 2 naps to 1 nap very early (around 10 months old). Then she started having regular nightmares and even now she often wakes up screaming from naps. Things that used to be guarantees (e.g. babywearing, car rides, babywearing on the bus, walking in the pram, pram on the bus/train, nursing multiple times, etc) are no longer guarantees. The thing that I have found the most helpful is just to tire her out. At 3 months, it meant going out lots and lots. Now at 13 months it means lots of running around parks and bike riding. If you miss the sweet spot of tired but not overtired, it will suck. But eventually they will be so tired that they will just crash. So, anytime you're thinking "omg why won't you sleep" just bear in mind that eventually sleep will come. Quite often, I have fallen asleep before she does but inevitably it does happen.
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Jun 30, 2018 17:27
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Re: the ‘your people’ thing, I’ve found pretty quickly that there are only a few people from my mother’s group that I’d be happy to catch up with regularly. It’s the same as any other group of random people, you’re not going to have much in common with everyone. Unfortunately the lady who’s somehow become the group guru is someone I really don’t click with on a personal level so I think I’ll start reaching out on an individual basis to the women I do click with. I also have friends that I catch up with still from the before time, but we have to make adjustments because of work commitments.
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Jun 30, 2018 19:42
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Just had our first a week ago. Theodore Danger. Since he's been born, my wife is telling me I wake up in the middle of the night in a panic, asking if he is ok or she needs anything. Apparently I'm frantic, and I have no memory of it in the morning. I guess what I'm looking for is some reassurance that I'm not going fuckin crazy? Any insight?
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Jun 30, 2018 20:26
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Sandwich Anarchist posted:Just had our first a week ago. Theodore Danger. For the first two weeks during each sleep cycle I would wake up and think that he was in bed with me and then muddle around until I realized that I was hallucinating. Then I'd get a cup of water, triple check that he was actually in his basinett and then go back to sleep.
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Jul 1, 2018 11:25
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bollig posted:For the first two weeks during each sleep cycle I would wake up and think that he was in bed with me and then muddle around until I realized that I was hallucinating. Then I'd get a cup of water, triple check that he was actually in his basinett and then go back to sleep. This was me too. I’d wake up in a panic, convinced that I’d fallen asleep feeding her and that she was in the bed somewhere. I’d feel around madly then realise she was asleep in the bassinet beside me.
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Jul 1, 2018 12:21
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I hear him do a little cough in the bassinet, and mind goes through the cycle of "he's fine, what if he's not, if he was in trouble he would be crying, if he's choking he can't cry, oh god he's dying" and then I get up and look at him sleeping soundly.
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Jul 1, 2018 12:31
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Sandwich Anarchist posted:Since he's been born, my wife is telling me I wake up in the middle of the night in a panic, asking if he is ok or she needs anything. Apparently I'm frantic, and I have no memory of it in the morning. I think it is fairly normal. For the first few weeks we would periodically jolt awake to check if she was still breathing. We got a snuzza baby movement monitor which really helped us not freak out for those first month or two. It is super easy to use, and I recommend it mostly for the peace of mind for the parents, not because anything is likely to happen to the baby in the middle of the night if you follow best practices for sleeping. It is also reimbursable from a FSA since it is a health monitor. Congrats! Being a parent is awesome.
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Jul 1, 2018 16:54
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So uh imagine looking outside and seeing this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxEQJ4YhxLY Also loving storms. We had a big cool tent over this thing that was really nice, you could just take a nap inside or just lie there and relax with a blanket. But it's not very durable, storms have wrecked it more than once, last time they picked up the whole thing and moved it. We'll probably have to replace it with regular nets instead.
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Jul 2, 2018 08:21
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