Monday, January 9, 2012

Our actually bilingual child

I have a confession to make.  About the same time this happened for the first time, we began what I refer to now as "The Summer of Dora the Explorer" and she just got a ton of screen time.  I know it's a choice that a lot, a lot of other mothers wouldn't have made, but I did.  Often, I feel like a lesser mother for it because I see soooo many other women who just seem to seamlessly transition to adding a new baby to their family and I am just...clearly NOT one of those women.  And that's okay.  I have other strengths.  But Grant was teaching a summer class that didn't end for a month after Elliot was born which meant he had to teach and work on his class every single day, so he simply couldn't help out at first as much as he did when Kendra was born.  So, while I was struggling doing the newborn thing, we got some help from Dora.  And a little from Blue's Clues.  But mostly Dora.

After a couple of weeks, though, I started to feel a lot less guilty because her verbal and overall communication skills just took OFF.  She started understand and point out a lot more about the world around her because she saw it on Dora.  It was so weird.  And then one day, out of NO WHERE, she did this:




After we treated the distress of the bonked head, we were kinda blown away. Neither of us had ever gone over Spanish numbers with her.  In fact, I'd gone over Hungarian numbers with her at least a dozen times over the couple of months before this and they never seemed to sink in.  So, we went with it.  Dora got us started and we took expanded.




Clearly, fruit chewies aren't the most effective teaching tool.  So we grabbed something else that she couldn't consume by the fist full.




These videos are already six months old, she gets to 20 pretty smoothly nowadays.  And I'm feeling pretty okay with the Summer of Dora the Explorer.

3 comments:

Lá em casa!!! said...

OLá sou Patricia , Brasileira e adoro acompanhar seu blog....estou passando pelo o mesmo...tenho uma menina de 9 anos e agora um bebê de 3 meses...como é difícil conciliar duas crianças , casa , marido , enfim...alguma coisa sempre fica a desejar não é...minha filha também passou horas na frente da tv ou do computar tentando se distrair enquanto eu estava confusa no meio de trocas de fraldas e mamadas ...hoje nem tanto com o tempo as coisas vão se tornando normais...parabéns pela linda família...dá uma olhadinha lá no meu blog para nos conhecer também...abraço...Patricia.

Jacqueline said...

With a mother fluent in Hungarian and English and a father in Spanish and English she could be ------tri-lingual. She does it so darling. Good girl.

Kristina said...

It's been two years and I still haven't adjusted to the second child ;) So don't feel bad. We can start our own club.

Also I definitely understand the reasons why they say to limit "screen time" with kids. But I've had the same experience with tv shows improving language skills. I think it's just a nice neutral ground for kids. They don't feel pressured to preform so they are more willing to open up and imitate. We saw this happen with Simeon during his baby Einstein phase and then again with his Dora phase. Now he's in a Micky Mouse Clubhouse phase and I'm seeing him try a whole bunch of new verbal things that he picked up directly from the show :D

Simeon's school also uses starfall.com which is fun and phonicsy