Baby Manners

Published by

Clarissa

September 9, 2016

Whenever Klara sees somebody who looks weird to her – somebody who is too tall, very fat, strangely dressed, exceptionally bearded, etc – she first stares at them with a facial expression that clearly says, “Hey, man, you are too freaky for words!”

Then she raises her eyebrows and looks at me as if to say, “Did you see the freak, ma?”

After that she stares at the poor individual again, waits to catch their eye, and blows an enormous raspberry in their face.

Her little face is so expressive that it is impossible not to collapse with laughter.

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9 responses to “Baby Manners”

Anonymous

September 9, 2016

A question for a future post (if you haven’t already written about it): what language(s) do you use with N.? And what language(s) do you speak with Klara? Did you make a principled decision or just go with what seemed natural?

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1. Clarissa
  
  September 9, 2016
  
  I speak English to Klara. And it was very funny to see her the first time she heard me speak Spanish. She was very visibly shocked. 😃
  
  N speaks Russian to her for now. Children of immigrants tend to refuse to speak the parents’ language at about 5, so he’ll have to switch to English with her in a few years.
  
  She will be an English-speaking, of course.
  
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  1. Anonymous
    
    September 9, 2016
    
    Thanks for the reply! I actually suspect that the “reject home language at 5” thing is a result of the fact that very often kids get only one language (the home language) at home and don’t hear much of the majority language, or aren’t really asked to engage with it, until they start schooling at around 5. It will be interesting to see whether Klara — and other kids like her, who hear and engage in more than one language from birth — go through the same rejection process. I don’t know of any studies about it, but perhaps you do.
    
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    1. Clarissa
      
      September 9, 2016
      
      I know people who have done absolutely everything possible to get their kids speak their native language. The result is always the same: kids reach the age of socialization and don’t want to feel different. That’s their #1 task between that ages of 5 and 20, to belong to a peer group.
      
      There’s nothing bad about this. It’s simply normal socialization. Children of immigrants who want to learn the parents’ language do it in college after the age of 20.
      
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      1. Pen
        
        September 9, 2016
        
        “Children of immigrants who want to learn the parents’ language do it in college after the age of 20.”
        
        -What if they live in a community with other immigrants and children of immigrants all from the same country? Where I went to high school there was a fairly high number of children of immigrants from a particular country, and they spent most of their time together and speaking in their parents’ language. Some of them even took a good portion of their exams in that language.
        
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        Clarissa
        
        September 9, 2016
        
        Of course, there are also those who are ghettoized, and it’s very tragic.
        
        But I couldn’t find a Russian-speaking ghetto in St Louis even if I tried. 😀
        
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  2. J. Otto Pohl
    
    September 9, 2016
    
    My daughter like her mother and grandmother is bilingual in Kyrgyz and Russian at six. Her English is still underdeveloped. I speak Russian to her.
    
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m

September 10, 2016

I grew up speaking both my parents’ language and English. We always spoke a melange of the two at home and still do. My brother and I always speak in English to each other. I never rejected my parents’ language as such, but I’ve always been primarily an English speaker and consider it my native language. I learned a third language as a teen/in college which I now use for work, and I dream in all three but only remember in English. People make too big a deal about the language thing. Kids are smart, and as long as they aren’t forced into languages or to speak a certain language, it all tends to work out fine. Making a big deal of it helps no one. And I find the argument that being raised bilingual is essential to future linguistic ability absurd. I’m much better at my third language than I am my parents’. My brother, who had a much more authentically bilingual upbringing than me, is crap at languages.

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1. Clarissa
  
  September 10, 2016
  
  I agree completely! I see no reason to make a drama out of it. Everybody who wants to learn to speak a language does, and that’s all there is to it.
  
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