I can read to babies!

Look what I've learned about reading to children since starting my job at the library! (A big shout-out to Betsy Stroomer, head of the Children's department at Lafayette Public Library, who spoke at the Survival for New Moms group at the hospital and who leads the baby storytime at the library--thanks for sharing so many books and rhymes and ideas with us.)

While there's no wrong way to read a book to a child, a few tricks will help your baby get more out of the book, regardless of which language you use.

First, choose a book that's appropriate for infants. A lot of popular children's picture books have been republished as board books, but just because the pages are sturdy doesn't mean that the story will resonate with babies! In fact, babies prefer very simple books with big pictures and few words on a page--they can't follow the plot of a story and don't appreciate complex illustrations.

Rather, choose books that will allow you to use each page as a springboard for sharing words and ideas with children. Describe the picture, tell them what it reminds you of, connect it to their lives. Ask them questions based on the picture. Count the number of objects in each picture. Sing songs and recite nursery rhymes that are related to the content of the book.

Among your read-aloud collection, include books that rhyme to turn children on to the sounds of the language and to help train their brains to recognize patterns. Encourage kids to play with words!

All the while, make your voice and face as expressive as possible--babies respond more to animated reading than to calm or expressionless reading. And read the same book many, many times. You'll get tired of it, but your baby won't.

Yes, an infant won't really understand what you're saying, whether you're slowly and clearly counting the ducks on a page or reading a moralistic fairy tale. But that baby will stare at the picture, will gaze at your mouth, will make sounds in reply. That baby will gradually understand that books have words which represent concepts, that those words have accompanying sounds, that books are read from front to back and left to right (or whatever the case may be in your language), that you turn their pages, and much more--all of which prepares that baby to learn to read down the road. Moreover, that baby is learning tons of words in context from your commentary.

I'm discovering that I can spend ten or fifteen minutes reading an eight-page board book with one word per page to Griffin. As an example of my recommendations above, here's what I might do with the following page of the charming I Can by Helen Oxenbury:

Tu vois le bébé? Le bébé peut courir. Maman peut courir. Oui, je peux courir. Mais toi, mon fils, tu ne peux pas courir. Non, tu ne peux pas encore courir. Parce que tu ne peux pas encore marcher! Papa peut courir, et ton cousin peut courir. Ils courent. Ils courent vite! Ils aiment courir. Moi, je n'aime pas courir. Mais un jour, toi et moi, on va courir ensemble. Oui, nous allons courir ensemble dans le jardin et dans le parc et à la montagne.

Griffin, tu connais le furet? Le furet qui court? Tu connais la chanson du furet? Tu veux que je chante la chanson du furet qui court? "Il court, il court, le furet, le furet du Bois Mesdames, il court, il court, le furet, le furet du Bois Joli, il est passé par ici…"

Que porte le bébé qui court? Qu'est-ce qu'il porte? Il porte une salopette rouge, un t-shirt rouge et blanc, et des chaussures blanches. Il vaut mieux porter des chaussures quand on court, sinon on peut se faire du mal. Toi, Griffin, tu ne portes pas souvent de chaussures, parce que tu es trop petit pour marcher. Tu ne marches pas, tu ne cours pas. Mais tu portes des salopettes comme ce bébé. Tu es trop mignon dans tes salopettes! Tu en as en bleu et en beige. Tu as même une salopette avec un lapin sur la poche!

Qu'est-ce que tu portes aujourd'hui, Griffin? Tu portes un body jaune avec Winnie l'Ourson. Tu ne portes pas de salopette. Tu ne portes pas de chaussures. Qu'est-ce que Maman porte? Maman ne porte pas de salopette non plus. Maman ne porte pas de chaussures. Maman porte une robe violette.

No, it's not Shakespeare. It might bore you silly. But it's what your baby needs.

(The English translation of my monologue is located beneath the Griffin in Overalls photo spread. Yes, any excuse to post pictures of my beautiful baby!)

All right, enough oohing and ahhing. Time for the translation: Do you see the baby? The baby can run. Mommy can run. Yes, I can run. But you, my son, you can't run. No, you can't run yet. Because you can't walk yet! Daddy can run, and your cousin can run. They run. They run fast! They like to run. Me, I don't like to run. But one day, you and me, we'll run together. Yes, we'll go running together in the yard and in the park and in the mountains.

Griffin, do you know the ferret? The ferret that runs? You know the song about the running ferret? Do you want me to sing the ferret song? "He runs, he runs, the ferret, the ferret of the Ladies' Forest, he runs, he runs, the ferret, the ferret of the Pretty Woods, he ran past here…"

What is the baby who runs wearing? What is he wearing? He's wearing red overalls, a red and white t-shirt, and white shoes. It's a good idea to wear shoes when you run, or else you could hurt yourself. You don't wear shoes very often, Griffin, because you're too little to walk. You don't walk, you don't run. But you wear overalls like this baby. You are too cute in your overalls! You have some blue ones and some beige ones. You even have a pair of overalls with a bunny on the pocket!

What are you wearing today, Griffin? You're wearing a yellow onesie with Winnie-the-Pooh on it. You're not wearing overalls. You're not wearing shoes. What is Mommy wearing? Mommy's not wearing overalls either. Mommy's not wearing shoes. Mommy's wearing a purple dress.

P.S.: Read my friend Estela's articles for more ideas on sharing books with babies and how to choose good books for them.

metalinguistic mamas back in town!

Today, we're meeting up with a couple of my good friends from grad school--we called ourselves the "Metalinguistic Mamas"--in the mountain town Glenwood Springs, Colo, home of the world's largest natural hot springs pool (it's a couple of blocks long!). It's been years and years since we've all been in the same state (the other Mamas have lived in Turkey, Mexico, Japan, the United Arab Emirates, and Mississippi since we graduated).

You've met two of these ladies before: Lori's daughter Amelia spent her toddler and preschool years in Kobe and now speaks better Japanese than her mom, and Amy has been speaking French with her four munchkins for years now.

And as delighted as I am to spend the day lounging by the pool with these fantastic families (Griffin proved himself a veritable merbaby his first time in the water), I'm also excited to speak French with Amy's kids in front of Griffin! Yes, he's still too little to process what language is being spoken and what it means--or can he?--but at least he'll hear other voices using Maman's language.

And we can't wait for later this summer when the fourth Metalinguistic Mama, Amanda, is visiting too!!!

A E I O U and sometimes Y (and sometimes L and W)

Griffin is a very vocal little guy. (Maybe sometime I will figure out how to take video footage off the camera and plunk it in the middle of a blog post so you can see him in action. Indulge me!) His sounds range from coos to shrieks of both joy and indignation to long blissful babbles. In addition to the expected screams and fussy cries, he also has a delightful laugh that can pull me out of a bad mood more quickly than Kraft Macaroni and Cheese.

Given my interest in linguistics and language acquisition, it's no surprise that I'm paying close attention to his baby noises. For the past month or so, I could swear that I've heard actual words, like when he said "Well, hello!" to me. And then there have been a couple of "la"s and even a "hi."

Yes, I know he's not even five months old yet and he's not really talking. This must be the baby equivalent of putting an infinite number of monkeys in a room with an infinite number of typewriters (one of them will eventually pound out Hamlet): he makes enough different sound combinations frequently enough than some are bound to sound like real words.

But what this does show is that he's progressing beyond vowels--I do hear the odd consonant now and then, especially Ls, Ws, and Ys. If I were to take the time to dredge up some of my grad school notes, I suspect that I'd remember more about these phonemes known as "glides" or "semi-vowels" (they act like a vowel but sound like a consonant) and figure out why it makes sense that a toothless baby can produce them earlier than the other "real" consonants. But I'm too tired to do research right now! Anyone want to step in and take over?

By the way, I can't definitively say that any of Griffin's sounds seem French (like the four nasal vowels or the funky u) as opposed to English. But trust me, when he starts laughing smarmily like a mustachioed beret-wearing Frenchman with a baguette under his arm or intoning the foghorn-like phonemes in "un bon vin blanc," you'll be the first to know.

hard at work

Not only does Griffin inspire many of my blog posts, but as you can see, he's also been helping me upgrade the layout. (It's still a work-in-progress, but so far, so good.) Who knew that he'd learn html before French or English?!

Griffin also helps out with the laundry.

"Tatie, Griffin doesn't talk!"

A PLAY IN ONE ACT

(Scene: Griffin and Carl's grandparents' home.)

CARL: Shall we talk about the room? That's a plant with flowers. That's the door and it's open. The door shouldn't be open.

TATIE (aside): This is a great opportunity to encourage Carl to communicate in French with someone other than me! This is exactly what I've been waiting for.

TATIE: Griffin ne voit pas bien. Carl, tu peux décrire la salle pour Griffin? Tu expliques ce qu'il y a dans la salle? [Griffin doesn't see well. Can you describe the room for Griffin? Can you explain what's in the room?]

CARL: Yeah.

TATIE (as if sharing a secret): Mais attention, it faut parler français. Griffin ne parle pas anglais. Griffin parle français! [But watch out, you have to speak French. Griffin doesn't speak English. Griffin speaks French!]

CARL (matter-of-fact): Tatie, Griffin doesn't talk.

(CARL exits stage right to chase the cat. GRIFFIN squirms. TATIE sighs.)

THE END

Happy Birthday, Baby Bilingual!

This blog is now two years old--you've come a long way, baby! The information I share in this blog has evolved, as have my goals, and of course now I have a would-be bilingual baby myself now, making the research and writing on this blog feel so much more concrete and necessary. How did it all start? Read my first post here.

I've also become a regular columnist for the magnificent Multilingual Living Magazine (though my column needs a new title--"Tatie Teaches a Toddler" is no longer completely accurate! Any suggestions?)

In celebration, I will be slowly upgrading to the "new" Blogger template, a switch I've been considering for a while now. I plan on overhauling the blogrolls in the sidebar, adding new categories of recommended websites and blogs, updating my reading list, and more. As of June 16, I've done a lot of revision, but I'm not done yet. Please let me know if you have any suggestions! And is there any topic or type of resource you'd like to see more of on Bringing up Baby Bilingual?

(Oh, one other question: do you think it would be worth my while to allow Blogger's AdSense or other ads on this site? Would I earn enough to buy a few books every month? Or would seeing an ad at the top of the page compromise the integrity of what has so far been an entirely not-for-profit endeavor?)

By the way, here are some stats on its first two years:

On January 1, 2007, Bringing up Baby Bilingual had received 2,000 hits. By the end of that year, we had reached 10,000. Now the end of our second year (May 23, 2008 was two years exactly), we're up to around 16,000. I've written 172 posts (88,000 words--is that the equivalent of a book yet?)

About 50 people read this blog every day, and while that's not a huge number, it keeps increasing; plus, it makes me happy to realize that I "know" most of the people who leave comments, and I really appreciate that some folks stick around when they arrive here after googling something else. (Among the most popular search terms are bilingualism, babies, and language, but a lot of folks out there are also looking for information on, say, The Very Hungry Caterpillar--which I've only blogged about once--the students in the French play I directed, and plenty of random things too.)

According to SiteMeter, my visitors span the globe: Six continents (what, no one working in Antarctica cares about multilingual munchkins?), 145 different countries (and counting). Y'all come from down the road in Denver and across the world in Malaysia and Mongolia and Macedonia, Ukraine and Yemen, Figi, Mali, Chile, China....

To all my readers near and far, large and small, monolingual and multilingual--merci beaucoup.

fais de beaux rêves, take two

For the past year, I've experienced stranger-than-normal dreams. And I've had some doozies in my life, even dreaming about punctuation in grad school. (Yes, I'm a nerd.) But I'm blaming the more recent weirdos on nine months of pregnancy and four months of sleep deprivation and postpartum hormonal craziness. Don't even ask me about my second trimester erotic dream about Homer Simpson. That one still gives me nightmares! Others have been disturbing, but in a whimsical way, like when I dreamed that Ed stuck a carrot in the soft spot on top of Griffin's head and said, "Now he's a unicorn."

But last night I had a detailed but fairly pedestrian dream, in content, at least: I was traveling through France with Griffin in his stroller, with two of my new friends from the "Survival for New Moms" class I attend at the hospital.

Oooh! Opportunity for another gratuitous Griffin photo! Here he is with his best friends, their daughters.

Anyway, the moms and I were doing normal touristy activities like shopping and flirting with cute guys and trying to figure out how to work foreign telephones. Griffin was being a baby and just hanging out watching.

It was only after I woke up that I realized that throughout the dream, I spoke to my friends in English but to Griffin in French, with the narration in my head in French as well. I even remember having a conversation all in French with myself about one of the cute guys I met--Pierre--pondering the irony of chatting up a man whose name Ed and I had considered for our baby before settling on Griffin.

This is the first time that I can recall a bilingual dream that involved my baby. It fascinates me that my linguistic interactions in my sleep mirrored those in my day-to-day life!

What language(s) do you dream in? Do the languages appear with the same frequency, the same interlocutors, and the same contexts as in your waking hours? What language(s) do your family members speak in your dreams?

Carl's maman's perspective

This is a guest post by Elizabeth!

Since Tatie became a busy maman, to say that Carl's exposure to the French language has decreased is an understatement. So now that he's without his weekly private lessons of conversation and music, what's he doing?

Well, Carl's a two-year-old, so attempts by Mommy or Daddy to push the language ("Wouldn't you really like to listen to this lovely CD of French songs, Carl?") are often met with "No no no!" He hasn't dismissed it entirely, however. Leave him alone to make his own choices, and Carl will select something in French maybe one time in five.

One of his favorite French books is Le petit autobus. Reading the book often leads to "playing bus," where Carl sits in an old cardboard box which Mommy pushes around the room. When the box stops, Carl insists that Mommy say, "Terminus, tout le monde descend!" ("End of the line, everybody out!") whereupon Carl then gets out of the box. When we last played that game, Carl got into the box and said, "Carl's the bus driver." After a short pause, he then asked, "What's 'bus driver' in French?" (le conducteur)

Carl has his own laptop now, and with a little help can navigate to the Tumblebooks website. Sometimes we try a French book, but he rarely sits through the whole story. The pronunciation's got to be better than when Mommy reads in French, but probably most of the stories there are just too far beyond his language comprehension.

If Carl chooses to listen to a French CD, these days it's likely to be Muriel's World. He hasn't tried singing any of the songs from it, though. What he will sing is "Frère Jacques," or more recently, "Sur le Pont d'Avignon."

"Sur le Pont" is no longer a "Tatie only" song. Mommy can sing it too, as long as she's also dancing with Carl. He got that idea from watching Moustache, which he seems to find perfectly entertaining despite its blatant teaching format. He also enjoys watching Brainy Baby French, even though he's long since past its simple vocabulary.

Carl does seem interested in expanding his French vocabulary. Periodically he'll ask what a word is in French, such as with "bus driver" above. Other recent word requests include "French Fries" (pommes frites), "lemonade" (limonade), "Teddy Bear grahams" (um, biscuit ours?), and "Pringle Sticks" (we gave up on that one). Yes, there's definitely a food trend going on. Last night at the dinner table his mind must have been on something else, however, as instead of asking about food he began spontaneously counting. He made it from un (one) to six (six), then Mommy prompted him with "What's next?" until neuf (nine), and after Mommy gave him dix (ten), he continued on his own until treize (thirteen). Not bad, considering even in English he's only up to twenty.

Finally, Carl does get a little conversation practice when Tatie comes visiting. He never demands she speak English to him, even though he hears her do so with everyone else. He seems to comprehend her questions in French, although he answers in English. It will be interesting to see if and how Carl's interest and ability in French change once his cousin Griffin gets old enough to start speaking it too.
PS from Sarah: If anyone knows what "Teddy Grahams" or "Pringle Sticks" would be called in French, please click on "comments" and let us know!

dancing with español; or, sleep-deprived ramblings of a would-be trilingual

Estela, Cynde, and Katie, you'd be so proud of me: I'm taking a "Spanish for Librarians" class! I want to be able to communicate with the Hispanophone parents of my Reading Buddies without having to resort to tortuous circumlocution. Class started today--and it just felt so good to be taking a concrete step to learn how to communicate for real (not just conjugate) in another language. Seeing how much I could understand from the teacher's rapid-fire all-Spanish directions and explanations turned out to be fun--a welcome change from the challenge of understanding Griffin's all-baby coos and cries. (Unfortunately, he doesn't come with a bilingual infant-parent dictionary.)

Oh, that's one of the new words I learned today! Unfortunately. "Desafortunadamente." What a mouthful! It's so long you regret deciding to tackle it once you get to the middle, but unfortunately, you must continue to the end. "Desafortunadamente." It sounds like a dance--the Macarena, but morose.

But I digress. The teacher kindly told me that my vocabulary and grammar were great considering how little Spanish I've formally studied, but that I sound like a French person when I speak Spanish. Yet isn't that preferable to sounding like an American?! At least they're both Romance languages. (Yay for cognates!)

Don't ask me how I have time for this with a baby around plus my library job plus my tutoring. (I don't. My blog is suffering from neglect! Sorry. And it's been a while since I read my favorite blogs--but I promise I'll drop by soon, Jeanne et al.!)

Oh, and I have a new tutoring client in French: an adult who hopes to study in France eventually. She wants to work primarily on conversation. I can't wait! I think we'll use newspaper articles and websites as a springboard for discussion and to explore French culture.

Okay, I'll admit it: while I love my job at the library, I do miss teaching French (and speaking it to people who don't drool copiously and holler incoherently in my ear). Griffin's adorable, but it's hard to hold a meaningful conversation with him.

Here's Griffin doing the Desafortunadamente dance. See? I told you he was adorable!

All righty, enough of this. It's late and I'm getting loopy. I must go to bed. Desafortunadamente.

when Mommy won't speak her mother tongue

I never thought it would be strange to speak to my child in my native language; in fact, it's been challenging to meet my goal of barraging Griffin with French, especially when we're together all day long! (See my most recent column in Multilingual Living Magazine for the full scoop on my struggle as a non-native speaker trying to raise my baby bilingually. It's one of the cover stories this time!)

But now, after three and a half months of being a maman, this must be starting to come more easily, because it feels weird to speak English to him now.

Yes, I do speak English around him when I'm with non-francophone family and friends (in other words, just about everyone); I'm not trying to disguise the fact that I speak and understand English. (To my delight, my nephew Carl has never protested that he and I only speak French together, even though he knows I'm an Anglophone--but many parents have to pretend that they don't understand the dominant language so that their kids will keep addressing them in the parents' language.)

However, I rarely address my son directly in English, unless my comments are actually directed towards other people--like to explain, say, why he's not wearing any pants ("Griffin, you've got to stop with these leaky diapers already!") or to make a request ("Griffin, don't you think that Daddy should bring Maman a glass of wine?").

And since his daddy doesn't speak French (yet!), when we sing to him together--such an important activity--we sing in English. But I don't sing songs in English by myself. That's hard enough, when so many fantastic songs that appeal to children exist and hold sentimental value for me; what's even harder is not reading to him in English.

But I've discovered one situation for which to make an exception to this rule: baby storytime at the library. The Lafayette Public Library has just begun a new program called "Book Babies." The babies--and I do mean babies, for no toddlers are allowed--and their grown-ups meet once a week for half an hour of songs, rhymes, fingerplays, and sharing board books geared towards babies. It's very interactive--we sing along with the librarian, help the babies clap, raise their arms to say "so big!", pretend our fingers are fleas crawling up and down their bodies, share books with them, give them horsey rides on our knees, and so on. Just imagine a roomful of infants and crawlers poking each other, shaking baby-sized maracas, gnawing on peek-a-boo books, and staring wide-eyed at the crazy lady ringing bells in Winnie-the-Pooh's face! It's been so successful that this month-long experiment will continue through the summer.

So you see, it would be rude for me to attend this storytime and refuse to participate; it would be pretentious to disregard the directions and conversations in English in order to translate them into French. (Not that I could translate many of these nursery rhymes and fingerplays on the fly anyway--"eensie weensie"? "waterspout"? How the heck do you say that in French?)

Therefore, every Wednesday morning, I toss aside the French so we can hang out with the other bibliobabies. And it feels quite strange to make that switch! Even though Griffin's clearly too young to care which language he's hearing from whom, I have the sensation that I'm breaking the law but have immunity because of a loophole. It's a little exciting, a little dangerous.

But w hat if I like it too much? What if I find myself informing him "I'm a little teapot" instead of "Je suis une petite théière?" What if I say to myself, "Oh, it's just a board book. One round of Bear Snores On won't hurt anybody"? Will I be able to resist when my mom pressures me into taking a hit of Eric Carle? What if The Very Hungry Caterpillar is just a gateway story to all my other beloved children's books and I start sneaking around to expose Griffin to English, hiding the evidence behind the couch or in the laundry room, denying to my friends and family that I've been reading and singing in English, saying that I'm taking Griffin to the grocery store but instead going to Borders and coming home late with bloodshot eyes and the incriminating evidence of papercuts on our fingers, until I need more and more and more songs and stories in English with my son to feel good?!

Help me be strong, dear readers. You are my support group!