Managing new words at daycare (< 2 yrs old)

[anlytcphil]

I have a toddler who is constantly learning new words at daycare and at home. We speak 3 languages at home (Italian, Spanish and English) but only English at daycare. Half the new words are in her minority languages which is great! But I’m nervous that the daycare teachers will say “no, that’s a BEAR not OSO” and she will forget these new words somehow. Would it be silly to send an update every few weeks saying “my daughter says A, B and C which mean X, Y, Z Just so you know what she is saying”? Have any of you done something similar? Or will she still remember these new words even if for 40hrs a week her teachers are saying “it’s WATER not AQUA (pronounced abba)”

 

[cassandra77]

@anlytcphil Have you asked the teachers if they are „correcting“ your child?
I don’t get the feeling that my child‘s teachers do that, they might just repeat it in German (main language here), but at the same time they are used to multilingual children.

 

[anlytcphil]

@cassandra77 I’m not sure if they’re correcting but I do see a preference starting to form. She says “Water” more often now and a couple other small words where she knew it first in Spanish or Italian but now says it in English. So something is happening. Maybe this is normal?

 

[aldredian]

@anlytcphil If my son said something to me in English, I usually say, "That's right! It's water." But in my language. If she's old enough, I would also say, "Can you try and say water again?" But again. In my language. When they're under 2, it's a 50/50 chance of them replying back so I don't really push. Past 2, we've noticed we could actually press my son to repeat after us.

It might be normal for her to start preferring English if she's going there quite often. So frustrating though. It feels like undoing your progress!

 

[anlytcphil]

@aldredian Yes exactly! We’re really intentional at home. But it’s so little time and it’s easy to feel like we’re always behind.

It’s good to know that a little later we can push a little more. Now I just say things in Spanish or Italian and acknowledging what she said to me in English.

 

[1nttoservejesus]

@anlytcphil I was raised bilingual, and my mum always says that when I was little I went through phases of preferring English, likely due to seeing other kids using it. She never forced me to stop, she just kept responding to me in Portuguese and after a few back-and-forths would ask "how do you say XYZ in Portuguese?" just to keep it in my mind.

 

[chainsaw1]

@anlytcphil This is normal. We all have a strong desire to fit in and be accepted, if the majority language is English it is very likely that your child will try and adapt using the majority language words once they learn them. My daughter has been doing this and even correcting me when I speak Spanish to her e.g “Nein, mama, Baer nicht Oso” however this means she knows the word still and fully understand me when I speak to her in Spanish. I know with time an consistency she will learn to use the languages interchangeably. However the majority language will be dominant and I’m ok with that.

 

[dianne46]

@cassandra77 That is how it's done at our (German) daycare. My son gets German from me and English from my husband but they only speak German at daycare and have other multilingual children and just go with the flow. They don't "correct" the kids or anything. They just accept it as far as I have seen and if they don't know something they ask the parents so they are aware.

 

[prophetelijah]

@anlytcphil It is normal. She spends so much time there around people speaking English only. It doesn’t mean someone is correcting, it is just exposure. Kids are smart, she will learn words from both languages with time.

 

[mjmichaels]

@anlytcphil I'd be shocked if they're saying "it's not oso it's a bear" more likely they'll be saying "oh you're pointing at the bear? You want to say bear?" Like they're not negating your other languages.

It definitely seems over the top to give them a word list, educators are great at understanding kids, they work with kids with a really varied range of language abilities, they will be fine and so will your daughter. You don't want them trying to say things in a language they don't even know.

It's totally normal for the kid to have a community language preference, especially before age 3,after that they start to differentiate the languages better and realise which situation to use each one. She won't forget your words because you'll keep exposing her to the minority languages as well. She's not even 2 yet! She'll have a big language explosion, often around 2.5 in my experience ,and you'll see her using more varied words. And as she gets closer to 3 will improve on which language to speak when. Be prepared for there to be a lot of mixing right through age 4. It's OK, totally normal, just keep going with your language plan.

What we do is say something like "that's right, they say BEAR at school. How do we say it at home? Oso!" Or "Bear? Is that what they say at school? mummy says oso and daddy says Bär" Also my daughter went from saying awa at home (agua) to wawa (water) as she learnt at daycare, to always saying water both at daycare and at home. Now at 3 she says all 3, agua, water and Wasser. It takes them a while to sort through all the words and they go through phases of saying it in one language all the time. But she never forgot any of the words, just changed preferences over time. She always understood me. Now at 3 she is speaking and replying more often in the same language you speak to her in. So give it more time, your daughter is still taking everything in.

 

[anlytcphil]

@mjmichaels Thanks for your insight!! It’s really helpful to hear experiences from other parents. We have a very small bilingual / multilingual community here and most have babies younger than ours. We were mostly raised monolingual until I went to preschool (around 3 or 4) so our parents experiences don’t help much. It’s hard to know if what I’m doing is working because I really want her to be equally fluent in all 3, and any preference for English makes me sad and worried it won’t happen - especially if she stops saying words in minority languages

 

[mjmichaels]

@anlytcphil Yeah I was raised monolingual too, I know what you mean. You're doing great! It is a hard to see the community language become really dominant for a while but it's normal. People with older kids say it all evens out if you are making sure they have good/varied exposure to each language.

 

[aldredian]

@anlytcphil I would have a chat with daycare and ask them what they've noticed and also, what's their experience with managing children from diverse backgrounds.

If they are correcting your child, ask them not to. Instead, say, "That's right. It's (insert word)." in English. That way, it's acknowledging she said the right word in the minority language and she just knows this is how you say it in English.

I made sure to pick a daycare that had teachers from diverse backgrounds and is very experienced with caring for bilingual or multilingual children. There were quite a number of them I could tell have zero experience so I eliminated them when I was touring.

 

[anlytcphil]

@aldredian There are a few bilingual students but it’s the minority (and generally the minority in our region. The majority if families only speak English here). I will ask they just affirm they secondary languages and offer the English word but not say “no”.

 

[godmadegorillas]

@anlytcphil We also speak 3 languages at home and we've seen this exact scenario. I just made sure to let the daycare staff know that we speak multiple languages at home (none of which are the daycare language). My son started differentiating the language spoken by each person/context soon enough and doesn't usually mix them anymore, and while he does seem to know fewer words than some of the other kids in his group he seems to have learned most words in all languages as far as I can tell. From experience alone, I think your child is more likely to remember not to use certain words [from other languages] with the person correcting him than he is to use that same word in all languages.

 

[curry3023]

@anlytcphil We had this issue (German at daycare, German and Spanish at home) and switched to only Spanish at home. It was the same age when her words started skewing heavily German. Now she's 3,5 years old and her vocabulary is pretty much 50/50 and she will not shut up ever in either of her languages.

Not sure if it's possible to drop English at home. It was weird for me at the beginning to speak to my kids in a non- native language, but now I'm used to it.

 

[anlytcphil]

@curry3023 I speak English with my spouse and while we’re both learning each others native languages it’s still hard to have adult serious conversations in those. So she definitely hears a lot of English at home. We should make the effort to speak it less in front of her

 

[kairete]

@anlytcphil I'd like to reaffirm what others have said here, that having good communication with your toddler's daycare teachers is the most important thing (so at least they know to respect her multilingual background), and add some personal experiences.

Our daughter is 25 mo. old and just entered a Colombian daycare in which they only speak Spanish, after 2 years of being raised in a combined English-Spanish environment at home (we both speak both languages so not OPOL, lots of native English interaction with me).

-Not sure how things are where you live, but around here, an adult will *never* scold or correct our little daughter when she produces words the adult doesn't understand. Sometimes it's because she says a word in English when Spanish is dominant here (e.g. "bubble"), but many times she (like all toddlers) has an idiosyncratic word that she made up for something, e.g. she calls all dogs "coco" (nothing to do with the Spanish words, "perro" or "cachorro", for the concept).

When our 2-year-old says a word to an adult outside the household which they don't understand, at the worst she gets a blank stare, or maybe they ask us "Did she say 'coco'? What does she mean?" Adults (and especially day care teachers) seem to just go with the flow and figure out what she wants to say without ever explicitly "correcting" her (which, as I understand, is a very sound approach for teaching kids language(s)).

-In spite of hearing lots of words for things in two different languages all the time, our daughter just picks one word for each thing / concept in each langue and stubbornly sticks with it. There's no clear pattern, e.g. she says some colors in English ("blue" and "purple") and others in Spanish ("(r)ojo", "verde"). Hearing adults use different words for these things every day has done nothing to dissuade her and she has stuck to "one concept, one word" for now, with no replacement of English words by Spanish or vice-versa. But perhaps this has to do with the personality and particular development style of my daughter.

-In case you're still worried that your toddler is losing Spanish, you should try reading a picture book with her and ask her things (e.g. "¿Dónde está el OSO?", and she can at least point if she doesn't want to say the word). We do this a lot so I am %100 sure that my daughter knows what "cat" means even if she only ever says "gata" for kitties.

Good luck! Kids are amazing at sorting these things out and nothing you've said here seems a cause for worry.

 

[anlytcphil]

@kairete Thank you! Your insight is very helpful. She loves books and so many are in English here but I really like the idea of using the pictures to enforce minority language.

 

[toomanythoughts]

@anlytcphil I actually prefer for daycare to speak in English only and not to use German words, so that she can learn which person speaks which language.

German is our minority language, only I speak it with her. So naturally she doesn't have many German words yet, but I'm not too word because she can understand German perfectly. I notice that when I ask her in German "Kannst du 'Stern' sagen" she will actually respond in English and say star. I take that as a good sign, she's understanding that both words mean the same thing. She's not yet 2 years old for context, and only has about 25-30 spoken words at the moment.