Should I teach my 9 month old shapes, numbers and colors in English first or French?

[ptrnoy777]

Hi everyone. I'm currently doing OPOL. I'm originally from Cameroon but grew up in Belgium. Went to a French school so it's my first language then years later we moved to the US. I stopped speaking French regularly for over a decade because of the environment but I picked it back up once I got pregnant and it's truly amazing how much our brains can retain. Since I started speaking to my son, all the words and expression are coming back to me and although it was awkward at first speaking French again I've gotten used to it and I feel comfortable. Watching French shows and speaking it with my sister has really helped. We honestly don't even remember at which point we made the switch to just speaking English and now we laugh about it in French. My husband is really supportive about teaching our son French. He's half Dominican and Half American. He speaks Spanish but is not confident enough in it to teach our son so we've been doing OPOL where I speak French exclusively to my son while my husband speaks English. We both work from home although my husband has a corporate job while I do social media. I want to get flashcards to teach my son about colors, objects, emotions, numbers etc... but I'm stuck because I don't know whether to do it in English first or French because when it comes to teaching, my husband is more relax than I am and I want to make sure our son knows his words in both languages if that makes sense. Also how do kids not get confused? for example if I teach him the word "pomme" for apple then his dad tells him it's called an apple, will my son think that he's saying the wrong word? Am I overthinking it? Help

 

[frustratedhusband]

@ptrnoy777 you can teach them at the same time. your husband in english, you in french.
no need for flashcards either.
it's not that difficult to say "une voiture rouge" "tes chaussettes bleues" and so on.
for numbers you can count with hum, tell him "il y a deux pommes"...

i like children books, because on top on reading the story you can look at the pictures, point at things and say their names, their colours, count them...
there's lots of games as well.
children learn when they play, when they cuddle with their parents to look at a book.

i don't understand why so many people mention flashcards.
monolingual children don't need them to learn to speak. multilingual children don't either.

 

[frustratedhusband]

about the apple thing. my younger sister (half spanish half french) is married to a half german half french man.
they usually speak french to each other, and my brother in law uses german with their sons while my sister uses spanish (and so do I).
when their eldest boy was almost two i showed him an apple saying "apfel "
he was very upset and told me "nooo! apfel c'est papa, mimí c'est manzana!"
they lived in france back then and when someone offered him une pomme at the market he knew perfectly what it was.

the day he got the concept of colour (he learned car makes before he did colours) he picked a yellow pencil, went to his dad and said "gelb" and then to his mum saying "amarillo"

children don't get confused. they know who uses what languages and learn the word for everything in those languages.
anda when they don't know the word in one language they will pick the word of the other language and modify it so it sounds "right" in the language they want to use it.

 

[barsomo]

@frustratedhusband This!!

 

[katrina2017]

@ptrnoy777 If the community language is English then go with the French flashcards.

 

[barsomo]

@ptrnoy777 Reading kids books in two languages will do the job! There’s so much more that you can talk to him about when reading a book than with flashcards, it will also deepen his interest in books and reading. You’re doing a great job momma!

 

[mreeed]

@ptrnoy777

how do kids not get confused? for example if I teach him the word "pomme" for apple then his dad tells him it's called an apple, will my son think that he's saying the wrong word? Am I overthinking it?

Yeah, you're overthinking it. Kids just figure it all out. My daughter is 20 months old and has started telling us "Papa says X, mama says Y" for words that she understands in both languages, even though we never explicitly told her that those words mean the same thing.

 

[aldredian]

@ptrnoy777 Get books, not flash cards. Books that uses stories to explain emotions are way more effective than flash cards.

My son has no interest in flash cards but books, he'll happily read. There's a lot of books that teach numbers, shapes etc in a very fun way.

Just do it in French. Get your husband to teach the English terms. Or don't even bother because your child will pick up the English terms through the community anyway.

My husband and I read every night before bed with our son. He reads in English, I read in Chinese and our son learns his vocabulary that way from each of us.

And kids don't get confused. They'll just know that mummy says it one way and daddy says it another way.

When our son first started speaking and there are times we don't know what he's saying, it's been handy to say, "How does mummy say it?" And then he switches language and we're like, "Oh, (word in English)." Or vice versa.

It's been fine. Stay consistent. They don't get confused.

 

[wantingtoknow]

@ptrnoy777 I think you’re approaching it in a very structured way! Kids learn very haphazardly, and at the end they’ll probably know the word triangle in all languages if the exposure is sufficient over their first few years. How much exposure is sufficient? That’s the question. Often, one parent per language can be enough.

Regarding confused bilinguals: nope, doesn’t happen. Your kid can already tell your language from your husbands since before he was born, and also can recognize them as his own as opposed to other languages. Isn’t that crazy?

I can only recommend the parents guide from Peach: https://bilingualfamily.eu/resources-for-parents/

And get a different set of cards for each language! I feel it’s helpful to have things/places/external markers assigned to a language so that the kid isn’t tempted to just use their strongest language every time.