Multilingual kids - checking their development

[zax]

Zax junior is 3 and a half years old, and has grown up in the "usual" multilingual way - he speaks only english with me and Finnish pretty much everywhere else (with Mrs Zax, at daycare etc.). Last night the Mrs told me that his speaking in Finnish is not as advanced as it should be, apparently he is not "bending" the words as she puts it (at least compared to other random kids of the same age she has listened to). In summary, according to her he speaks Finnish like a foreigner.

Of course I can't tell since I'm pretty useless with Finnish. But then it occurred to me that I also can't tell if his english is at a suitable level for his age, simply because I don't hear any "native" english speakers of that age talking for comparison. He seems to talk pretty well to me, but then I'm not really qualified to judge.

How do other folks handle this situation? I'm a little concerned that he'll end up being "behind" in both languages. Being behind in english doesn't worry me too much of course since he'll still be ahead of most Finns of the same age, but being behind in Finnish is a little more worrying. Problem is I don't see what else I can do to prioritise Finnish apart from stop talking to him

[Mölkky-Fan]

Firstly, you are not alone. My son has the same problems, and he has extra classes for his Finnish. He is 9 now, and they think he still needs another year of extra classes. But also the Finnish education system IMO is really on the look out for any problems, and then they try to deal with it quite quickly and thoroughly.

I do not worry too much, as he is confident and can communicate understandably in two languages, which is already better than me!

With a second language, especially at an early age, communication is the most important thing, and if he can communicate with you then great! And as he gets to use the internet, watch films etc his English will flourish.

I would really be proud that he can communicate in two languages, and then just try and talk with the teachers to see how he can improve his grammar!

[karen]

My ds speaks Finnish like a foreigner, but it's actually working to his advantage at this age. He is starting esikoulu (kindgergarten) in two weeks and we spent the first half of this year getting approval for the daycare to hire additional staff so he could be in a smaller group and get more attention. Of course they didn't tell us that's what it was all about, they just told us that he needed speech therapy. We went to a therapist a couple of times, had meetings with the woman who evaluates multilingual kids, filled in a multiple forms, made phone calls, etc. It was only during the meeting with the evaluator and the daycare that anyone finally mentioned that it might be possible to place him in a smaller group. That's when it all clicked. Someone had mentioned "smaller group" to me ages ago. The problem is that they can't just make a smaller group, they have to have approval for the additional staff required to allow a smaller group.

Ds is almost 6 and he's fluent in both Finnish and English. English is definitely his first language, but I have a friend whose dd is stronger in Finnish even though the mother speaks English.

[Rosamunda]

Funny... it's that Back to School time of year and everyone's mind set is switching away from fishing and back to Finnish lessons, school timetables and Che Guevara accesories!!!!!!! There was a very very similar thread on An Other English forum yesterday.

I won't cut and paste what I wrote there but you can go and look at the thread for yourself. Everyone agreed that active bilingualism takes time and you shouldn't freak out because one language or another is temporarily dominant. Finland's school system does a great job at giving kids support in Finnish if they need it, whether through speech therapy or special needs. Most kids needing help (and many of them are not bilingual) are diagnosed early which is the most important thing.

Do not switch your routine at home. If you are practising "One parent, one language" (ie you speak English all the time and your wife speaks Finnish all the time) then don't change. Stick to it. Do not compare your child to the others. My 3 were all very slow in making connected speech and were way behind the other kids when they started school. But they were coping with 3 languages (French, English and Swedish), whereas nearly all their classmates were monolingual. One teacher even told me to stop speaking English to my kids..... great advice, which I totally ignored

If you are interested there is a newsletter you can subscribe to
http://www.bilingualfamilynewsletter.com/ I was a reader for a while when my kids were younger. There are also quite a few good books on the subject, try your library or amazon.

[Karhunkoski]

Speaking as someone who's mother was advised not to speak Finnish to her children by the family doctor, "lest their English will suffer", I can only offer my encouragement to stick at the bilingual thing. Speaking two languages fluently is a great gift to give your children and the fact that I was never able to converse with my grandparents and other Finnish relatives before they died is a sadness I will never lose. I wish you luck and success.

[catstale]

Hi all, Zax, I'm actually glad this topic came up!

First let me just say that I definitely agree with Penelope. And also agree that one parent, one language is a good approach for the kids. I have a 4 year old daughter and a one year old son. My daughter speaks 3 languages fluently (English, Finnish and Vietnamese) and my son understands 2 at the moment (Eng & Vnmese). I know they seem to be totally different languages and it has not seized to amaze me how well they've learnt it. I myself grew up with three languages simultaneously (English, Vnmese & Filipino) (Long story
Anyhow, don't be discourage with the kids' languages, if they can communicate with you that is already very good. Remember that their progress is always individual.

I can share some experience here if it might help a bit and give some encouragement.

I think the most important thing about being bilingual or multilingual is actually having ONE language that is stronger than the rest. This language will be the one that the child will base its understanding of other languages on. I think this is the reason why at some stage the child will have a dominant language. In most cases of bilingual children at some point between the ages 2 and 4 when they start to speak, they will chose one of the languages to master. After a certain period of time, they will be using both. But not right away. Most of our friends are also mixed and have bilingual children who have all done this. Most of them have Finnish as the other language and most have let Finnish dominate. I know of only one case where the child chose to speak English.

Hope that was not too much to read. But before I stop, I think it would be nice to meet up with other English speaking kids of the same age. We don't have so much of those around, so anyone Interested?

[ajdias]

As far as I remember from reading some years ago, lagging behind during the early years on language learning is perfectly normal for multilingual children.

Here are some links I used in the past.

• The billingual families webpage:
  http://www.nethelp.no/cindy/biling-fam.html
  Loads of resources and a mailing list if you need more information
  
  
  A sample of the newsletter Penelope recommended:
  http://www.multilingual-matters.com/mul ... letter.pdf
  ...2004. It used to be the previous number, but obvious too many people must have figured that this was as good as the newsletter itself

[zax]

Thanks for the replies, I'll spend some time checking out those links.

So I'm not the only one to be amazed at how youngsters can flip between languages so quickly. It can be a little embarassing having a 3 year old as your interpreter

What I can't figure out is how English seems to have become his dominant language. He only hears it from me and from TV when we watch english shows, and that's far, far less than the exposure he gets to Finnish, especially since he goes to a Finnish daycare. I've noticed he even "plays" in English when he's doing his own thing, and that's been noticed also by folks at daycare even when there are no English speakers around.

Seems he really is a chip off the old block

[CH]

What I can't figure out is how English seems to have become his dominant language.

Is English perhaps the common language between your wife and you?

My daughter is Finnish/Swedish bilingual, but her stronger language is Finnish, as that's what I and my husband speak to each other. Otherwise we use OPOL with our daughter. She spoke more or less exclusively Finnish when she was 3, only started to speak again Swedish just before turning 4, just in time before she started daycare in Swedish. She is gaining fast in Swedish, but she still has a Finnish accent.

Anyhow, I wouldn't worry, especially as your son is in Finnish daycare.

[jen]

at such a young age i feel that understanding is much more important than speaking. Our 3 year old daughter is bilingual english/hungarian. at the moment we live in scotland (for the next few days anyway) and my husband is the only hungarian speaker in her environment. she speakes very little in hungarian, unless she is forced to (eg. when speaking to the hungarian grandparents who dont understand english) however she does understand hungarian to a normal level.

her spoken hungarian will develop in time but at the moment she understands the world around her and cam comunicate effectively her needs and her feelings. just relax. children really are remarkable, they are capable of so much more than our narrow minded adult brains can imagine.

i would only begin to worry if your child seems to be frustrated that they cannot understand or be understood.

i know one family- mother is finnish, father is czech, live in denmark (danish friends,neigbours, daycare), parents speak to each other in english (neither parent can speak danish). the child was getting angry when father came home from work because home language changed to one that was not understood. they have decided to move to an english speaking country to give english a chance to develop as their family language while still maintaining finnish and czech.

[Xochiquetzal]

What I can't figure out is how English seems to have become his dominant language.

Is English perhaps the common language between your wife and you?

My daughter is Finnish/Swedish bilingual, but her stronger language is Finnish, as that's what I and my husband speak to each other. Otherwise we use OPOL with our daughter. She spoke more or less exclusively Finnish when she was 3, only started to speak again Swedish just before turning 4, just in time before she started daycare in Swedish. She is gaining fast in Swedish, but she still has a Finnish accent.

Anyhow, I wouldn't worry, especially as your son is in Finnish daycare.

And then we bring our daughter over to play with her and the languages really start to flow for the poor kid

[fabi77]

I think I will have the same problem as the family described by Jen, my mother language is Spanish, my husband is Dutch, we talk to each other in English and neither of us speak Finnish at a decent level.

Lucky at the moment my little boy is just three months, but we have been discussing wether to relocate to a Dutch/English/Spanish country to make things easier for our son

anybody else here in Finland with the same problem?

[karen]

I have friends here who both speak German as their native language. The mother speaks German with their child and the father speaks English. The second language in your home doesn't have to be Finnish. I believe that children benefit from learning multiple languages, no matter what they are.

[jen]

i totaly agree that children can benifit from learning multiple languages. however in the case of my friend, the fourth language was hindering the development of the other three to the extent that it was distressng the child. the childs danish was developing but they had no long term plans to stay in denmark. they felt it was best for them at this time to move sooner rather than later.

[Rosamunda]

I totally sympathise with you.... my eldest son was diagnosed with dyslexia in France (British mother and Swedish speaking father). In the 90s there was no in-school support for kids with learning difficulties in the state school system in France. So when we moved to Hungary we put him into an American school where there were qualified special ed teachers (and "proper" ESL teachers) around to give him the help he needed. I think moving away from French really helped him, his progress accelerated and his English is now average for his age. He struggles in Finnish but his French is still pretty good and he speaks/understands basic Swedish. All 3 boys have coped in very different ways to our rather complicated linguistic background.

I think you need to be vigilant when they start to learn to read. If your child is not making progress (at his own pace) then you need to raise the alarm. The teachers will say "he's slow because he is multilingual" but sometimes this "excuse" hides a real problem. I knew something was wrong when my eldest started school.... so I ignored the teachers and went straight to a pediatrician for a diagnosis.

As far as I know, the incidence of dyslexia is no higher among bilingual children than in monolingual kids and is somewhere between 3-8% on average in most countries.