Tadpole's Mummy- I hope that you have seen the letter now and it has explain things a bit better.
I will offer you some virtual sympathy as it must be really not nice receiving a letter which expresses concerns about your child. Speak to his daycare and see if they have noticed a problem, it may have been that at Reino's evaluation he was shy or just didn't want to perform on the day.
I hope the letter, once you got home and saw it yourself, made more sense.
All the best
Hannah
My 5yo needs speech therapy
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superiorinferior
- Posts: 2245
- Joined: Sat Jan 03, 2004 3:44 pm
- Location: Helsinki
Well, how many bilingual kids have you had through the Finnish daycare system, Hank?Hank W. wrote:Yeah, don't be a xenophobe. Go with the Finnish bollox
I have two, and maybe it is because they are incredibly intelligent (I am joking) that they haven't been singled out for their linguistic shortcomings.
Or maybe it's because they went to Swedish speaking daycare where bilingual kids are a little more common than tri-lingual ones.
The Finnish daycare/education system seems to have this "Finnish is the center of the universe" attitude, and that's all I was trying to say. And to me, yes, that kind of attitude smacks a bit of xenophobic bollocks.
Especially when I know that bringing up kids bilingual is really a piece of cake.
It's not just in Finland that people may be a bit too concerned. An american friend that lived her childhood in the UK, had speech therapy in the States because her "R"s were British English instead of American English. 
I was told on 6th grade that I had some problems with my "R" and "S". No one had said anything before, and this was a check up given to everyone under 12 at school. I was given instructions on paper on how to practise on my own, and that was it, since I was going to start junior high the following year.
I might have been misdiagnosed actually, because what I sometimes do have a problem is pronouncing whole words clearly enough. Never rolling my "R"s or anything.
I wouldn't just ignore the help completely though.
I was told on 6th grade that I had some problems with my "R" and "S". No one had said anything before, and this was a check up given to everyone under 12 at school. I was given instructions on paper on how to practise on my own, and that was it, since I was going to start junior high the following year.
I might have been misdiagnosed actually, because what I sometimes do have a problem is pronouncing whole words clearly enough. Never rolling my "R"s or anything.
I wouldn't just ignore the help completely though.
Last edited by E Maya on Tue Oct 10, 2006 11:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Happiness is not a goal; it is a by-product. Eleanor Roosevelt
Hey, that sounds familiarE Maya wrote:It's not just in Finland that people may be a bit too concerned. An american friend that lived her childhood in the UK, had speech therapy in the States because of her "R"s were British English instead of American English.
I was sent to speech therapy in Chicagobecause they didn't like my Southern accent. The onnly good
reason they would have had (and didn't use) was the fact that I
pronounced r's like Elmer Fudd.
-enk
I talked to a friend tonight who had a similar problem. Her daughter was being placed in a remedial eskari. My friend refused and told them that her dd would be up to speed by the end of the year. She was at the same level as her classmates by the end of the school year and everything is fine. It seems that her husband also chose to have limited interaction with the kids. That has changed in her home and I suspect it will change in mine . We will of course go for any testing and couseling. Thank you all for your insight and well wishes.
And my son does have a Texas accent. It's much, much more exaggerated than mine and I have no idea where he picked it up. I'd send him to speech therapy to get rid of it. He adds -ay to the end of the first syllable of almost every word. Drives me bay-atty.
. We will of course go for any testing and couseling. Thank you all for your insight and well wishes. And my son does have a Texas accent. It's much, much more exaggerated than mine and I have no idea where he picked it up. I'd send him to speech therapy to get rid of it. He adds -ay to the end of the first syllable of almost every word. Drives me bay-atty.
Hmm, well, from the point of view of e.g. a family that uses two languages (for example, Finnish and English) it may perhaps look like that. I'm not saying bringing kids up bilingual is a strange/bad thing, on the contrary; the thing to remember is however that most families only speak Finnish (or Swedish) so in that respect I don't think it's a big wonder the local native language is very much on the agenda.superiorinferior wrote:The Finnish daycare/education system seems to have this "Finnish is the center of the universe" attitude, and that's all I was trying to say.
Depends on the daycare centre / school one's kids go to, of course.
However. I'm ready to admit that yes, for me Finnish is (in a way) the centre of the universe - no matter how much I learn and like "foreign" languages, and despite the fact that Finnish is not inherently any better than any other language, it remains my mother tongue, the language in which I think and possibly also build a great part of my identity on... I can't help it, I'm neither proud nor ashamed of it - just the way things are. So, in a proper Finnish way I fall flat on the ground and beg forgiveness for this lamentable attitude that many other Finns maybe also share
Thats a bit of a sweeping statement. What experience do you have to make a statement like that?Richard wrote:Speech therapy is for when the child cannot pronounce certain sounds.
My son has speeche therapy and it certainly not because he cant pronounce his r's
IMO the therapy has been a tremendous help for his learning/speaking. The system here do like to over diagnose but I have nothing but good to say about it. In the UK he wouldnt have got half the help he needed.
As someone who grew up with a lot of languages spoken in the family,sammy wrote:However. I'm ready to admit that yes, for me Finnish is (in a way) the centre of the universe - no matter how much I learn and like "foreign" languages, and despite the fact that Finnish is not inherently any better than any other language, it remains my mother tongue, the language in which I think and possibly also build a great part of my identity on... I can't help it, I'm neither proud nor ashamed of it - just the way things are. So, in a proper Finnish way I fall flat on the ground and beg forgiveness for this lamentable attitude that many other Finns maybe also share
I don't feel that way. I use different languages for different purposes,
but English is not the one I necessarily fall back on, not necessarily
the one I think in. And I switch languages really quickly, forgetting
the ones that aren't useful in whatever place I'm currently in and picking
up the languages that are useful there.
There was mention somewhere on this board about what language you
count in. For me, it's whatever language I happen to have been using
at the time, not my mother tongue. So when I was in Nellim last spring
talking in Skolt Sámi, I counted in Skolt Sámi. Just like I counted in
Japanese when I was in Japan before that. Hmmh. I guess I'm more
screwed up than I thought
.And I'm neither proud nor ashamed of it either
It's just the way thingsare.
-enk
Just my point! I do understand you, but not even nearly every family has this kind of a situation. Including mine - my parents only spoke Finnish so all other languages remain "foreign" to me, to an extent.enk wrote:As someone who grew up with a lot of languages spoken in the family, I don't feel that way. I use different languages for different purposes, but English is not the one I necessarily fall back on, not necessarily the one I think in. And I switch languages really quickly, forgetting the ones that aren't useful in whatever place I'm currently in and picking up the languages that are useful there.
Us "born monolinguals" of course need to take you folks into consideration, but also the other way around
I've also always thought that speech therapy was only for e.g. correcting your R's (I went through that in my childhood) - based on a quick Google search, however, it seems I was wrongsimon wrote:Thats a bit of a sweeping statement. What experience do you have to make a statement like that?Richard wrote:Speech therapy is for when the child cannot pronounce certain sounds.
My son has speeche therapy and it certainly not because he cant pronounce his r's
Speech therapy seems to include other stuff as well.I think the Finland bashing is way OTT. Finland has one of the highest literacy rates in the world (OK the language is othographically shallow, so easy to master in terms of phoneme/grapheme bla bla bla) but the fact that children are systematically tested and given remedial help before they start school is brilliant.
Having brought my kids up in a system which had NO provision at all for this I can tell you: Finland is nirvana.
And to suggest that the Finnish school system is intolerant towards bilingualism... or non-Finnishism - is complete and utter BS. There are many, many immersion schools all over the country AND.... a mother tongue programme that, in Espoo alone, includes over 30 teachers giving classes in 19 languages!!!!! I know of no other country in the world where every child who has mother tongue that is not one of the national languages, is allowed 2h a week of mother tongue language training. (In Espoo this includes African, Asian, European and American languages.) In France, primary schools can't even offer kids foreign language training let along mother tongue classes (and we all know how many young French kids do not have French as their mother tongue.... over 1 in 7). IN the UK, foreign languages are not even compulsory in comprehensive education!!!!
Finland has some world reknown specialists in Bilingualism and Education and several centres of research such as Helsinki and Jyvaskyla universities. It plays an active roll in language developement in Education at a European level (foe example in the deveopment of CLIL as a teaching/learning methodology).
The testing that is done in Finland is all about "School Readiness". It is to ensure kids are "ready" to start school. (All kids sit a school readiness test before they enter first grade so that any learning difficulties or development glitches can be identified and eventually identified). It is NOT NOT NOT intelligence testing and has NOTHING NOTHING whatsoever to do with academic achievement, IQ or linguistic talent.
Having brought my kids up in a system which had NO provision at all for this I can tell you: Finland is nirvana.
And to suggest that the Finnish school system is intolerant towards bilingualism... or non-Finnishism - is complete and utter BS. There are many, many immersion schools all over the country AND.... a mother tongue programme that, in Espoo alone, includes over 30 teachers giving classes in 19 languages!!!!! I know of no other country in the world where every child who has mother tongue that is not one of the national languages, is allowed 2h a week of mother tongue language training. (In Espoo this includes African, Asian, European and American languages.) In France, primary schools can't even offer kids foreign language training let along mother tongue classes (and we all know how many young French kids do not have French as their mother tongue.... over 1 in 7). IN the UK, foreign languages are not even compulsory in comprehensive education!!!!
Finland has some world reknown specialists in Bilingualism and Education and several centres of research such as Helsinki and Jyvaskyla universities. It plays an active roll in language developement in Education at a European level (foe example in the deveopment of CLIL as a teaching/learning methodology).
The testing that is done in Finland is all about "School Readiness". It is to ensure kids are "ready" to start school. (All kids sit a school readiness test before they enter first grade so that any learning difficulties or development glitches can be identified and eventually identified). It is NOT NOT NOT intelligence testing and has NOTHING NOTHING whatsoever to do with academic achievement, IQ or linguistic talent.