Hi Everyone- Dad of 18 MO Son...

The Little Lounge Introduce Yourself
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Hi Everyone,

I just purchased the Your Baby Can Read video and flash card set from an infomercial and just found this site today- I ordered Doman’s books last night from Amazon. My son has had a pretty good introduction for a complete novice- I am sure he would be reading right now if I had started him at 2-3 months. Since my wife is Chinese her mom came to the US to help when he was 3 months old and between my mom and hers and my wife and I- he has developed with good early motor skills and language skills in both English and Chinese. My mom told us we had to make him crawl or he could only use half his brain- he wanted to walk and not crawl so we did crawl training at lunch everyday for 15 minutes for 2 months…He started walking at age 9 months- he is a world traveler on his first visit to China. I had him walking in the hotel lobby in Hong Kong walking up and down the stairs- he thought it was so much fun! Until last week he did not know any written words outside of the alphabet- he already can sing his ABC’s and several other nursery songs. He already has about 10 words down that he has read to me before looking at the picture either on flash cards or the video in just 1 week. When he is interested he can repeat the whole video- we do it as a family together to make it as interactive as possible. But I quickly realize I need customization- there are so many things I want to do- Like a number and name of the presidents then the picture- he already knows Obama. I also want to start him on Chinese characters- which will be very hard to learn according to my wife!

So any help or direction would be greatly appreciated. I am really excited to see his progress- we thought he was ahead of other kids but realize he may be behind some of the early learners- I just want him to have fun and hope that he will be reading English by the time he is 2…

Eric

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That’s great and a wow to see a dad teach, I seldom see dad taking interest, and that’s good.

About teaching your child, I had put my daughter on Glen Doman’s program since birth (just after she was delivered - no jokes) . His books are real good, but you to do is program consistently (an important factor). Infact I purchased all of his books, and yes my daughter has done amazingly well.

About your question, about customization and teaching your child new things, all that is outlined in Glen’s book “How to teach your baby to read / encylopeida/ maths”. Just to tell how i teach my daughter, In reading, I started with word, then phrases and sentences. In maths i started with dot cards 1-100 and then equations, in encylopedia - I show her pictures with word cards.
Regarding teaching foreign languages to your child, i feel no language is difficult for a child to pick up, it will be difficult for us to learn a new language but never never never for a child. My daughter learns her numbers in 3 different languages English, Chinese and French and sometimes German and belive me she knows all of them. As for me i only speak English but i can still teach my daughter other languages with the help of BrillKids Maths library. So go ahead undoubetdly teach your child all what you want with fun. Believe me they love it.

From
Judy

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Thanks! I figured if I can teach my dog (Labrador retriever) to the AKC Master Level…I better be able to teach my son to the PhD level! :yes:

It is funny how you start dog training at 49 days old and the systems are well put together! But our society as a whole has not emphasized early learning and development…After I watch the Your Baby Can Read video- I felt so stupid! I did all my dogs training at an early age but I did not do enough with my son… I read to him and played with him every day…He can talk in two languages when he was 10 months old- but I did not show him any written words…It makes so much sense!

Thanks!
Eric

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Yes, that’s so true.
Go ahead and all the best for happy fun learning

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Hi Eric,

I’m Chinese also, I know that chinese is not easy to teach because you don’t know the pronunciation from the characters.

Did your wife learn chinese before? Is she a Cantonese or Mandarin speaker? Maybe I could help you to find some chinese website which has the pronunication of chinese characters.

And I have a file with many chinese characters, which are daily used in us, and I start to teach these words to my daughter. If you wants, pls feel free to let me know, I could sent to you by email.

Have a funny learning in chinese :happy:
Jandy

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Hi Jandy
I too would love to know a website that could help in pronouncing chinese chars.
Also could you also share the file with me too.

I have quite some english words that I would love to know how you write and read in Chinese, could you help me too on it.

Thanks
Judy

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Hi Jandy,

My wife is from Sichuan Province and speaks Mandarin and a few local dialects. We want to teach our Son Mandarin. I am going to purchase the Little Reader so we can start to customize our program. My wife can do the audio pronunciation. But if you have something already made up- it would be great to get a copy. I will send you a PM with my email. Once we have some Chinese flashcards and video made I hope to post them up to this website so we can share them.

It is funny how here in the US there is a debate on phonics versus site reading and memorization and how they say site reading is so bad! Well the way I look at Chinese it is ALL SITE READING! I have been told you need to learn 5000 characters to just be able to read the newspaper…I hope to learn Chinese along with my son! So part of this is for me also!

Thanks,
Eric

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Hi Eric,

Welcome! Always glad to see a fellow-father on the Forum! :slight_smile:

You’re absolutely right - Chinese is entirely sight-reading! But having said that, phonics is absolutely vital as well, as I’m sure you’ll also agree.

You may be interested in this discussion:

http://forum.brillkids.com/teaching-your-child-to-read/why-did-france-prohibit-the-'whole-word'-teaching-method-in-2006/

Hope to see you around often!

btw, hope your wife’s family in Sichuan wasn’t affected by the quake.

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Hi Eric, Judy,

I 'm pleasure to help you guys, cause I’m really happy to hear you like to let your baby learn chinese, really hope that I could help you.

Since my file are only chinese characters, at the beginning I through that Eric’s wife may be can read them to his son, but now I think I better give a phonetic transcription for each word to you, therefore, I will email to you later. Judy, could you please also send me your email address by PM, so that I could email to you once I finish the files.

However there are some files you can download from the bottom of this website :
http://www.happyfamilynet.com/baby/download.htm

And pronunciation (This is HK yahoo dictionary, you can paste the character and check the pronunciation and meaning from here, if it can’t find the words, just check one by one, chinese word can be divided, each word has it’s only meaning) :
http://hk.dictionary.yahoo.com/search.html?q=1&s=����

But these are chinese websites, I don’t know if you can see it.

My mother language is Cantonese, because I’m living in HK, and I haven’t learnt Mandarine, but for me, I still can handle, because we use the same characters. So that, I have brought a set of Mandarine DVD to teach my baby, it is very good for her and me.
http://www.gc.hk/index_topic.php?did=92206&didpath=/11879/92206
http://www.gc.hk/index_topic.php?did=12864&didpath=/11879/12864

Since all of the chinese materials here are explain in chinese, therefore, I’m thinking how to help you.

Any questions, please feel free to send me PM.

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Hi Jandy,

Thanks for the links- I showed my wife last night and she will look for some of those DVD’s…Tommy had fun just watching the clip on the website and sung Xi Gao…after we were finished. He gets exposure to Mandarin at his day care, but I want them to start using DVD’s or flash cards. My wife said the characters were formal Mandarin and not informal that is used on mainland China. Maybe someday on a trip to China we can have our babies meet for a play day! My companies factory is just outside of Shenzhen. I am just getting all of Doman’s books so I will need to catch up…I have little reader installed and will do a session with him tonight or this weekend.

Hi KL,
Yes it was a very scary time- My son Tommy just arrived in the Sichuan province 1 day before the big quake- my wife’s family was very lucky! Her hometown suffered damage but no collapsed buildings and only a few deaths, she lost a great uncle and many, many of her cousins just narrowly escaped and lost their homes. They were only 30 minutes outside of Minyang which suffered tens of thousands of casualties. They had to live on the street for almost 3 weeks before leaving the area. Thank you for asking!

Good Training!

Thanks,
Eric

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Hi Jandy,
Thanks for the website, i liked the HK dictionary website, but I would like to know how could i prononuce the words.
Would it be possible if i give the list words i need in chineese and if you could tell me how to write and pronounce it.
Or if there is any website that can tell me the pronounciation, please do let me know.

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Hello and welcome to this fantastic forum!

I look forward to getting to know you better and reading your posts. Please feel free to browse around. Also please feel free to join your country of origin board, This will help you get connected with other like minded parents from your country but also give you a place where you can talk freely about issues related to early education, and activites in which you may be able to get your child/ren involved in

Kimba15

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Despite the tragedy, what a lucky break! I hope things are close to normal again now over there… Are they?