We want our little girl to know English, Spanish and Mandarin. I am speaking to my daughter in English and my husband is speaking to her in Spanish. We plan to get daycare in Mandarin and will have her attend Mandarin preschool.
The most important languages to us or English and Spanish, but I’m a little confused how to teach the writing. Our little girl is 7 weeks old and we are just getting organized with the Doman program. We have shown her 7 huge flash cards words thus far, but they are all in English. We are doing the one word 10x a day for weeks 1-3. Should I be making Spanish flash cards as well?
Did you teach them at the same time or teach one first and then the other? Also a link or place in one of the books on how to do this is welcome if it exists and you can direct me to it.
Thank you, I’ve already learned so much through the forums. Keep up the amazing work!
Since your daughter is just 7 weeks, my suggestion would be focusing on just English. Perhaps later when she’s more active (3 months), you can start introducing Spanish, then another 3 months, Mandarin. You still have plenty of time.
My daughter speaks English relatively well at this point (2 yr 3.5 mo, non grammatical, somewhat disjointed, but adults typically understand about 80% what she says). She knows some words in Indonesian (native language of my wife and I), Mandarin (a language that I, but not my wife, can speak), and a few words in Spanish. For her, I focus on sentence building of the first language (English) first, while developing vocabulary lists for the other. At this point, she shows preference in English, though I try hard to get her learn the other languages. I started the foreign language learning at 10 mo. I found that flashcards aren’t very effective for her on the second languages, which is strange. I think daily exposure is the most important part, so her mastery status is predictably: English > Indonesian > Mandarin > Spanish. As far as the programs, I use Little Pim and Dino Lingo.
Edit: I should add: We teach her in English and Indonesian from the get go. We speak to her in both languages. Of course, in day care, she’s exposed to English more than Indonesian. Then, we threw in Spanish at about 10 mo. I spoke to her in Mandarin here and there since 3 mo, but I started getting her to learn it at around 18 mo, I think?
Wonderful! Spacing out the languages makes sense to me.
It is good to hear that she is still young (which obviously she is!). We hadn’t heard about Doman or early learning in general until she was about 3-4 weeks. So I feel behind in the learning department. And in the Doman program, we were already behind in many of the books. We’ve wanted her to be a polyglot for awhile and the plan was simply to speak to her in the different languages and then get childcare in the third.
I looked up Little Pim and it’s right up our alley. Thanks robbyjo! It sounds like your little one has had a great start to life so far.
You’re welcome. And certainly, do check out LR products (Mandarin and French).
Another suggestion: You have to be clear on the end goals of wanting your baby to be a polyglot. Mine is to extend my kid’s long term memory, presumably by learning a lot of vocab entries, not really about communicating per se (though it’s a huge plus). Research backs this up (multilingualism improves long-term and short-term memory, which in turn improves intelligence), but not much of the rest (especially critical thinking, which I really really want to stress). Now, if your end goal is to improve long- and short-term memory, then you should supplement with other approaches, for example:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/radical-teaching/200904/top-10-list-improve-your-childs-memory
You may want to read the following articles:
http://healthland.time.com/2012/01/30/are-you-a-hyperpolyglot-the-secrets-of-language-superlearners/
http://www.davidmansaray.com/polyglot-misdirection
Sorry for not responding sooner, I just saw this response. Once the girl gets a little older, I will probably get her on the LR mandarin.
Thank you for the articles. I REALLY enjoyed the memory article, but thought all three included exciting information. They were also easy to read and digest. I’ll be showing them to my husband too. We hadn’t thought of cognitive reasons as the most motivating for multiple language acquisition. Spanish is my husband’s first language and it is important for him to pass on that identity to her. Mandarin was simply to give her more means to communicate/more options. We are not married to Mandarin, but think if we send her to a preschool that speaks mandarin and continue to put her in extracurriculars where it is the language of choice, she’ll have an advantage in life. It is not as important to us that she is fluent in reading and writing mandarin. I think we will expose it to her when young and see how it goes.