My Little Polyglots

Piia Rossi, in her guest post, addresses many of the fears that parents of multi or bilingual children have, in her own fascinating personal account of multilingualism in her family. 

My two daughters, 6.5 and 3 years old, speak four languages each. Three of them fluently and the fourth scantily but they understand it well. The kids consider multilingualism as normal; in fact they don’t seem to pay too much attention to the fact at all.

We don’t have huge theories or philosophies behind the language acquisition of our kids. Instead we are guided by the circumstances and what we consider to be common sense. I’m from Finland and my parents don’t speak any language other than Finnish. For me it was a no-brainer that my kids would learn Finnish, as otherwise they wouldn’t be able communicate with their grandparents and relatives. The situation is exactly the same with Slovak, which is my husband’s language. To be able to communicate in Slovakia our kids need to speak the language. The necessity of language in our case is not about the language itself but how it is a vehicle to the girls’ culture and roots. It would be a shame to deny them a full access to their identities purely due to the fact that they couldn’t speak the languages.

At home, English is the main language for us, as me and my husband don’t speak each other’s languages (we are not quite as talented as our kids are)! Both kids were born in Ireland, are Irish citizens and learned English in their early years. English has established it self as the base language for us. I think we consider English as their first language. Not a mother tongue, but something similar to that. As we now live in Germany, naturally both kids speak German  and they go to school and kindergarten here. I speak Finnish to the kids varyingly, I can’t say whether it is half-half or more, I rather go with the flow than keep check on the language. This is also the case with my husband’s use of Slovak.

Now, how does this play out in everyday life in our household? We have always been extremely relaxed with the language issue; no set rules, no huge philosophies and no particular methods. I have never read a guidebook on the issue, and usually avoid any research in the field. I believe that guides and rules on this matter would restrict our natural family life too much.

However, as I meet a lot of multilingual families I am aware of the typical fears and beliefs about multilingualism. I have listed here some of the most common concerns.

• You can only teach babies 2 languages before the age of six, otherwise they get confused.
• You need to be systematic with the use of language. What's most important is that you don't switch between different languages as this might cause the child to be unable to differentiate between them.
• It's not good for parents to speak broken or accented language to their kids. It's much better that the parent speaks only their native tongue.
• It’s important to correct your kids’ mistakes.
• Multilingual kids’ speech will be delayed. 

Our personal experience is different to the list above, and I feel that often these worries are based on us parents having grown up in monolingual cultures and therefore not having the experience of multiple languages in a family. I think its helpful to remember that being multilingual is not a modern phenomenon. In fact there are more multilingual people in the world than there are monolingual people. Millions of people have done this successfully and think nothing of it.

In this light, I will go through the list above and offer some thoughts from our experience as being a quarto lingual family. 

The first point, that babies can learn only two languages or they will get confused, is just simply not correct.  I have two kids at home that prove that children can learn multiple languages and I meet families with multilingual kids on a daily basis, no problems there. People in bilingual communities take bilingualism for granted and often mix various languages in the same sentence; this certainly happens in my family and confuses nobody else but some outsiders. However, sometimes our ‘home made’ language makes me think of James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake, where he invented a unique polyglot-language composed of composite words from some sixty to seventy world languages.

Being systematic and not switching between languages is not a rule in our family either, and it has not proven to be a problem for us. I can’t remember a single time when my kids were confused about what language to use with which parent. This is possibly due to the fact that we don’t force any particular language; whatever comes out first is fine by us. There was a brief period of couple of months when our youngest daughter and my husband didn’t have a common language (we took this as preparation for the teenage years) but she soon acquired enough vocabulary to be able to communicate with him. Also. I have noticed that the kids very rarely talk the ‘wrong’ language to an outsider as long as they have been told that this person might not understand certain languages.

The one-parent-one-language method just didn’t work in practice for us. Firstly, it affects the naturalness of communication in the family when you constantly need to keep yourself in check what language to use. It also means that other people, the other parent included, will not understand what is being discussed between you and the child, unless you all understand all the languages spoken in the family or you translate all communication.

In regards to using a broken language, my thought is that it is better for the kids to learn some language than none at all.  

For the third point, we all have accents and the grammar might not be perfect, but its good to remember that kids don’t learn language just from their parents. They copy their friends and other contemporaries. As long as the kids have access to other speakers of the language, read a lot, and can watch programmes that they find interesting, my experience is that this widened exposure to the language lessens the impact of the non-native speaker parent. With our kids the exposure to the Slovak language is pretty much left to my husband only as we have not found a Slovak community here in Germany and this has partly resulted in Slovak being the weakest of the four languages they speak.

In our family we don’t correct the kids' language. We have chosen positive encouragement and acceptance as a method of learning. We believe that the feeling of achievement is a right for every person, and that home should be the last place where one is constantly scrutinized for such a basic thing as communication. When the language has developed to a very good standard, but there might be some persistent ‘mistakes’, we have shown the correct turn of phrase.

We were never concerned about the possible delay in speech. Based on my experience there will be lots of talking in years to come so we just enjoy the quiet times. Not that we 

 ever measured in any way when they started speaking. I understand that development is similar with speaking as it is with walking; some kids learn earlier, some later. I have noticed that there can be a bit of concern from outsiders in relation to the speech development, and my advice here would be to trust your own judgment as you have the full facts of the situation. This ‘advice’ often comes from persons who are not multilingual themselves or not used to dealing with multilingual kids. In my opinion they most often refer to the above list without any real knowledge on the matter. I have met kids who really don’t speak a word for the first few years of their life and then one day open their mouths and produce perfect sentences in multiple languages. Ours, on the other hand started babbling early, not perfectly but in large quantities.

Now, I must admit that there was a time when I did have questions regarding multiple languages, and I did ask around how to go about it. This was when my daughter started school couple of months ago. My worries were with reading and writing as I was wondering whether she should learn to read in one or two languages at the same time or would it be better to learn German first and later on transfer that to the other languages?  Well, typically my kid didn’t go on theorizing about it but went and learned Finnish and German simultaneously without our explicit encouragement or restrictions. With English it is a bit more difficult as the phonetics don’t work the same. Nevertheless based on the evidence (literally written all over the flat) I believe she is going to get English also in no time at all.

One thing I know for sure is that whatever my husband and I have thought about the multilingual issues has paid little importance here at all. My kids just went and did their own thing. My conclusion on multilingualism based on my family’s experience is that through positivity, unlimited admiration and support children find they own way suited to their person and our role is to be at awe of the little creatures.

Little Polyglots/  photo by Tervetuloa kuvauksin

We were never being boring

The side effects of parenthood are well known. From nausea in early pregnancy, swollen ankles to sleepness nights and mummy brain (when you walk into a room and can’t remember what for).  But I have yet to read anything about how being a parent can turn you into a bore overnight, especially to those friends of yours who have no children.

It starts when you give up the alcohol in pregnancy. This is already potentially the start of being a huge bore. When your friends are ordering beer you are nursing your herbal tea, hoping that the honey will make you a bit tipsy. It doesn’t.

When the baby is there, you notice that some friends just don't call you anymore. When you meet up, it is often at home, conversations snatched between scooping up baby food and nappy changing. Piled up laundry it is. Fancy free and fun it ain't. It isn't sipping cocktails in a cool bar, or checking out the latest exhibition or shopping. It's apologising as you have to put the baby to bed and might not emerge for another hour, if at all. 

Whereas you may be able to talk to other mothers for hours on end about baby food, breastfeeding and childbirth stories, this won’t wash with many of your other friends.  Why should it? You are literally cocooned in your own little baby world and by the time you emerge your friendships may have reshuffled and changed.

You don’t (in their eyes) do anything anymore. You are boring. This is a tough one to deal with, on top of the above mentioned side affects of parenting. It is creeping, underlying and often not said out loud.

In Berlin I would literally take my baby with me everywhere, to loud street parties, to open air film screenings, I didn’t think anything of riding home on the U-Bahn at 3.00 in the morning.

When you have two kids (and you move to a less cosmopolitan place like we had to), this becomes impossible. A three or four year old will not put up with this, and then you find yourself getting into their routine. Having two kids is like two to the power of four, it is just weird maths, which mean that the efforts of parenting have quadrupled rather than doubled.

In order to survive the year you have to dig in and get downright boring. Celebrate your boringness. Don’t get any hobbies, or if you must, try Suduko.

‘Get a babysitter’, come the cries from the outside of your nest, trying to rake you out of your babybore phase.

But my kids don’t get to sleep until 10pm, and I usually am asleep before them, you reply. And so it goes on. It is funny, but you can blame yourself when friendships drift apart. You don't think, heck, they could come round and chat about formula milk. You think, I have got to get out there, otherwise I am in danger of falling off the face of the earth. 

I say, give yourself a break. 

I am advocating raising the boring stakes a notch. Baby birth bore talkathons, baby poo talkalongs and baby food shaggy dog stories.

So, when you have young kids, forget upping the interest stakes by trying to be like your former all night partying former drink bingeing self or feeling you have to get a cool career to boot.  Play fire with fire by celebrating motherhood in all its glorious bore-potential.  Get down right boring. 

One day you may wake up feeling bored yourself. Then you can think about what actually interests you. Maybe your old friends are right. You have changed. You may be surprised yourself that  the things you found important before you had kids no longer interest you. In fact, you find them rather boring.

creative quandary

dining table with printmaking equipment

It feels slightly ironic that I have come here to the Mumsnet Blogfest when my two kids and my husband are back in Germany! Still, it is the first time I have been away by myself for ages and I get precious time to spend with my friends and family back in London. But the question remains: How do you balance your creative ambitions with family life.

I am staying at my mum's who is a printmaker. Her studio is in the house. When I was growing up it didn't strike me as odd that there were trays of acid in the bathroom (for etching ), for example. There were plus and minuses from our perspective that her work space was in the home. Us kids were encouraged to make lino cuts and etchings, which was fun. On the other hand, I felt it was hard for my mum to switch off from the work, especially if a print wasn't going her way. That is the problem of having your work space at home. It is hard to create a divide between your home and work life.

If your job involves being creative like an artist, where the measure of your success is not so easily defined and the output is more personal then this can be even harder. You may also have to justify to yourself and to others that what you are doing is valid, especially if you are not earning much money through your art. If you can manage that, then you may need to find the headspace in order to be creative. I have read with admiration about authors who have written books during their babies naps, for example. (I was napping through my babies naps, though!)

litho press and bookshelf

I would like to do a survey amongst people who are artists and who have families. How do they strike a balance with their art and family life? Can they involve their kids in the process, or do they need for "a room of ones own", like Virginia Woolf. Also, how do they manage between creative thinking, where you really need the luxury of time to develop ideas and the hectic schedule of family life. A female friend of mine organises family life as well as teaching at a University and developing her own art work. Her husband, who is also self employed, is away with work a lot. She said she doesn't touch the housework until the kids come back from school. It is the only way she can get things done.

Another artist friend of mine has recently taken a self imposed sabbatical. When she originally told me this I said, rather insensitively I think, I"ll believe it when I see it. I meant it in a positive way, because she is one of the most dynamic and energetic people I know. She came to Bielefeld and in less that two years embarked on a PHD, attended conferences and formed an art group. This kind of drive is often what helps you to survive as an artist, even when you have two young kids and are a trailing spouse with an uncertain future. I can imagine that it may be difficult to put aside this drive to focus on other priorities. You can read about her sabbatical here.

It is very hard to strike the balance between work and family as a freelancer or an artist.

I  discovered this when I was working from home as a translator. If you don't respond to requests and opportunities from the outside then you may kick yourself for missing out. But if you take everything on then it can easily get too much, and your health suffers and this effects your family.

printmaking table arial view

I question myself on a regular basis. How much is too much? Will I overstretch myself if I take on this job.  I also love writing my blog, which I see as being a creative outlet for me. I also question the time taken to write it, as I now question the time I have taken to come to London on my own. 

At the same time I am glad that I have a mum who has followed her artistic career, despite being a divorced mother bringing up four children singlehandedly  and can see if you fulfil your own creative ambitions then you can still be a good mum or precisely because of that you are a good mum. 

prints in progress

Old bag with school bag

Last Thursday I took part in a self-portrait workshop run by Grace at the 'Trailing Spouses' Art Group. I had brought along my own props: a medium format camera and my son’s schoolbag, as I had an idea about how I wanted to portray myself. The camera represented my college days, and the dreams aspired to since that time towards some sort of career in photography. The school bag sums up my life as a mum, especially as I now carry it everyday for my son. Called a “Tornister”, nearly all German school kids have one. They are squarish, large and robust enough to sit on and you can choose from various themed designs. The thing is, it is so heavy, I end up carrying it for him. I always feel slightly preposterous walking down the road sporting a magenta striped rucksack emblazoned with footballers in mid-action, the straps squeezing my shoulders.

  

I merged the two portraits, to show that I find it hard to draw the line between these two images that reflect myself. Also, this lack of separation often leaves me feeling that I fall short in both respects, firstly as a mother and secondly as a creative and /or professional person.

 I read on the ‘used to be somebody’ by the journalist, Gaby Hinsliff, that she felt a kind of lifting of guilt associated with being a working mum when her child started primary school. She says “…. it is the first time the choice - that terrible, double-edged choice - about whether to be home or not has been completely taken away from me.” In Germany, or at least where I live, there is still very much a choice about how long you leave your child in school. In the school where my son goes to, for example, the lessons start at 8:05 and sometimes finish as early as 11.50am. Then, some of the children are picked up for the day before lunch by their mums(or Dads perhaps), whilst others stay on in the after school care centre, which was founded just seven years ago, until 4.30pm at the latest. So that feeling of guilt is still in the air, when there are still two systems for the stay at home and working mums. This school system is changing in Germany, but there still isn’t one school here in Bielefeld offering the same school hours to all children, starting and finishing at the same time.

On occasion, I have picked up Eric before lunch and we have both really enjoyed the extra time together with my younger son Henry for the rest of the day. I am not actually supposed to pick him up before 2pm. Most of the time I pick him up between 3:00 and 4:00pm, like in the British system. Being self-employed, my workload is fragmented and I need to be able to work through to the afternoon on some days.

I do feel though it is strange, that in Germany you have to book a minimum of 45 hours a week of childcare for the under 3s in a kindergarten (9hrs a day!), which seems a lot, whereas when they go to school at the age of six, you may find the same child only being entitled to attend school for 4 hours a day. After school care is not free. It costs me 130 Euros a month including lunch, although if you have two or more children in a nursery or school, you just pay for the one child with the highest fees, which is good. 

Nevertheless, I do think it would be nice for the atmosphere of the school and the children if they could all be at school at the same time, and all enjoy the Karate, football or cooking clubs etc that are on offer  in the after school care centre. Socially, the school is also divided, for the parents and the children. Children who finish school before lunch are not allowed to use the playground in the afternoon because of insurance reasons. I obviously have more contact with parents whose children are in the after school care because I see them when I pick up my son. 

My experience is that many parents here don’t like the idea of comprehensive education, where lessons take place in the afternoon, because they believe it would be too inflexible and strenuous for the children. They prefer the model of lessons in the morning and an option of after school care in the afternoon, perhaps because of their own educational experience. My husband, for example, was at school from Mondays to Saturdays in the morning, but then he could run around unsupervised with siblings and friends for the rest of the day. I can’t imagine that happening these days. 

So I suppose I will have to get used to that portrait of myself for a while, and the choices associated with it.  In the meantime,  here is a picture of the "Tonni" in its full glory.