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Teaching our children as much information as we can gives them more choices. |
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by peace613  (January 2009) (rank 500+) |
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Re: Bilingual upbringing
Asked by uteganger
Question:
What is your best advice when raising my children bilingual? I have a 2 and 4 year old.
My Advice:
Hi,
My advice would be
to teach your children to be bilingual. Anything that you start at a young age will be much easier for them to pick up and use everyday. The US and other countries are becoming more and more world wide. Being fluent in 2 languages opens doors to them. An employer may be more likely to hire your child that is biliengual than one with the same creditials that only speaks English.
Also, studies show that once you learn 2 languages that it makes it easier to learn more. This may end up being something that your child or children are interested in. There will continue to be great jobs for translators and even teachers along with other professions across the board. After all that is what we are aiming for right to give our children every oppurtunity to do the best at what ever they choose to do.
It can also be a language that they speak to each other. When they are in a store and others around them only speak English they can speak their second language freely.
My brothers both learned sign language as young children and they would contantly talk to each other even when others were with them in a group. My son started learnig sign as a baby and that allowed me to talk to him and get answers before he started to talk. We are learning Spanish right now and hope to learn Hebrew as well. We started with words that we use everyday and he will point to someone and say El hombre es rico. Meaning the the man is rich. We all laugh. We all practice as a family using the spanish that we are learning that week so that it makes it stick more. It also makes it fun.
I also read that being billiegual uses the language center of the brain and increases the learning ability. If you are already bilingual then it is pretty easy to teach your young ones to speak 2 languages. If not then there are many programs and books available to help them learn.
The best approach that I've seen is one where they both learn how to speak it using pictures or the actual objects and how to write it at the same time.
I hope that this is helpful.
Peace613
