Reply to Adoption--parental obligations regarding child's native language

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My kids (adopted at ages 9 and 12) stopped speaking their native language within a year of the adoption and have absolute no desire at this point to be forced into language school to maintain it.  It was tough enough having to go to school all week in English, their new language---we weren't going to force them to then spend saturday mornings trying to keep up their birth language.  (I've also observed that a time-honored American immigrant tradition is for the foreign born to send their first generation offspring trekking off to Saturday school for Greek/Chinese/Farsi [fill in the blank here] AND IT NEVER WORKS.  The kids may learn to understand their parents' birth tongue, but they will revert to English as soon as possible---children just naturally gravitate to the dominant language.]

As for language immersion camp---my kids used to live in an orphanage and spent years longing to live in a family environment.  Language camp is a little too close in feel to an unpleasant past.

Our kids are proud of their country and heritage and we encourage that identity preservation.  We always keep the option of language classes out there as an open invite.  But we will not force it.  My kids have enough to process right now without being made to feel guilty that they are somehow "failing" in not keeping up their original language
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I think you completely misunderstood. Language attrition and the loss of the mother tongue is always viewed as a traumatic experience. Even if a kid stops talking and sounds like is fluent in the new language, there are a lot of idioms and sayings they do not fully understand for a long time.
You should lok into what science says about the subject. Some elderly in frail care with dementia have stopped talking English and have reverted to their mother tongue
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