My grandmother decided that French was inferior to English and so she spoke to my mom in English only. Now my mother doesn't speak French and neither do my siblings and I. We don't feel the culture pride and connection to my grandmother's heritage and we aren't accepted because we don't speak French. I'm way too old to actually feel less because of this, but I truly feel my culture was stolen from me. Please don't underestimate what happens to a child when a parent decides to alienate him/her from the culture, starting with denying the child the right to learn the language. It can truly affect self-esteem, etc... My two kids are in French aftercare and they're only pre-schoolers, so I'm hopeful they will have the language skills I was denied. The language of a community truly is the culture. I don't understand why parents don't seem to understand that.

And not everyone gets into YY, so enjoy!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

B/c we know our kid will never be truly bilingual by having once/twice a wk classes. DH and I are bilingual through immersion - by living in the countries while we were children. English is my second language while it is DH's native language.

DC will not get enough practice and would not be literate just speaking a language at home to a parent.

Not true. I speak German to DC and wife speaks another language. We speak English amongst ourselves. Aiming for trilingual. Gotta stick to one parent, one language though. Otherwise they get too confused.

From what I am reading, success of immersion if parents don't speak the language is mixed at best. Therefore we are not considering it.

Deutsche Schule in Potomac would be nice but it is a hike for us. Maybe a charter school will offer German in the future. Slim chance of that I guess.

My parents don't speak English and I learned it well enough. I like immersion for small children b/c it's effortless and it'll never be that easy learning a language for them again. I learned French starting at 10 yrs old and it was a completely different experience from learning English through immersion as a 6 yr old. DC goes to China every other year during the summer and will be doing an exchange year (or two) away when he's older.

I know lots of people whose parents tried to make their kids bilingual in my native language by the parents speaking to them and weekend enrichment classes. Most speak it at the level of a 8 yr old as an adult, bad accent, and could not get a job in my country, not what I would consider bilingual but my native language is not a Romance language.

You don't need to be critical of those who learn some bits of a family native language. If you chose not to speak your native language to your child at all, that is what seems a little strange to some, but okay. Clearly you can still do immersion school with an additional home language. And again, I think your DC will need to live in China to really be proficient.

Many kids who learn uncommon native languages learn it from their family and travel frequently to that country. It is as much about the culture as the language. A sense if your heritage. So please don't lecture to an international city like DC that it is a waste of time, that is rude to be honest.

I'm telling you why I'm not teaching my DC my native language. My parents agree learning Mandarin will be more useful than our native language and agree wholeheartedly. I'm sorry you are taking it as criticism or lecture about what others choose to do b/c it's not meant that way.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

B/c we know our kid will never be truly bilingual by having once/twice a wk classes. DH and I are bilingual through immersion - by living in the countries while we were children. English is my second language while it is DH's native language.

DC will not get enough practice and would not be literate just speaking a language at home to a parent.

Not true. I speak German to DC and wife speaks another language. We speak English amongst ourselves. Aiming for trilingual. Gotta stick to one parent, one language though. Otherwise they get too confused.

From what I am reading, success of immersion if parents don't speak the language is mixed at best. Therefore we are not considering it.

Deutsche Schule in Potomac would be nice but it is a hike for us. Maybe a charter school will offer German in the future. Slim chance of that I guess.

My parents don't speak English and I learned it well enough. I like immersion for small children b/c it's effortless and it'll never be that easy learning a language for them again. I learned French starting at 10 yrs old and it was a completely different experience from learning English through immersion as a 6 yr old. DC goes to China every other year during the summer and will be doing an exchange year (or two) away when he's older.

I know lots of people whose parents tried to make their kids bilingual in my native language by the parents speaking to them and weekend enrichment classes. Most speak it at the level of a 8 yr old as an adult, bad accent, and could not get a job in my country, not what I would consider bilingual but my native language is not a Romance language.

You don't need to be critical of those who learn some bits of a family native language. If you chose not to speak your native language to your child at all, that is what seems a little strange to some, but okay. Clearly you can still do immersion school with an additional home language. And again, I think your DC will need to live in China to really be proficient.

Many kids who learn uncommon native languages learn it from their family and travel frequently to that country. It is as much about the culture as the language. A sense if your heritage. So please don't lecture to an international city like DC that it is a waste of time, that is rude to be honest.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

B/c we know our kid will never be truly bilingual by having once/twice a wk classes. DH and I are bilingual through immersion - by living in the countries while we were children. English is my second language while it is DH's native language.

DC will not get enough practice and would not be literate just speaking a language at home to a parent.

Not true. I speak German to DC and wife speaks another language. We speak English amongst ourselves. Aiming for trilingual. Gotta stick to one parent, one language though. Otherwise they get too confused.

From what I am reading, success of immersion if parents don't speak the language is mixed at best. Therefore we are not considering it.

Deutsche Schule in Potomac would be nice but it is a hike for us. Maybe a charter school will offer German in the future. Slim chance of that I guess.

My parents don't speak English and I learned it well enough. I like immersion for small children b/c it's effortless and it'll never be that easy learning a language for them again. I learned French starting at 10 yrs old and it was a completely different experience from learning English through immersion as a 6 yr old. DC goes to China every other year during the summer and will be doing an exchange year (or two) away when he's older.

I know lots of people whose parents tried to make their kids bilingual in my native language by the parents speaking to them and weekend enrichment classes. Most speak it at the level of a 8 yr old as an adult, bad accent, and could not get a job in my country, not what I would consider bilingual but my native language is not a Romance language.

Anonymous wrote:

B/c we know our kid will never be truly bilingual by having once/twice a wk classes. DH and I are bilingual through immersion - by living in the countries while we were children. English is my second language while it is DH's native language.

DC will not get enough practice and would not be literate just speaking a language at home to a parent.

Not true. I speak German to DC and wife speaks another language. We speak English amongst ourselves. Aiming for trilingual. Gotta stick to one parent, one language though. Otherwise they get too confused.

From what I am reading, success of immersion if parents don't speak the language is mixed at best. Therefore we are not considering it.

Deutsche Schule in Potomac would be nice but it is a hike for us. Maybe a charter school will offer German in the future. Slim chance of that I guess.

Yep, it takes some work and google translate. DC will have to be in camp at the school and we're planning our first language immersion trip. As a monolingual person, I'm thrilled that DC has the chance to learn another language.

OP, its probably too late, don't discount speaking a language at home, friends who have done this have children who can at least speak other languages, even if they can not read in the language.

speaking for YY only....DC is in the upper grade and the parent portal has massive amounts of chinese help---copies of the readers, mp3 files, etc. so even though we don't speak chinese we are able to monitor vocabulary, follow along while being read to in chinese, etc. DC also networks through the class moodle site with peers for collaboration on assignments, questions, etc. It's a huge help.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our child attends Yu Ying but neither DH or I know Mandarin although we are both bilingual. The only language the three of us have in common is English. LOL! It's really not a big deal...

Our kid manages fine. Is not unhappy or confused and if asked will tell you that he likes English and Mandarin the same; is just as happy during Chinese day as English day at school. He started at YY when he was 4 so having Mandarin at school is "normal" for him. He does not need help with homework and is above grade level in all subjects.

Not knowing the immersion language has been a non-issue for us so far.

If you are both bilingual, was there a reason you did not teach your child either of your native languages?

B/c we know our kid will never be truly bilingual by having once/twice a wk classes. DH and I are bilingual through immersion - by living in the countries while we were children. English is my second language while it is DH's native language.

DC will not get enough practice and would not be literate just speaking a language at home to a parent.

Anonymous wrote:Our child attends Yu Ying but neither DH or I know Mandarin although we are both bilingual. The only language the three of us have in common is English. LOL! It's really not a big deal...

Our kid manages fine. Is not unhappy or confused and if asked will tell you that he likes English and Mandarin the same; is just as happy during Chinese day as English day at school. He started at YY when he was 4 so having Mandarin at school is "normal" for him. He does not need help with homework and is above grade level in all subjects.

Not knowing the immersion language has been a non-issue for us so far.

If you are both bilingual, was there a reason you did not teach your child either of your native languages?

Our child attends Yu Ying but neither DH or I know Mandarin although we are both bilingual. The only language the three of us have in common is English. LOL! It's really not a big deal...

Our kid manages fine. Is not unhappy or confused and if asked will tell you that he likes English and Mandarin the same; is just as happy during Chinese day as English day at school. He started at YY when he was 4 so having Mandarin at school is "normal" for him. He does not need help with homework and is above grade level in all subjects.

Not knowing the immersion language has been a non-issue for us so far.

OP--are you teaching your child German? My husbands family is all in Germany and I would love for our daughter to learn German but he is hit or miss about speaking it to her regularly. The only German program for toddlers/pre school is out in Potomac. Curious if you know of any other classes/groups for little kids to learn German in DC.

Our experience in PS3 is that while there is instruction in Spanish that a large part of the day is in English and with two teachers in the classroom (teacher and aide), one speaks Spanish and the other English - and the Spanish-speaking aide is a native English speaker (with Spanish home language and education in Spanish) so a language meltdown for the English-only kids seems pretty unlikely and easily mitigated.

The "homework" we have received has not required language ability. It's mostly like - have child plan something fun, do it, then draw a picture of you doing it together.

We have young children at a DCPS bilingual school. Neither one of us speak Spanish. I cannot comment on homework (theu are too young) but their teachers send vocabulary lists home so I review it, learn some words and try to reinforce it. We now speak Spanglish at home and about. They seem happy and even proud of what they are learning - we tell them that we are impressed and I think that that gives them confidence in themselves.

Besides English, I speak German. I am wondering what it would be like to have a kid go to a dual-language school, whether it be in Spanish, Chinese, Hebrew, French, etc. when the parents do not speak that language.
What is it like if you literally cannot help your kid with homework? Is it weird if so much of your kid's day is happening in a language you do not speak? For those of you who send kids to a dual-language preschool, did your kids come home unhappy or confused that entire days were being conducted in a language that neither the kid nor you could speak?
I am certainly interested in dual-language programs, it just seems so weird. I'd be interested to hear about this aspect of the experience.