There are many children who are resilient and overcome all sorts of things, both terrible things and things that are just kind of less than ideal. There are kids who grow in poverty, or without educated language models, or attending terrible schools and go on to have successful lives and careers.

But there are also kids who don't overcome, because it turns out that they have other inborn challenges, or because life throws things at them that no one could foresee, or because they just aren't that resilient. And when kids are at the age when one hires a nanny, the parents don't know what the future holds. So, for many people it makes sense to select the childcare that best supports your child's development, which is childcare that includes fluent language models in whatever language the caregiver is using most of the time.

That doesn't mean that kids don't do well in other circumstances. Many kids do, just like many kids are raised on junk food and still grow up healthy, or many kids go to terrible schools and still learn, or many kids don't use carseats and grow up without an accident. But many parents who have the resources that allow them to make choices for their kids make choices that increase the odds that their kid will be happy, and healthy and successful. Choosing a provider who models fluent language (whatever that language is) increases the odds.

Anyone send their child to a school where the teacher speaks broken English and uses poor grammar?


Question posed above and never answered by those saying broken English is no big deal.

Anonymous wrote:Some children hear nothing but their parents native language till 3 — and are fine. Get over yourselves. Stability, love, and feeling safe are the most important from birth to 3. Do you think your nanny’s use of the English language outweighs your genes and smarts? Do you speak to your kids when you see them? Sure, your nanny spends more time with them on weekdays — but if you had them all day long, be honest — you aren’t speaking them 100% of the time! They aren’t missing out on your amazing and perfect English grammar. The will be fine.

Sent from a phone while also watching Netflix, so please excuse typos

WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE READING COMPREHENSION ON THIS THREAD?!!

It is not about parents speaking a second native language at home!!! It is about a caregiver speaking broken English and not her native language!!

Some children hear nothing but their parents native language till 3 — and are fine. Get over yourselves. Stability, love, and feeling safe are the most important from birth to 3. Do you think your nanny’s use of the English language outweighs your genes and smarts? Do you speak to your kids when you see them? Sure, your nanny spends more time with them on weekdays — but if you had them all day long, be honest — you aren’t speaking them 100% of the time! They aren’t missing out on your amazing and perfect English grammar. The will be fine.

Sent from a phone while also watching Netflix, so please excuse typos

My mother spoke to me in broken English. She grew up in the townships of South Africa where they spoke broken English, broken Afrikaans and broken Zulu. I went to a public school in a working class neighborhood full of immigrants. We all grew up speaking standard American English. It was fine.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OMG. I grew up with an immigrant mom who didn’t know any English when she came to America.. She learned English from watching tv and raising kids who were taught English in school. My siblings and I all have graduate degrees in professional fields and make between $200-$750K/year. So....

OMG. You are stupid. You must be the lowest earning sibling.

DP.. I think you are the stupid one and/or live in a teeny tiny bubble. There are indeed plenty of very smart people who had caregivers speak to them in broken English with bad grammar.

Is that what is best for the child? Can you honestly answer yes to that question? There are wonderful, loving and devoted nannies who also speak flawless English. NP here and there is no way a nanny with fluent, flawless English isn’t better all other things bring equal.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OMG. I grew up with an immigrant mom who didn’t know any English when she came to America.. She learned English from watching tv and raising kids who were taught English in school. My siblings and I all have graduate degrees in professional fields and make between $200-$750K/year. So....

OMG. You are stupid. You must be the lowest earning sibling.

DP.. I think you are the stupid one and/or live in a teeny tiny bubble. There are indeed plenty of very smart people who had caregivers speak to them in broken English with bad grammar.

Anonymous wrote:OMG. I grew up with an immigrant mom who didn’t know any English when she came to America.. She learned English from watching tv and raising kids who were taught English in school. My siblings and I all have graduate degrees in professional fields and make between $200-$750K/year. So....

OMG. You are stupid. You must be the lowest earning sibling.

Anonymous wrote:OMG. I grew up with an immigrant mom who didn’t know any English when she came to America.. She learned English from watching tv and raising kids who were taught English in school. My siblings and I all have graduate degrees in professional fields and make between $200-$750K/year. So....

Did your mother speak to you in broken English or in her native language?


Wow, so many of you self-proclaimed intelligent posters have reading comprehension issues. OP doesn’t want the nanny speaking anything but English.

OMG. I grew up with an immigrant mom who didn’t know any English when she came to America.. She learned English from watching tv and raising kids who were taught English in school. My siblings and I all have graduate degrees in professional fields and make between $200-$750K/year. So....

Anonymous wrote:Many of the top academic performers in the Us have parents who speak little or no English.

You missed the point. It’s fine if the nanny has a great vocabulary and grammar in her native tongue. But not a nanny who needs to primarily speak to the child in broken English and can’t read in English.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Would you send your children to a school where the teacher spoke broken or poor English?

Your child’s nanny, birth to 3, is their first and most important teacher.

This is so true. Not just a nanny with proper grammar but an extensive vocabulary is extremely important... but very expensive.

I’d say whoever is your child’s primary caregiver is your child’s first teacher. And yes, the first three years are most definitely the most important years. Everything after that comes on top of either a strong foundation, or a weak one.

Nanny is with your child all day long. Her education most definitely matters. Waking Hour for waking hour, she is with your child more than the parents.

Many of the top academic performers in the Us have parents who speak little or no English.

1) it depends on how many hours the nanny works. If your nanny works 40 hours a week that is very different from a lot of families in the area who have 60-hour-per-week nannies. If you are going to be the primary person teaching your child English, will you be there enough hours per day to effectively do that? Bear in mind that young children may be asleep from 7pm-7am for years, so if you have a 9-5 nanny, you still only have 4 hours together on weekdays. Are you prepared to focus a lot of that time together on interactive language and reading, or will you need to multitask caring for siblings, making dinner, getting ready for work yourself and so on?

2) How many years do you want your nanny? If you just need to bridge the gap between maternity leave ending and your child being old enough for the toddler room at daycare, then, again language matters less. If you are looking for someone to help raise your kids for years and years, you probably need someone who is a fluent reader and writer and speller or she won’t be able to help with homework. And yes, homework counts in many classrooms starting in Kindergarten.

3) While being bilingual has lots of proven benefits, it doesn’t magically occur just because one caregiver speaks in another language to your child. If the only exposure they are getting is your nanny, they are hearing one form of the language: adult-to-child. To effectively build fluency, they would need to speak to peers in the target language, hear multiple adults speak to them, hear adults converse, listen to books and music in the target language. Are you going to buy a shelf-full of books in a language you don’t speak and send your kid to language immersion preschool? If not, the most you will get is a kid who maybe has an easier time locking in the accent in High School. It also matters a lot how well-spoken and educated the native speaker is. Imagine hiring an American nanny who dropped out of school at 14 to get a job and had been cleaning houses and babysitting ever since. She would not be well-equipped to single-handedly teach someone proper grammar and a large vocabulary in English, but people hire foreign nannies with similar profiles all the time and expect it to result in fluently bilingual children. That is hardly guaranteed.

4) Next, this is one of those things where you don’t know what your kid’s aptitude for language is, so you don’t know whether they will be impacted. Some kids might be bright, language-oriented and excellent mimics and those kids will likely learn English just fine from parents as well as a good bit of the target language from the nanny. But if your kid is predisposed to language issues (e.g., having a hearing issue, or a physical issue that interferes with speech, or is on the autism spectrum and struggles with language generally). For any of these types of kids, having a caregiver who speaks another language or only broken and thickly accented English will magnify the problem and set them back further.

5) Finally, the issue of nanny being able to communicate with parents is not insignificant! Especially if you want this person to care for your children long-term, you will need to coordinate and cooperate to accomplish things like building a nap schedule, introducing solids, potty training, scheduling playdates with peers, and managing medications and other critical details. If you aren’t confident that you can effectively relay doctor’s orders about a child’s ear infection, for example, then this is likely not the nanny for you.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Would you send your children to a school where the teacher spoke broken or poor English?

Your child’s nanny, birth to 3, is their first and most important teacher.

This is so true. Not just a nanny with proper grammar but an extensive vocabulary is extremely important... but very expensive.

I’d say whoever is your child’s primary caregiver is your child’s first teacher. And yes, the first three years are most definitely the most important years. Everything after that comes on top of either a strong foundation, or a weak one.