La Mère Aventurière: The Halfway Mark

It seems like minutes ago that I dropped my 3-year-old off for her first day of French immersion school, but the year is already half over. During the holiday break I was able to take stock of what my daughter Éva was learning. In between baking batches of cookies and coloring reindeer I’d sneak in little questions to test her.

During the holidays we took this kids to Marché de Noël, a “Winter Market” here in New Orleans that featured many wares and treats you’d find at a holiday market in France - including children’s books.

For example, I’d ask her in French to get me a specific book from the shelf. I wouldn’t look at the bookshelf or give any body-language hints about what I was asking for, but she’d always retrieve the correct book and say “Here Mommy” in English.

And it went like this for the entire two week break. Me asking questions in French, and she answering in English. She clearly understands the French pretty well, but so far has no desire to speak it. She also seems to get annoyed with me when I speak French, like I’m breaking some sort of a rule. Whenever I try she says, “Stop that mommy, French is for school” or “French is for teachers.” I’ve explained that this is not the case, and continue to speak French whenever I choose, but she remains skeptical.

I’m not sure at what age immersion school kids (from English-only homes) start to actually speak the immersion language, but I’d assume it’s like learning the first language. Even when your 1-year-old baby can’t speak, she often understands you. This can go on for months or even longer before the child starts talking in full coherent sentences. Mostly they absorb and comprehend before they start to use it.

This is the part where I can’t really compare what my daughter is learning in immersion to what you’d learn in a regular preschool program because I don’t know what they do. Since I have no experience with educating children of any age, I can only guess, but she seems to know what a preschooler should know, like discussing and using colors, shapes, numbers, letters, weather, foods, animals, etc. – except she knows it in two languages. She can read a little and count pretty high, but I’m keeping these fun and pressure-free at home. This is partially because of the extra language learning she’s doing, but also because I want her to enjoy preschool – you know, like art, music, and playgrounds, not verb drills, math homework and chess lessons.

One thing she’s done from the first month of school is to sing little French songs around the house. I’m pretty sure she doesn’t understand everything she’s repeating, but it occurred to me that she doesn’t understand all the words to her English songs either. How often as kids did we sing pop songs only to find out years later what the actual meaning was? One wonderful side effect of her French singing is that her 2-year-old brother is listening, and he can also be heard singing in nonsensical French.

Christmas is barely behind us and already I’m searching for French immersion summer camps and registering for the fall semester – for TWO children now. My son Savi was thankfully accepted to the same school his sister attends and will start his own French immersion adventure for the 2012-2013 school year. His personality and learning style is very different from his sister’s and it will be interesting to see how he approaches this.

And finally, moi. How has my French been progressing? Well, obviously not as fast as I’d like it to. I’m quite impatient and I get frustrated very easily when I can’t just articulate what I’m trying to say. Sounding like a 5-year-old when you’re 36 is just annoying, especially when you articulate for a living. As I mentioned above, my daughter gets to listen and absorb first, but learning as an adult requires the opposite. Not only don’t you have the luxury of time, but adult courses immediately demand you to speak. This is beneficial in getting you past the awkward feeling quickly (something kids are not burdened with), but it also means you wind up being able to speak more than you can comprehend. And this is where I got stuck before the holiday.

I’ve decided to regroup and stop expecting instant results. I’m going to focus a bit more on listening for a few weeks and stop worrying about output for the moment. And when I do speak I’m not going to stress over how clumsy I sound. I’m pretty certain the humiliation of learning a new language is far less than the humiliation of being unable to speak the same languages my preschoolers do.