I have held off on posting this week (well last week) because I didn't want to turn my blog into a complaining place.
On the other hand I would like to get this off my chest.
I went to Desi's very first parent teacher conference this past monday. It was scheduled so I knew that he was not in trouble or anything, but I was most definantly not prepared for what I heard.
It strated off well. Desi can cut very precisly with scissors. He is the only 4-year-old in his class that can write his name (kindergarten classes are usually a mix of kids ages 3-7. Kids usually go for 3 years kind of like a preschool setting). He has lots of friends. His shyness is much less now. He works very precisly and concetrated when building or the like. He is very inteseted in technical things. On and on. She did say that during group time Desi tends to not pay attention, but to be honest I remember when I got in trouble for that in the 2nd grade. I still zone out during class for no reason.
The next point was the bad one. She said that Desi's German is not very good. He makes more grammatical mistakes than normal for his age group and she has to repeat instructions several times before he seems to understand them leading her to also think that he does not understand German that well.
This was like nail to my heart. I really didn't know what to say to her.
I think for this to make sense I should back track a little bit. Desi is not Maik's biological son. Come on look at the pictures. For us this is not a big deal. Maik has been in Desi's life since he was 6 months old. Desi was born in the USA. For the first year (and i mean exactuly 5 days after his first birthday we left) Desi heard only English. Maik only spoke English to him, because he did not want to confuse him (that is another story). Anyway after we got here Desi began be BILINGUALLY raised. I only speak English to him and Maik only speaks German. The Germany influence in his life is HUGE. I don't have any English speaking friends here and apart from speaking English to me and watching some English dvd's, Desi's English influence is very small.
So back to this conference. The teacher (who speaks VERY little English) thinks that Desi's English is much better than his German and that the English influence in his life is too much and that I (who can not even pass German at school) should stop speaking English (to my own child) and only speak German to him (so that i can no longer communicate and did i mention that grammar is awful!?!?) so that his German improves.
I still don't know how to respond to this. I read everything I can find on the topic of bilingualism. I read through all the methods, the different types of bilingualism, the effects, the problems, and what good can come of it. In our life it is nessacery that Desi (and all following children) be bilingual. My family cannot speak German, nor Maik's family English. Aside from that Desi is bilingual in the very sense of he has two native languages. From what I have read at this point it would most likely harm him more to take him out of the bilingual enviornment.
My main question is: did I do something wrong? I mean Desi's problem seems to be that the minority language (English) is better that the enviornment language (German). That is not common. I don't know why this is. I would like to point out though: I waited over 2 years to hear my child's first word. I had to wait almost another year to hear his first sentance. Yes Desi did not start to talk until he was 3. I think that what he learned speech wise in the past one and half years is increadable. On the other hand I really cannot say anything about his German. I really don't know if it is that bad, but i can say that his English needs work. He makes a lot of grammar mistakes that I know are from German and I can imagine vice versa.
We plan in March to (once all our testing is done) take him to a speech therapist and have his speech and all that jazz evaluated. Other than this I am at a loss. I could really use some advice. I don't think raising him bilingually is a bad thing, nor do think we should stop what we are doing. I just don't know how to explain that to anyone.
If you read this far, thank you. I would really value your imput. I promise next post will have pictures of fun in this snow!
lots of love,
amy
Today the National German Handball team is playing and all the kids got German flag stamps on there cheeks. Very fitting as Desi and I just got our visas extended for two years today!
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