Kid Update, part 3

I have been meaning for quite a while now to write another "kid update". There is so much to say. I feel a little overwhelmed by the task of recording our experiences. Our kids are such complete and complicated humans these days. They always SEEMED complicated, but in retrospect diapers and bottles and sleep seem so fundamental, and the newer issues of competency, belonging, and self-expression seem so grown-up to me. Makes it hard to know where to start...

Since we have been actually a little busy, with holiday gifts for teachers to organize (I am twice a room parent), costumes to gather for the kids' school "Spectacle", and a party of our own to throw together ("Fetes Divers D'Hiver", or, an excuse to blend Christmas cookie decorating with potato latkes, more on this later...) I have had less time than usual to dedicate to this document. But here I am, determined to get it out before "le week-end".

It has been with increasing fascination that I have observed my kids' second-language acquisition. For a nerdy developmental psychology student like myself, having a front seat from which to observe this process has been thrilling. The great (French! well, Swiss/French) developmental psychologist Jean Piaget really hit his academic stride when he meticulously documented (to an almost creepy degree, perhaps) the developmental foibles of his own three little darlings. So I'm going to play Piaget and record here for you some of the amazing linguistic moments experienced by my kinder these last few weeks or months. I'm taking a kind of "field notebook" approach, so forgive the lack of editing, if you please. Just need to get it down.

I'm going to start at the end, or that is, the present; in other words, now. The most recent thing I have noticed that we are all doing, is learning how to speak the particular brand of Franglish that ex-pats here have mastered and model for us daily. This is the kind of speech where in English you say, "I propose that we eat some foie gras". Technically it's English, but it's really a translation of what is a much more normal thing to say in French, ("Je vous propose..."). I have heard the English teachers at the kids' school say funny things like this and laughed, "I guess that's what happens to your English when you live her for 20 years!" But then I realized that even we have fallen prey to this linguistic sink-hole. Chris told me a story yesterday about a guy at the train station in Lyon who wouldn't sell him something because the vendor "didn't have any money". Well, what he didn't have really was "monnaie", which is French for "change". And just the other day, Loki held the door for Maya and when thanked answered, "It's nothing". Again, technically acceptable, just not what I would expect him to say, but for the fact that it is a perfect translation of "De rien!".

(Loki drawing for an audience...)

So Loki, the reticent frenchie is letting some linguistic habits sink in, despite his best efforts at resistance. Loki, as I have mentioned, has generally made it clear to us that he does not want to learn French, and for the first two months, I think he was successful. Chris and I discussed ad nauseum our concerns about Loki, and how to help him get over his resistance while acknowledging his dissatisfaction with our decision to come here... As Chris said. "Well, if he makes it the whole year in a bilingual school and really learns NO French, we'll have some very interesting information about Loki!". My strongest suit seemed to be to get him to realize that school (the French half, at least) would be a LOT less torturous and a LOT less boring if he actually decided to let a little of that French sink in. I think this argument finally appealed a little bit to his sense of self-preservation, and bit by bit, the chinks in his armor started to show. And having his charming and talented teacher tutoring him helped break down the wall, too...

Every little victory was celebrated. First, he would thank me in French without being asked. "Merci, Maman" from Loki was a breakthrough. Then he would start to string words together for the pure satisfaction of using the vocabulary he so painstakingly had acquired. Sampling my banana bread (thank you for the recipe Glen Park baking guru Michael Shapiro) Loki says to us, "Bon banane pain!". And the look on his face was indescribable. He beamed, he glowed, he actually seemed happy. And soon thereafter, while drawing a picture of a monster truck, he wrote "Grand Pied Quatre" right under "Big Foot 4". Coming along....

And then there is music. If you caught a glimpse of the rock video that our sitter Jessica made, then you know that Loki, in addition to his artistic genius, also has some mad moves. He now seems to have embraced the musicality of French and has perfectly memorized the French song he and his classmates are singing (and dancing to) for the holiday "Spectacle". He is like a young MC Solaar. I am serious. French rap has brought out the linguist in Loke Dog. I think we are on out way.....

So, Jonah... Jonah has had the least pressure to learn French, as the Kindergarten curriculum allows more flexibility, first of all, and also he is in a reading group for English, so his most rigorous academic "session", if you will, is in English. I won't go into detail about how I feel about that, or I might start crying about Glenridge and how much I wish he were digging in the mud with Kerry, Jessie, and Mame, BUT one side benefit is that he doesn't feel too much pressure to learn French, and the language acquisition that is happening is happening pretty organically.

That said, he had the most to learn in terms of what this whole "other language" thing is all about in the first place. One of Jonah's big "aha!"s of this year has been figuring out that people have languages that differ, and that they vary based on geography. I realized this the other day when I was watching Jonah draw a picture. (He is giving Loki a run for his money as resident artist, by the way - reams of paper are being consumed at the altar of his artistry. After visiting a cool exhibit at the Fondation Cartier on street art and grafitti he said, "I am inspired a thousand!" and has proceeded to fill notebook after notebook with his MTA-worthy tags.) But anyway, he's drawing a picture and I say (in violation of what I learned from Mame, which is to not make kids define their art to you), "What are you drawing?" And he says, "A bad guy (long pause) . A robber. He speaks every language. English. French. Every country's language." Whoa. I'm kinda floored. But I manage to respond with another question. "Does that make him powerful?" he looks at me like I am an idiot (he is REALLY good at that these days), but says earnestly, "VERY."

My other favorite Jonah language anecdote these days happened when walking to school musing about rodents. Jonah is really into animals, and so we talk a lot about dogs, cats, ferrets, marmots, giraffes, cheetahs, and on this particular morning, chipmunks. And I wondered out loud, "How do you say 'chipmunk' in French?" He looked up at me with his doe eyes and expressive eyebrows and suggested, "Maybe it's 'sheep-manque'" in a perfect French accent. Sheesh, no problem getting those sound patterns down, I guess!

He just seems to get the tone and tenor of the language in an intuitive way, half the time not understanding WHAT he is saying, but saying it perfectly. So if he comes home with no actual French knowledge, he'll at least be able to do a mean Inspector Clouseau imitation! Ask him, when you see him next, to tell you the story of the little girl who was his walking partner (the kids walk to the park and their gym and swimming pool, so they trek around the neighborhood quite a bit, which is really nice). Jonah doesn't let language barriers stand in the way of striking up a conversation. He just barrels ahead in English and this little girl stopped him and said, "Non, Shjonah, I uspeak ufrensch". Hard to capture it in text, but when you hear him say it you will die laughing because he captures the cutesy cadence of this lilting little French accent so exquisitely.

But he tries, and thinks it is interesting and funny to use what he knows in new situations. From my days as a student of developmental psychology I remember that when people over-apply a language rule (saying "goed" instead of "went", eg) it means the person is learning the patterns of language, and therefore represents an improvement over just parroting "went" without mastering the skill of turning virtually any verb into its past-tense construction. So anyway, Jonah is a student of these patterns and rituals that are his source of learning in French. So when he finished eating his snack the other day and he turned to me and said, "J'ai fini, Sandrine" to tell me he was done (but in the process calling me the name of his French teacher), I thought immediately of how now he knows what to say when you are FINISHED with something. He will eventually learn that he should add "Sandrine" only when Sandrine is actually present...

And Maya. You may be wondering what Maya has done with all her enthusiasm for French. Well, she alternates between dismay (French is impossible and English is babyish) and exultation (the look on her face when she correctly nails the third person singular present tense for the verb "fremir" (to shudder) based on the knowledge that it should follow the same pattern as "choisir" (to choose). She seems to see this crazy language as a gigantic puzzle. When she finds the piece to slip into place, she grooves. She loves her success in school (actually she and Loki both are very enthused by the fact that they receive letter grades here. I can't express to you how relieved Chris seems to be that both of them are dead-set on maintaining "straight A" grades.)

Her mind is so nimble and flexible. The rules glom onto her grey matter like "le scratch" (velcro). She just gets it. She gets it all. And she gets why it matters.

Maya wants to "do it a-self" and the sooner she gets the language skills, the sooner she gets to be independent. It starts with homework. Homework in French used to be a required "sit down with mom or dad" kind of an activity. And she had made it very clear that relying on us to help her complete her homework is not a very good feeling. At her SF school, this was not only necessary, it was against the rules. the kids are supposed to do their own homework. Duh. But it's a little trickier if you are supposed to write a four stanza rhyming poem in a language you barely know about an invented Carolingian King. I mean, she needed a little help, you know?

And though at the beginning of the year we needed to sit down and walk her through every scrap of French homework, we now really just need to give her the framework and she is independent. And she is reveling in this new power. Because language is power. And now she knows. Now I can send her to the boulangerie down the street and I know she will say, "Bonjour. Je voudrais une baguette et quatre croissant au beurre s'il vous plait" and she can bring back the booty like some kind of ocean-conquering swashbuckler. She is that proud and tough. She is unstoppable now.

So, you can see I am very proud of my little linguists. They have overcome feelings of incompetency, embarrassment, vulnerability. They have taken risks and come through unscathed, and even stronger for having taken on the challenge.

They get it now when someone stammers in English that there is nothing wrong with that person, they may just be new to the English language. "Is that the French Tintin book or the English Tintin book?" It's simple comments like this that show me that my kids are conversant in a whole new lexicon, comments that evidence their meta-linguistic awakening.

So badass.