Never Underestimate the Little People

Ever since my mom arrived, Kai's been getting a lot of Chinese and producing a lot more Chinese than ever before. As a result, I've noticed the typical signs that a child is acquiring and sorting out the two languages in his immediate environment. The first is the occasional confusion and mixing up the languages in his production. He sees a dog in one of his books and he'd say, "Gougou! Puppy! Doggy! Woof woof!!" He sometimes asks for "Gemma" (Bill's mom), "wai-puo" (my mom), and "yi-puo" (my mom's sister) in the same sentence. Another indication that his brain is busy sorting and filing the massive amount of input Kai receives on a daily basis is that, as a very talkative toddler, he has gotten a bit reluctant at times to give an answer, especially after he's been using one language for a while and someone asks him a question in the other language. Nothing to worry about. All this is typical for bilingual children. Their brains will sort things out eventually.

Yesterday, however, Kai did something that blew my mind.

I took him out on a number of short walks because it rained on and off throughout the day and we wanted to get out as soon as the sun came out. We got to the elementary school across the street and Kai immediately started running like crazy. They have what looks like hopscotch squares with numbers in them on the playground. Kai ran over there, bent forward, and started counting, "uno, dos, uno," (exactly the same way he counts in English and Chinese). Obviously he has learned it from watching Dora the Explorer, but if you know us, you know we've been keeping it to one episode each time, and we don't put the show on every day. Moreover, although Dora does intend to "teach" Spanish, the primary (aka dominant) language of the show is, nonetheless, English. I can see older kids picking up Spanish here and there by consciously learning the words, but I was (still am) stunned by the fact that Kai has picked up even as few as two Spanish words (and he knows to use them correctly) from a show that he doesn't really watch all that much or often.

Man.... I wish I were in school now. You see, I was a good researcher when I was working in the "neuroscience in early language acquisition" lab, but I wish I could go back to doing that now. I was in my late 20s when I worked there. The "tests" were fun to run (hooking up babies and toddlers to the machine that recorded their brain functions), but I knew nothing about my "test subjects" then. I now understand (1) why those mothers signed their little ones up for our "tests" (I would) and (2) why the moms always looked as if they weren't sure if they should give us a hug or eat us alive when we were explaining to them the implications of the results. I also think I would have a much better rapport with the moms now. Back then, I was just a research assistant who had just begun a doomed relationship.

Anyway, the point here is that I'm humbled by what a child can do, and I think, as adults, we should treat the little people in our lives with a lot more respect and never underestimate/undermine what they're able to do. I would also like to clarify that it is not recommended that you purposely create an environment which you believe would help realize your child's potential (i.e., a certain dragon mother that we have all, unfortunately, heard about).
Let children be children and learn with them along the way.

I know I'm gonna enjoy growing up with Kai and learning from him.