French Daycare and English Speaking Parents

October 7, 2005 11:31 AM

My wife and I have been looking for a daycare centre for our one year old daughter, as my wife is returning to work shortly. French daycare w/ english speaking parents question follows...

Apparently a lot of people in our area (English speaking Ontario, Canada) are multiplying because we're bottom dwellers on a lot of waiting lists from many local centres. Anyway, the other day we got a call from the local Francophone daycare centre, informing us that they now have an opening. (Side note: we weren't looking specifically for a French daycare, but we thought it might be a good thing to consider.) So we toured it and it seems great. Now my wife and I don't speak french (we were studying before the baby was born, but still, we essentially have little to no practical speaking ability). The centre staff are all bilingual of course, and they inform us that there are quite a few anglo-only parents like ourselves who opt for their facilities. So, although we would love to give her the opportunity to learn another language without really having to work at 'learning' it (ie through what would essentially be immersion), we have questions.
Once in daycare, we would probably only get to spend abour an hour in the morning and 2-3 hours at night with her, depending on what time she goes to bed (now between 7-8, we get home at 5). Would being in a French speaking environment for the majority of the day hinder her English or confuse her in any way? We'd still be spending weekends with her. We are not sure if she would continue French immersion elementary school level yet. Thoughts? Thanks

posted by jikel_morten to education (15 comments total)

When we lived in Brazil, we put our daughter into a day school (mornings) from the age of one, when they would admit her. She learned and thrived in Portuguese for nearly two years. She spoke Portuguese as well as she spoke English. Our housekeeper (oh, how we miss her!) spoke no English and our daughter spoke only Portuguese with her.

Now she's nearly four; we've been back in England for a year, and she's forgotten most of the Portuguese. We still do stories and I try to speak it with her; she still understands but won't speak, apart from her numbers and a few key words. Her English is excellent.

I am convinced that the social exposure far outweighs any concerns about later language skill. There are studies to say that this is the time to program kids' circuitry so they'll have that multi-lingual facility later in life - when you don't know the boundaries of one language, you learn so much more just like it's all the same language. I can't imagine raising a child to speak more than one language as close to native would ever be a mistake.
posted by sagwalla at 12:03 PM on October 7, 2005

Just an anecdotal answer here. My brother lived in Armenia at the time his first child was born. His wife and he both worked and so they hired a nanny. The nanny, who was with the child most of the day spoke no english and only Armenian and Russian. The child is now reading on about a very high level (he just finished the Narnia series) and is about to enter kindergarten.
posted by Pollomacho at 12:04 PM on October 7, 2005

I lived in Quebec for a long time and there are scores of similar stories, and I've never heard of any real problem. What I've heard is that there's minor confusion for a little while, but at some pretty early point the kids just "click" and get that there are two different languages and that not everyone who speaks one can speak the other.

For a more definitive answer, try Google on "code switching" which I believe is the technical term for this in the research.
posted by mikel at 12:07 PM on October 7, 2005

Thanks all...good stuff. Thanks for the code switching bit Mikel, hadn't heard that before.
posted by jikel_morten at 12:13 PM on October 7, 2005

I have older kids in French immersion in the same area (Ontario). Having them speak French all day has had no impact (as far as I can tell) on their ability to read or speak English. People actually comment on their (English) vocabularies, but we (the parents) are prone to using big words anyway. The only possibly downside I can see is that they won't do any spelling in English until Gr 5, so they may end up being slight worse-than-average spellers in English. Oh, the horrors (as I hit F7). For kids in preschool, I don't think it's a big deal. If the people are nice and the toys are clean, that's probably the main thing.

It's not much of a worry IMO.
posted by GuyZero at 12:13 PM on October 7, 2005

I went to a bilingual school in Massachusetts. While my mother is French, many of my classmates were completely Anglo. This wasn't daycare, but "maternelle" (ages 3-4). I don't think there were any problems. I think it's an excellent thing for your child to be exposed to.
posted by chelseagirl at 12:15 PM on October 7, 2005

There is tons of research around this, and the general consensus is that it's a very good thing to expose kids to multiple languages when they are deep in language acquisition mode. If they ever take up the languages later in life, they often will have perfect accents due to their previous exposure. There are studies that say it can also improve reading, critical thinking, and math skills.

The only downside I've heard from parents raising kids in multilingual environments that it can slightly delay the onset of fluent speaking. I forget the ballpark numbers, but say kids really start talking in sentences at 2, a kid surrounded by two languages might not be that talkative in either language until 6 months later. I have a friend that has a child learning english, german, and spanish and can speak words in each, but he's a little behind for his age, maybe 6-9months what a kid that only knew english would be.

It's a pretty minor downside in my opinion, as it kind of disappears as a problem by the time they are 4 or 5 and ready for school. FWIW, my hope is to send my daughter to a bilingual school for as long as possible, even though we don't speak more than one language at home.
posted by mathowie at 12:20 PM on October 7, 2005

another anecdote:

An ex-boyfriend of mine's family adopted a 2-year old girl from Romania. They're bilingual themselves - from what I can tell they mostly spoke Spanish at home, but the kids had perfect English. The girl came to them, I think, only speaking a little Romanian, and they taught her Spanish first, and then English. She learned both quickly, and the whole family is bilingual - which got the ex's older sister some nice scholarships, btw.

I started learning French in kindergarten, and while I'm not even close to fluent, my accent is perfect. After a tiny bit of practice, I was able to sight-read Haitian Kreyol as well, with perfect pronunciation.

Basically - I wouldn't worry, and would see it as a big plus. I wish I'd become bilingual when I was wee one myself.
posted by kalimac at 12:36 PM on October 7, 2005

Thanks all.
posted by jikel_morten at 12:54 PM on October 7, 2005

I was raised speaking Dutch and English, and have taken yearly trips to Beligium my entire life (I never went to school in Dutch).

I speak Dutch pretty well, and if I speak it for about a week I really fall back into the groove fairly effortlessly.

When I took French the past few years, I found the pronunciation to be quite easy.

I got a 750 on SAT verbal.

I attribute most of the above to my parents raising me in a bilingual environment as much as they could.

I'm really much more of a math person, but I still appreciate it.

Do it! Your kid will appreciate it too (in a rather sesquipedalian manner I'd guess)
posted by phrontist at 2:45 PM on October 7, 2005

My American friend's son entered Brazilian school at 18 months. Seven months later, he seems to have an incredible grasp on English and, from all accounts, Portuguese. He refuses to speak Portuguese with any American other than his older brother (who goes to school with him) even if they speak to him in Portuguese.

I say go for it. I spent a few years in French immersion myself and feel my life was much richer for it.
posted by wallaby at 4:31 PM on October 7, 2005

My best friend is Puerto Rican and her husband is Wisconsonian and they live in Austin, TX. He speaks only English to the kids, and she speaks only Spanish. Her oldest is 3 now and she speaks Spanish to whomever speaks Spanish to her and English to whomever speaks English. She did start speaking later than her peers (about 4 months), but I see no discernable difference now between other kids her age.
posted by j at 5:16 PM on October 7, 2005

Wisconsonian is a slightly less striking version of Fargonian.

Seriously, in the not-so-proverbial world of Manhattanite day-schooling, there are parents who pay many thousands of dollars to get their pre-schoolers into language immersion programs. For you, you just need to go outside! I really think this a great opportunity and you should embrace it.

Just wait till the kid starts correcting you. ;-)
posted by dhartung at 6:10 PM on October 7, 2005

All of the articles and research I've read in studying foreign language education points to the positive effects upon children in immersion environments. Also, some of the best immersion schools/centers are in Canada, so you've got that going for you.

What I've read about and heard from bilingual families (eg Ami/German, Ami/Rus, &c) is that it is important that each parent use his or her native language. Modeling, although very effective, might reinforce mistakes or incorrect pronunciation if one of the parents is not a native or fluent speaker.
posted by vkxmai at 8:06 PM on October 7, 2005

I grew up speaking English and Spanish with no problems, and picked up some portuguese at school up until grade 5 (stayed in the room doing other homework while portuguese was being taught). From grades 3 to 5 I also took Italian in school, and of course French from grades 1-12 and first year university.

I seem to have no confusion between languages. I'm still fluent in English and Spanish. I do fine in French, and I can understand Portuguese and Italian if the speaker speaks slowly or if I can read instead of listening.

I really don't think there's any reason for you to worry about having any problems at all. I don't recall as a child ever getting confused and starting to speak to someone in the wrong language.

However, I will note: When I took French in first year university (French Lit, not "how to speak french" -- the course assumed you were already relatively fluent and lecutres were held entirely in French, class discussions held in French, and papers due in French), the course was filled with former immersion students (high school and/or elementary school, not daycare immersion). These students really really intimidated me. It all came to them faster -- they spoke quickly and never had to take a second to come up with a word.

On the day of the exam as I was handing in my exam, the professor asked me if I planned to major in French and encouraged me to do so. I told him I didn't think so, and that part of the reason was that I felt so intimidated by the immersion students. He said that my grades in the course were higher than theirs, and that I shouldn't be intimidated by them because though they spoke quickly their grammar was terrible. I've since heard this from other sources (that French immersion students have terrible grammar). Take from that what you will... It could be a plus that they were confident beyond their abilities, or a minus that their abilities were lacking. Regardless, I figured it didn't reflect well on me that I hadn't known they had grammar problems. I did not major in French .

I don't think it's necessarily important that you only speak your native tongue lest you make mistakes when speaking to your child. North American is full of children who speak perfect English even though their less-than-perfect-English-speaking parents spoke English in front of them.
posted by duck at 12:35 PM on October 8, 2005