Recently I answered to a Instagram Story about an interesting study pursued by Esti Blanco-Elorrieta. The linked article speaks about how bilingual people can express themselves more easily and in a more sophisticated way. However, what caught my interest is about childhood:
La experta asegura que antes de los seis años, el niño alcanza un nivel nativo. Pasada esa edad, aunque el cerebro es capaz de aprender el vocabulario a la perfección, no podrá desarrollar la destreza motora necesaria con tanta facilidad para reproducir el sonido exacto del segundo idioma. Por otro lado, hablarle a un recién nacido en tres idiomas y seguir la iniciativa a lo largo de su infancia es lo mejor, según confirma Blanco. “Es cierto que tardará más tiempo en hablar correctamente, pero al final llegará a controlar los tres idiomas. Es como con la música. Le puedes poner música clásica, country y rock, y con el tiempo, sabrá diferenciar todos los estilos”, compara.
After the age of six a child cannot learn a second language at a native level of proficiency. So, if you want that your child masters more than one language, you should start at birth:
It is true that he will take longer to speak correctly, but in the end he will control all three languages
I told my acquaintance that it is a very interesting study, but I met a few people that learned a language at a native level during their puberty. My affirmation started one of the most interesting debates and knowledge confrontations of my life.
Isn’t it stressful for a child to learn more than one language at such an early age?
The answer is… no.
A child needs to adapt to the environment and understands, promptly, that he has to communicate with different people with different “sounds”, even if she/he doesn’t differentiate those as different languages. On the contrary, children really enjoy talking so differently.
I was supposed to be bilingual, because I grew up in an environment where Italian and Swiss German language were spoken. I remember I used to speak Swiss German and I loved to communicate with the Swiss part of my family. Sadly, I don’t know exactly when during those six years, I stopped. My mother started talking to me just Italian. It was a mistake, and WE all know it.
Why do some parents decide to stop talking in their native language to their children?
The same mistake that my mother did with me is often done by other parents too. During the discussion we ended up thinking that they are just afraid. They are afraid that their child will not be able to integrate if they don’t speak the same language. For example: my mother feared to confuse me talking Swiss German since I started an Italian language school.
A consequence of taking this decision is that children will not express anymore interest into that language. Indeed I didn’t and still don’t want to speak German with my mother, and neither does she. Something feels weird and off when we try it. However this can be just my exception.
Most parents don’t know how important the first years of a kid’s life are. During those years children learn languages without any effort, build their character and start to be independent. They normally treat their children as a small thing, like funny toys, speaking to them in a reducing way. If a child can learn five languages in four years, then adults have to recognize that, and understand that this is not possible in later development stages.
The importance of being independent
Children learn how to be independent earlier than we think. The overprotection, that parents use as a justification to restrict the child environment, is self-defeating. The confusion, that grows in a child, stays in adulthood too, because of the lack of opportunities to be independent. The strictness inside the family can be found in school too. Children have just to stay quiet and learn, with other children of the same age. They become just copies. They copy each other’s behavior and stick themselves to an apparently stronger friend, or person, and become dependent on him.
The guilty adult/The guilt spiral
The adults are the problem. As adults we have many problems that are coming from our own childhood. Sometimes we don’t even manage to realize that. It is also difficult to accept that our parents failed in educating us, because of the unconditionally child love. That is why we copy the way our parents raised us, even if we don’t want to. It is difficult to change what we learned in such early stages of our life: self criticism, sense of failure, beatings etc..
Sadly, like I said before, the traditional school doesn’t teach anything different: it grows a lot of children that end up feeling uncomfortable in our society, because they cannot do these and that etc… The actual truth is, they are just not interested in what they are supposed to be.
Parents are bad at educating because they were badly educated too. Still, during our debate, I was feeling like our generation is different: we are more fearful, anxious and depressed, something our parents didn’t really get, on the contrary in their years they were just doing what was right. We just feel something is wrong and we don’t know the explanation, and what did actually start our bad feelings. I guess we can have some theories, which will somehow unite anthropology and psychology and who can tell whatever else!
The case of the beatings
Take beating as an example: many parents believe that children should be educated with discipline and, if needed, beatings, even if the latter is nowadays considered Abuse. The problem is that most of us grew up being beaten and still think of being a good person because of that, instead of realizing that a kid cannot understand the difference between good and bad through slaps. I think nobody will ever beat an employee because he did something wrong.
A new thing I learned during this debate is that children acquire a naturally inner discipline inside an environment regulated with freedom and limits. They start to learn very soon what is good or bad, also thanks to their high level of concentration that helps them learn so many things at such a high speed. An useful capability that we crave as adults, but we suppress it in children with stupid jokes and lies. We can just imagine how much a child ends up being confused.
Society kills personalities
To become a mother or father people have to fix their problem first. A child will not make you happy, will not be the answer to your life’s problems. Everything is more complicated than that.
Everybody nowadays is struggling, sort of, and the reason is also Society, which is mostly formed by our parents’ generation. We are starting to change things, but still not everybody is getting this sophisticated discomfort. On the contrary we raise children that hate themselves; an hate that stays with them forever and becomes a disease that has to be cured.
Parents make mistakes; a lot of them. For their mistakes they should apologize even to a child. In child’s eyes parents could never make mistakes, and she/he will just copy and repeat this behavior, feel wrong, lack self-esteem, or, in the worst case, develop fears and contrasting feelings(see child abuse, violence).
Everything I just mentioned stays deep in yourself as an adult too. Sometimes your behavior will just happen to be justified as part of your character, when in reality it comes from frustration and confused feeling that you are repressing since your infancy: like when a teacher turned off your curiosity or when your father yelled at you because you wrote on a wall.
The things we have in common can erase awareness
During the long discussion we got deep in our childhood experience, and, as weird as it can be, we both found that we experienced a trauma of a sort, as many other people we know in our everyday lives. Imagine, among 8 billion people, how many had their personality suppressed. They had to follow a path they didn’t really care about. They had to obtain a place in society to help the economy. They have to do everyday something they don’t truly understand, just knowing that it is the right thing to do. How many of these people embraced their true self?
Too many adults ignore how much a child can feel the environment he is in. We are the proof of it. We remember, we copy and paste. What kind of humanity can come out of that?
The only way to save humanity is by saving children; and if you think about it… It really makes sense.
Alessia Sorbo
2020-02-19