Right Mothering

Although I was worried that the inauguration silliness would penetrate my daughter’s school, I decided to trust its international outlook and not ask whether there were special plans for Inauguration Day.  When I picked my daughter up in the afternoon, I coyly asked her if they had watched anything on TV that day.  She said no, but knew what I was asking and told me that they hung Obama’s picture on the wall.  She insisted showing me the picture in her classroom (my little angel!  she knew I would take issue with it).

There were two photos of Obama on the wall – the first a tiny head pasted onto the calendar to mark Inauguration Day.  Of course, that is without offense.  But then next to the calendar hung a large head shot.  I was shocked, and composed the following email to her teacher (I would have done this in person, but I pick my daughter up from the after-school program and therefore seldom see the teacher, whom I actually adore).

My daughter is fully trilingual.  I speak English with her, and my husband speaks one of his two mother tongues with her.  Acquisition of the third language began when we were living in Europe and continues here in the States at an immersion program that she has attended since pre-Kindergarten.  Our family language is English, but my husband only uses  his language when he speaks to her, even when out in public.  Some non-native English speaking parents may use English with their children when out in public, for fear of drawing attention to themselves as foreigners or immigrants, but thankfully, not my husband.

I fully support my husband when he speaks to our daughter in his mother tongue, even if that may exclude me from some conversations and even if he risks incurring the judgment of strangers.  First, he has a limited amount of time to spend with our daughter, and we both prioritize our daughter’s acquisition of this language.  He needs every minute.  Furthermore, if he only spoke in his mother tongue at home, he would restrict the contexts in which the language is used, and, in turn, the range of our daughter’s vocabulary.  As an added bonus, because his language is rarely known by non-native speakers, he can correct her behavior discretely and even comment on the bad behavior of adults and other children without them knowing.  Luckily, no one has ever said anything to my husband about not speaking English (which, by the way, is better than most native-speakers).

One question I have is why bilingualism has become a dirty word among conservatives (I listened to Laura Ingraham on the radio this morning on the way to work) and the use of languages other than English on American soil an offense. With all the known intellectual benefits of bilingualism (the kids are smarter), why can’t the Spanish-speaking background of immigrants, legal or not, be cultivated to their advantage?

On a side, but perhaps related, note, a friend of mine recently asked whether by learning three languages, my daughter has had trouble mastering one completely.  NOT AT ALL!!!!  Although it is common wisdom that bilingual children speak later, my daughter spoke early and from a very early age articulated words and expressed herself with the sophistication of child many years older.  Knowing more than one language or speaking a different language at home is not a handicap!

The key, I believe, is authenticity.  Each situation should be authentic.  I do not believe that children of kindergarten-age and younger should learn a language.  Rather, they should find themselves immersed in one or more languages other than their mother tongue.  The first thing a woman or man can do is to fall in love wisely, with a non-native English speaker.  Second, you can live with your family in a country where English is not the dominant language.  I suppose you could hire a nanny who speaks another language (but isn’t that a bit pretentious?).  And immersion schooling is of course an option, and one that we use, but in our case, it is built on the foundation of our early years living in a country where that language is spoken and through extended visits from a grandmother who speaks that language.

Other than that, I would say that you are out of luck.  This is a shame, but I think the struggling about which my friend had heard and asked me about was the result of inauthenticity (perhaps also understood as lacking a compelling reason) in the learning of the second and third languages.

Among the ideas highlighted by the New York Times Magazine in its year in ideas issue is the notion that “Kindergarten Redshirting is Bad in Many Ways”.  I am intrigued by this trend of redshirting (but didn’t know it was called this until today) and have conflicting instincts with regard to it.  The “many” (actually two) negatives that the brief essay in the New York Times Magazine presents do not compel me in any way.  First, I would consider the hastening collapse of social security resulting from the reduction in workers supporting the system a good thing.  Second, the shortening of the education of those who both begin late and drop out as early as legally possible seems a poorly thought-through theory.  Isn’t it highly likely that those children who start later have greater success in school and are therefore much less likely to drop out when they are older?

My own perspective on this issue is based on my daughter’s contrasting experiences in her school and her summer camp.  Her school has a December cut-off, so each grade has very young children, at least for what the school expects from them (such as full-day schooling from age 2.9).  At her summer camp, a day school during the academic year, the policy is to hold children back, especially boys, so that they enter kindergarten often at age six, and most of the children in her group also attend the school during the academic year.  Of the many differences between the two environments, the good behavior of the boys at the summer camp most impressed me.  The boys at the summer camp, who were all on the older side, were little gentlemen, in sharp contrast to the boys at my daughter’s school, especially those who are clearly on the young side, who constantly misbehave.  This, of course, is purely anecdotal evidence, but considering that the misbehavior of those boys (and some of the young girls too) has a noticeable negative effect on my daughter’s schooling, I am not inclined to dismiss this observation so quickly.

My own perspective is also informed by the prospect of enrolling my daughter in our town’s public elementary school.  My daughter’s birthday is in September, and the town has a strict cut-off of September 1st.  I will keep her in the private school at least through the first grade, because only for enrollment in the second grade will the school accept the lateral transfer from another school of a child whose birthday comes after the cut-off.  Although socially, I wouldn’t mind putting my daughter in a classroom where she can dominate by virtue of her seniority, intellectually, repeating a year would be stultifying for her.  And I have recently discovered that for gifted children, early enrollment in kindergarten is essential (see A Nation Deceived), and in fact, that skipping grades is actually not as detrimental as commonly believed.

So, if I had a boy born near the cut-off, and he had behavioral difficulties and showed no signs of giftedness, I might be inclined to redshirt him.  But with a girl born at the cut-off with impeccable behavior and signs of high intelligence, if not giftedness, there is no way that I will restrict her in this way.