I wonder what my toddler thinks about being bilingual

A cute little cartoon beaver, with the text 英文儿歌 (English kids' songs). Image source.

I talk to my little daughter in English. Other people in her life talk to her in Chinese. (For the purposes of the blog, we will refer to her as Baby Wavelength.) She has a nanny who takes care of her all day because my husband and I have full-time jobs- in China it's common to have a nanny because there are very few daycares that take kids less than 3ish years old. In China, we call the nanny "ayi." The ayi talks to her in Chinese all day.

My husband (who is Chinese) sometimes talks to our kids in Chinese and sometimes in English. He and I talk to each other in English. Oh, and the ayi doesn't speak English, so I talk to her in Chinese. 

Huh, when I spell it all out like this, I guess it sounds really confusing? It doesn't feel confusing to me as I live my life. I guess this is just normal to me now. 

(I mean, if you research the strategies that people use to teach their children multiple languages, One Parent One Language (OPOL) is common, but we're not quite doing that, it's more like, an assortment of people with all different levels of English/Chinese ability.)

Anyway, what I wonder is, what does little Wavelength think about this? Is it incredibly strange to her, that the entire way that ayi talks is completely different from the entire way that Mommy talks?

One day I was quizzing her on her body parts- "where are your ears?" and she touches her ears, etc. And I said "Where's your neck?" and she didn't know that one. Then I said, "Where's your neck? 脖子 [bó zǐ]" and she touched her neck. I guess she learned a bunch of Chinese words for body parts from ayi. Does she think it's strange that I refer to these body parts by a completely different set of words from what the ayi taught her? How do you make sense of that, if you're a baby?

Another example- my daughter learned to say "up" (in English), and that became her favorite thing to say, because she always wants us to pick her up. Our ayi told me that all day long, Wavelength was saying "up." Not sure if ayi knew the English word "up" before this, but I guess the meaning becomes obvious when a baby is following you around all day with her arms raised.

Maybe little Wavelength doesn't find this weird, because as a baby, everything is new and you have no frame of reference for what's "normal" or "weird."

Or maybe this isn't that different from a more universal toddler experience- they play some game or sing some song with one caregiver, and then the toddler tries to get another caregiver to do the same game/song, but the other caregiver can't figure out what the toddler wants them to do. 

And then I thought, hey, you know who would have some insight into whether it's confusing to be a baby in a bilingual household? Her older brother. His situation when he was a baby was pretty much exactly the same. So I went and asked her brother- my son- on the blog we can call him Square Root- "When you were little, did you think it was weird that some people talked to you in English and some people talked to you in Chinese?" 

He said, "I don't remember" and then wandered off to play with his toys. Okay.

Square Root was born just before the pandemic, and we got stuck in China for 3 years. During that time, he learned to speak- and he basically spoke Chinese only. I always talked to him in English, and he could understand all of it, but he didn't say things in English himself. I guess since nobody else in his life talked to him in English, he thought it was just some niche interest that Mom is into. Then when China's zero-covid policy ended, and we finally got to travel to the US and interact with my relatives, then he started speaking English.

And now, basically whenever we travel to the US, for the first day he talks to people in Chinese, and they have no idea what he's saying, but then he adapts to speaking English and it's not an issue.

I'm a white person in China, and generally nobody expects white people in China to be any good at speaking Chinese. Yeah, there's very much a double standard, where Chinese people apologize for not being able to speak English well, but don't have any sort of expectations that a white person who chose to move to China should be able to speak Chinese. And if the white person says 1 word in Chinese, Chinese people will say "wow! Your Chinese is so good!" (But don't take it that seriously, they are just being polite.)

So yeah, I can speak Chinese, but nobody really holds me to any kind of standard about it. Except 1 person. My son. Oh man, sometimes I catch him telling people I can't speak Chinese, like, what the heck, dude. He tells me I don't speak Chinese well, because sometimes I can't follow what he's saying, like if he had a bizarre dream about Optimus Prime and he's describing it in Chinese. Can you believe I couldn't quite follow that.

Or he says to me "How can you not know this word? This is an easy word!"

And there was one time he was telling me all about this Chinese word that refers to a kind of fruit, but also means jumping on the couch, and I was working very hard to try to follow what he was saying, and then I said, "Is this a real thing, or did you make it up?" and he said "I made it up."

Always fact-check your children!

Anyway, this is what life is like for my kids. I'm so fascinated by the way language interacts with the way that people think. I'm so curious about what it's like to learn to speak in this kind of bilingual environment. I wonder what my daughter thinks about it all. I tried asking my son but he seems to have no interest in communicating it to me.

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Related:

Raising Mixed Race (a book for parents of mixed-race Asian kids)

On Immigration and Double Standards 

"The Case for Loving" (kids' book about Loving vs Virginia)

"I Want a Popsicle" (a bilingual book for Asian children, about feelings)

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. Cracker Barrel, Anglican Converts, and Tradition’s Aesthetic (August 25, via) "That draw into nostalgia—even or especially nostalgia for something we never experienced like the rural South of the 1930s or the high medieval English cathedral—can drive us to over-inflate continuities between ourselves and the past and to idealize rituals, expressions and—in the case of church and Cracker Barrel—aesthetics we think capture our imagined communities in their purest form."

Related to this is the idea that white people have a culture. I didn't get that when I was growing up- I thought the way I lived was just the regular way, and other people who ate weird food and celebrated weird holidays did so because it was their culture. The link talks about the misconception that the liturgical rituals in the Anglican church are the same as those from the very beginning of the church- the idea that these rituals are just neutral and normal and the way it always was- no, this is not true.

2. More Drowning Children (March 21) "God notices there is one extra spot in Heaven, and plans to give it to either you or your neighbor. He knows that you jump in the water and save one child per day, and your neighbor (if he were in the same situation) would save zero. He also knows that you are willing to pay 80% of the cost of a lifeguard, and your neighbor (who makes exactly the same amount of money as you) would pay 0%. However, in reality, the river and the drowning children are going by your house, not your neighbor’s house. Which of you should get the spot in Heaven?"

3. AI Companies’ Race for Engagement Has a Body Count (August 28, via) "Instead of providing meaningful safety measures, transparency, age assurance, and data privacy protections, Meta and others have chosen to build platforms that deliberately blur the line between human and machine."

The thing that really gets me about this is, I know that some people will respond by saying, well, that's just how an LLM is, you don't really know how it works internally or what it's going to do in every situation, so this is not anybody's fault, it's just the way it is. But I think this is the wrong way of looking at it- companies should be held accountable for making a product that will respond in unpredictable (and possibly dangerous) ways. There's no guarantee that this is safe, and yet they're selling it.

4. BREAKING: Eurgh, oh God, there’s a texture (August 29, via) "Even when you successfully manage to scrub away the last of the peanut butter, its memory will stain your hands, causing you to experience a level of anguish previously only felt by Lady Macbeth."

This is so real. This is exactly what it's like.

5. Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce Make Their First Public Appearance as an Engaged Couple—Just a Few Miles From NFL Star’s $6 Million Mansion (August 29) Aww that's great! (I am a Taylor Swift fan.)

6. Un-Reformed history (August 28) "Bai imagines that he’s positioning himself as a reasonable centrist and Serious Person because he’s rejecting “critical race theory,” but what he’s actually rejecting is total depravity and original sin."

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. Florida's 'Alligator Alcatraz' detention facility to be empty 'within a few days' (August 28) 

2. 2 firefighters arrested by Border Patrol at Washington’s Bear Gulch Fire (August 28) "In a statement Thursday, Sen. Patty Murray slammed the arrests as unnecessary, and demanded “immediate answers” as to why the men were arrested on the job, and what the immigration enforcement policy is during active wildfires."

3. Hundreds of unaccompanied Guatemalan children can stay in the U.S. for now, judge says (August 31) "'In the dead of night on a holiday weekend, the Trump administration ripped vulnerable, frightened children from their beds and attempted to return them to danger in Guatemala,' said Efrén Olivares, a lead attorney at the National Immigration Law Center. 'We are heartened the Court prevented this injustice from occurring before hundreds of children suffered irreparable harm.'"

Also: A high schooler stays back as his family, separated by deportation, returns to Guatemala (April 26) "Two weeks after federal officials arrested his father, Alex drove his mom and siblings to the airport for their flight to Guatemala. He's faced with finishing his senior year of high school without his mom or dad and finding a way to make it on his own with his older brother. Alex just turned 18."

4. Michigan AG Warns UM Hospitals Not To Capitulate Over Trump's Trans Ban, Calls Decision Likely "Illegal" (August 27) "'This administration draws most of its power from the willingness of its targets to capitulate without a fight, abandoning their own principles and interests, and throwing disfavored populations under the bus,' Nessel continued. 'Despite repeated successful legal challenges to actions by this administration, UM has chosen instead to sacrifice the health, well-being, and likely the very lives of Michigan children, to protect itself from the ire of an administration who, oftentimes, engages in unlawful actions itself.'"

5. Another major medical association breaks from CDC as ob/gyn group recommends Covid-19  vaccines during pregnancy (August 23) "'While the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently removed its recommendation that pregnant and lactating individuals receive updated COVID-19 vaccines, ACOG’s recommendations have not changed,' according to the updated practice advisory. 'The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists continues to recommend the use of updated COVID-19 vaccines in individuals contemplating pregnancy and in pregnant, recently pregnant, and lactating individuals.'"