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View Full Version : None speaking English!! Advice please :)



maryp0ppins
13-08-2011, 07:19 AM
I had a lovely family visit yesterday. Mum and Dad are both Chinese and work at a university.
11 month old LO is adorable and she happily crawled around the house exploring and smiling away.

Parents tell me at home they have ONLY ever spoke in Chinese to her and that they rarely go into the community with her (library, make & plays, park etc etc) so LO will have hardly picked up any English talking if any.

They are looking at other CM's so might be asking for no reason if they decide to go else where, but how would I get over the language hurdle if LO is only coming 2 days for around 5 hours each day?!?!

Has anyone been in this situation and if so what advice would you give to me please...????????????

Oh and dropping off would be grandparents who do not speak a word of English and also do not understand English, so I did say I could make some cards for them with 'smiley/sad/crying/poorly etc faces and when dropped off they could show me how LO had been previous night and before drop off?!?!?

Penny1959
13-08-2011, 08:03 AM
I have had some similar experiences

Family one mum bilingual English and Turkish, dad only Turkish, child only limited Turkish, me only English. Required to drop home to Dad.

Family two mum bilingual English and Romsnian, child limited Romainian on starting at 14m, Granny (when staying here and we drop to) Romainian only.

With both families we wrote extra detail in the daily diary for the English speaking parent to read later on.

We communicated to non English speaking parent / grandparent with basic hand signs / facial expreesions for happy/ sad, eaten / not eaten, slept / not slept and the most important one - making a phone call sign - this meant we needed to talk to the English speaking person that evening (in case did not read book) Of corse if was an emergency we would have phoned directly ourselves

To the children - we learnt the words the parents thought most useful mummy, food and so on in the child's home language. If the child said something that we did not understand we would ask about it. In both cases the parents wanted the child to learn English and to speak English in the setting.

We brought some picture dictoraries to help us and to help value the child's home language.

We have had many other lanuages but in those cases have not had to deal with a non English handover - so was a bit easier.

Penny :)