my wife is due in July and I’ve been trying to find as much resources as possible to prepare for the new baby. This will be our first baby.
I was just wondering if anyone here has mixed race babies that aren’t white and Taiwanese or two Asian races mixed that could talk a bit about their experiences raising children here?
Although I am half white, my skin is quite brown. My wife is Taiwanese. I know from first hand experience that children here can have strong reaction to dark skinned people (well more like strong reactions to anyone who looks different really. Not so much about skin color exactly). Anyway I wonder how parents here deal with this?
Im also curious about language. My wife and I speak almost entirely in English at home. I practice Chinese every day but the majority of the time we speak in English as my wife doesn’t really like to slow down and help with my Chinese (I’m not very good at it so I’m sure it must get annoying for her to explain things over and over). Anyway I’ll be taking more mandarin lessons next semester which will hopefully help. But I worry that if we switch to Mandarin in the home my child will lose English ability.
How do others balance language? Also can there be too many languages? My mother will certainly try to teach my child Spanish and my in laws speak almost exclusively in Taiwanese (pretty fascinating usually they speak taiwanese and the young people respond in Mandarin).
Sorry I know this is a long post but I just want to raise my new kid the best I can. I want my child to have a good life.
(Also were only 8 weeks so we haven’t yet crossed the first trimester milestone. It’s quite the build up of anticipation during gestation.)
We always played it down. No, you can’t take a picture with my cute baby, or toddler, or child. No.
No. The kid will pick up both. Our son was a bit delayed with SPEAKING English, but by 4 or 5, (maybe even younger) he was clearly bilingual. Adding a third is a great idea.
Then read to him or her a LOT. Like a LOT. Foster good writing behavior. Have a family writing time.
Anyway, for the most part, babies are boring, but they get way more interesting as time passes!
That assumes they have equal contact with the kid.
My wife and I speak English with ours. They didn’t go to kindergarten but had contact with Mandarin speakers.
At six, when they went to school, their English was much stronger, but they could speak Chinese. The oldest is stronger in Chinese now.
In my experience, when one parent speaks Chinese at home and school is all Chinese, the kid’s English is pretty poor and the conversations with the English speaking parent are…….basic.
My sons first languages at home were Taiwanese and Mandarin. He did not learn to speak English until he was 8 years old. Was never an issue for him later on in life.
Kids will speak in whatever language they speak with a parent from. @comfy123 daughter speaks English to him. speaks Chinese with her grandparents and mother.
His daughter told me she wont speak to me in Chinese as it’s not fair her father won’t understand what we are saying lol. You have a long time to learn Chinese and can also learn from your child later.
My father’s side has blonde hair and blue eyes in most of the family (although my father’s hair was brown almost red and brown eyes.
My family on that side us from Denmark and Sweden. So, I have no idea how my child will look like. My brother has white mixed children and my nieces look like light skinned Mexican (one lighter than the other though).
My sister also has a child white mixed and he looks full white with just a tinge of brown.
Although, I was reading my son Shakespeare whilst he was in utero.
When he was older, I read the Magic Tree House books to him at bedtime and when he started to devour the One Piece comic books, in Chinese in the 4th and 5th grades, I about wept.
The best sound in the world imo is to hear a kid laugh out loud at something she’s reading.
The national library by number 4 park in Yonghe also has a big English language kids section. You can get up to 20 books at a time, so don’t feel too pressured to buy books from the states.
My friend was half Puerto Rican, half Pakistani- always introduced himself in Taiwan as “_____ from New York” so he wouldn’t face typical prejudice against dark-skinned people here; his wife was Taiwanese. AFAIK his kids never faced any discrimination here- they were friends with my kids, and never reported any. My own kids, half white, half Taiwan aborigine, never faced any prejudice even in Taitung.
