Will pay someone to send me a Chinese language teaching manual for young toddlers

Taiwan Parenting
21

I’ve tried this. She glances at it, then something comes up and she puts it to the side and never picks it up again. Don’t underestimate the power of an employee simply ignoring instructions in a passive way. Don’t know if it’s because English takes longer to read or because she’s not interested period.

[quote=“bababa”]But to say the baby doesn’t comprehend or react? I think if you spend a lot of time with a baby you will see that the child does comprehend and react. If a parent only spends a bit of time each day interacting with a child because the child is in daycare most of the time, you might not get the rapport needed to realize how the baby is reacting or what he means. Just like a stay-at-home parent will understand words the baby says much sooner than a parent who goes out to work, and both will understand much earlier than an outsider would.
Try saying “Where’s mommy?” to a 6-month-old. He or she will look around for mommy.

I think if you explain to the nanny what you want (over and over, maybe), and stay with her while she is taking care of the child for a couple of days and model what you want, she’ll be better. It would also give you a chance to see just how much Mandarin she does use every day. If it has been the same nanny for all this time, though, I would wonder if maybe she is speaking English to the child when you’re not there.[/quote]
My wife went back to work after 3 months (which is standard in the US, I don’t think your job is guaranteed if you stay out longer than that). I actually work from home, so I actually see what is going on every day. That’s why I am so confident about his comprehension levels.

I know how responsive he is to us in English. He directly responds to a number of commands from us. He also understands certain question forms, like “where is _____?” I just don’t see a parallel level of comprehension when she speaks to him in Chinese. I have actually tried to model stuff with her. For a while, I took a full lunch break to co-teach with her and every day we would work on an activity with him. I would do it in English and then ask her to do it in Chinese. She seemed to take my encouragement well enough. But then I got busy and couldn’t do that, and she basically stopped too.

In my mind, the key is to convince her how important these rich linguistic interactions are with the baby. Once she is a believer, she will naturally start doing all of the things she needs to. That’s all it took for us as parents. Without conviction and belief, no amount of modeling or training is going to make her do it except under my constant prodding and nagging, which is no fun for anyone. I just figured some sort of teaching guide would break down for her the way in which rich linguistic interaction would help develop his social and language skills.

Maybe, like you suggested bababa, I should show her some parenting guides that describe how to interact with babies. Maybe that’ll be enough to convince her. I would need someone to skim through the parenting books and find the right sections for me.

Which brings me back to my original request. Know any native speaker of Chinese who wants a small side job? I’m sure I can pay a reasonable rate that will make it worth their time. Maybe a parent with an existing library of Chinese parenting books would be ideal.

22

[quote=“Teddoman”]In soliciting the wisdom of the forumosa, one must absorb a couple of body blows along the way. :sunglasses:
[/quote]

And you’re taking them very well :slight_smile: .

The problem you have is that you are coming from an original position that I’m pretty sure nobody on this board agrees with. In fact, pretty much nobody in first or second language acquisition agrees with (outside of Taiwanese buxibans :smiley: ). Language can not be taught to a fifteen month old child - either first or second language. A lot of posters on here don’t think that language can be taught to people of any age. That perhaps is open to debate, but to a fifteen month old child :astonished: ! All you need to do is increase the input - seven billion language speakers across the globe can’t all be wrong.

If your nanny isn’t providing the input, and you are able to speak Chinese, then why not start communicating to your child in Chinese? S/he is in an English speaking environment, so the English will come regardless of pretty much anything you do. If you are worried about not providing native speaker input - in my opinion it really isn’t that much of an issue.

Asking for books, methods, or the availability of teachers to teach a 15 month old child a language is the sort of thing I used to hear from Taiwanese parents who then sent their kids to HESS.

23

To be fair to the OP, he is trying to get the nanny to provide more Mandarin input, but is failing. I think it would be better to have a native speaker’s input than that of the father, unless his Mandarin is really good. I also think that even mentioning ‘teachng’ to a Taiwanese will give them the impression you want them to ‘teach’ like their teachers taught them in school - which would be worse than the situation as it now stands.
To the OP: since you are home when the nanny is with the baby, you can see what she is doing. Does she play with him? Read him stories? If not, just what exactly does she do for the four hours every day? Feed him, change his diapers, and then what?
And does the baby seem attached to her? If not, I would wonder about the quality of the interaction between the two, never mind what language was being used.

24

[quote=“tomthorne”]In fact, pretty much nobody in first or second language acquisition agrees with (outside of Taiwanese buxibans :smiley: ). Language can not be taught to a fifteen month old child - either first or second language. A lot of posters on here don’t think that language can be taught to people of any age. That perhaps is open to debate, but to a fifteen month old child :astonished: ! All you need to do is increase the input - seven billion language speakers across the globe can’t all be wrong.

If your nanny isn’t providing the input, and you are able to speak Chinese, then why not start communicating to your child in Chinese? S/he is in an English speaking environment, so the English will come regardless of pretty much anything you do. If you are worried about not providing native speaker input - in my opinion it really isn’t that much of an issue.

Asking for books, methods, or the availability of teachers to teach a 15 month old child a language is the sort of thing I used to hear from Taiwanese parents who then sent their kids to HESS.[/quote]
I sort of feel like the supposed disagreement here is purely semantic. Most of the teachers here are against “teaching” to children, where teaching means sitting at a desk listening to a lecture. However, most of the teachers here would be for “language activities”, which are natural, rich, linguistic interactions centered around various activities in the child’s life and could be routine activities like diaper changing or could be non-routine activities like going to a park and playing with a dog that you encountered at the park. “Teaching” involves the child consciously learning something; “language activities” involve unconsciously and indirectly learning something through hearing and engagement. Correct me if I’m wrong but that seems to be the division line.

Despite using some words that are apparently very laden with bad history and are bound to bring up memories of misguided Taiwanese parents who want their infants to go to language “teaching” classes, I think that through this thread you can see that I have primarily been talking about materials that will help provide “language activities” so the child can indirectly and unconsciously learn language through hearing and engagement.

The materials I am looking for are to get the nanny to buy in by laying out for the nanny why and how rich language interaction results in language proficiency. From some of the suggestions provided here, I am now also considering simpler Chinese-language parenting materials that simply talk about the important of rich language interactions with a baby without any specific activities. Perhaps that will do the trick. But I suspect that a teaching manual will be more useful because it may give the nanny more concrete ideas of activities to engage the baby in, things to do with the baby, etc. I can’t necessarily rely on the nanny having the same vested interest in the child that the parent will have. A parent will naturally spend their free time thinking of activities or ways to benefit the baby; rather than relying on the nanny to do the same, since maybe only the best nannies might be so dedicated, having a teaching manual with activities laid out in an easy to follow fashion seems like it would work better.

As I’ve said, parents need to be taught how to parent too. For me, who had never really ever interacted with children before my own (except when I was one myself), there was no such thing as being “natural” with a baby. I had to be told what to do. There are a lot of parenting materials and guides that provide explicit suggestions for parental interactions with babies, some of which are intended to have linguistic benefits. After telling a nonresponsive baby you’re going to change his diaper a handful of times, the only thing that keeps you doing it is the little adviser on your shoulder that says, “hey, you read this thing in a book that told you to constantly tell the baby what you’re doing so he’ll absorb the language. keep talking buster!”

So if parents need some training, I don’t see why nannies can’t benefit from the same training too. The interactions suggested in parenting books are not “teaching” in a stiff formalized sense of sitting at a desk listening to a lecture. The suggested interactions are suggested activities to do with infants and toddlers that over time will have the effect of teaching them certain words or phrases and language generally. For example, playing hide and seek helps teach the baby its own name (“where is Jason hiding?”), the names of objects or locations in the house (“Is Jason hiding in the bathroom?”), location prepositions (“Is Jason hiding under the crib?” “Is Jason hiding behind the crib?”)

[quote=“bababa”]To the OP: since you are home when the nanny is with the baby, you can see what she is doing. Does she play with him? Read him stories? If not, just what exactly does she do for the four hours every day? Feed him, change his diapers, and then what?
And does the baby seem attached to her? If not, I would wonder about the quality of the interaction between the two, never mind what language was being used.[/quote]
Well, the attachment level is hard to tell. I don’t know if Taiwanese people are less emotive with infants than Americans. I haven’t seen any Taiwanese parents with babies. And there’s also the personality factor. She’s more reserved. She doesn’t get all silly with him and kiss him and hug him all the time like we do.

Because we’re that way towards him, he’ll run up to us and want to be held or hugged. We actively try to do things he’ll find funny and laugh. We may be more engaging because we’re his parents, or it could just be because our personalities are more warm, silly and active. We treat him like a real person who understands what we say. We try to get him to laugh, or we expect him to respond to our questions or commands.

With her, she mostly follows him around while he runs around. He’s quite active now, so he’s not a captive audience like he was before he could walk and run. She does sit him down from time to time and read to him or show him a picture book. I feel like she lets him run around too much without any actual interaction, and then the direct engagement she does have with him feels to me like it’s lower quality than our engagement with him. I want it to be more personal engagement of his personality, but is that just a reserved personality, or is that her not being aware that she needs to exhibit more of those qualities with a baby? It may also be a bit of a vicious cycle with her: he still doesn’t have any Mandarin comprehension, and she continues to behave like he’s an infant with no comprehension so she doesn’t actively engage him as much as she could. Or it could also be her personality and culture makes her more reserved around an infant.

She does many things right, in terms of being reliable, trustworthy, feeding him (he’s not easy to feed). And continuity of care is so important for babies. Plus it takes months for a nanny to learn the personality of the baby. So it’s not really a practical option to just change nannies whenever they don’t do something perfect. It’s much more practical to just retrain your nanny so that they do things better.

25

Teddoman, is your nanny certificated? Sorry if you’ve already said and I’ve missed it. I just find it strange that a trained nanny wouldn’t know she’s supposed to constantly talk to the child. That’s pretty standard good practice with babies, as you’ve discovered yourself by reading parenting manuals.

Do you have any other reason for keeping her on other than the fact that she’s been with you a while and knows the routine etc.? Personally, I wouldn’t like to have a nanny who didn’t express affection for my child, especially a young toddler. :2cents:

26

[quote=“Petrichor”]
Do you have any other reason for keeping her on other than the fact that she’s been with you a while and knows the routine etc.? Personally, I wouldn’t like to have a nanny who didn’t express affection for my child, especially a young toddler. :2cents:[/quote]

Why? I always thought part of babysitting was to actually care about the children you’re looking after. It’s quite hard to spend even a small amount of time with little on your mind but another person’s well-being and not end up attached to them!

27

laying my cards on the table. i don’t know a thing about the theory of learning, but it makes sense that in order to learn a language you need to be exposed to it. so with that in mind why don’t you get some Mandarin tv shows such as chow-hu (search google for benesse who make the show) and then talk to him whilst he’s watching. try to make it a bit more interactive than passive. for what it’s worth expect a ratio of about 70-30 e to c since he is exposed to more english.

28

I think she shows affection for the baby is her own way. It’s just less expressive than the way we as the parents show it. Is that personality, or is it cultural? Or perhaps she cares but just not as much as the parents. I’m not really sure how to differentiate all those factors. You guys would know better, because you see lots of Taiwanese people with kids (which I don’t get to see here in the states to judge what standard behavior is towards infants)

I think there’s research that says babies can differentiate between live voices and recorded voices and that they learn better from live interaction. So an interactive adult is definitely way better than a CD or TV for language learning. But perhaps it might benefit him in our situation where we have a nanny that isn’t particularly interactive with him. We threw out our TV, so might have to wait until we’re ready to expose him to TV.

29

ok so you don’t have a tv. get chinese language cds or podcasts (did i really need to say that) and, as i said earlier, listen to them with him and talk to him about whats going on. that way he’s getting feedback on what he’s listening to.

30

[quote=“tsukinodeynatsu”][quote=“Petrichor”]
Do you have any other reason for keeping her on other than the fact that she’s been with you a while and knows the routine etc.? Personally, I wouldn’t like to have a nanny who didn’t express affection for my child, especially a young toddler. :2cents:[/quote]

Why? I always thought part of babysitting was to actually care about the children you’re looking after. It’s quite hard to spend even a small amount of time with little on your mind but another person’s well-being and not end up attached to them![/quote]

I think you’ve misread what I said. I agree with your sentiment.

31

He’s too young for podcasts or simply audio imput. TV shows if you or the nanny watched with him and commented on the shows in Mandarin might be OK, but not as good as real interaction sans TV.

32

Just. Relax.

He is not getting (and has not gotten) nearly as much input in Mandarin as he has in English. It will take time. And you want to talk baby talk to him in both languages. Don’t pay any attention to this whole “if you speak baby talk to them they’ll never learn adult language”. Thousands of us did just fine.