How many international adopters provide language lessons for the adoptee to learn to speak their original lang

Question

It is easier for younger children to learn lauguages, and it also helps improve other areas of thought and reasoning.

How many make an effort to expose an adoptee to early exposure of the first language of the child's culture?

Answer 1

We adopted our daughter from China at 9 months and she is now 2.5 yrs.  In February she is starting Saturday morning classes and she is already booked into a school that teaches Mandarin as a second language.  

We would have liked her to start earlier but there were no programs available for younger children so up to now my husband has been teaching her (he is Canadian born Chinese but more fluent in Cantonese).  I also would have liked her to participate in an immersion program for kindergarten but there are no programs like this operating in our city which is surprising given the large number of Chinese people.

I think it is important that adoptive parents do everything they can to teach a child about their culture at what it means to be a Chinese-American (or Vietnamese-American, African-American etc etc).  Language is just one aspect of this.

Answer 2

How wonderful that some adoptive parents are doing this.  What a great opportunity for the child to retain some of his/her original cultural identity and for the family to become bilingual.

Americans are bad at learning other languages because we don't care to do it, but second language is like a second world view.  A child who keeps his native language (which means, of course, the language of the culture in which he or she was born, as "native" comes from the same root as "natal") will have a richer life.

Answer 3

I was adopted from Korea when I was almost 2.  My mom made the effort to get me into Korean language classes when I was about 4.  It was a very sweet effort.  It would've meant her giving up Saturdays because the city where the lessons were held was about 3 hours away from our home but she was more than happy to do it in order to help keep me in touch with my heritage.  But she let it be my decision.  She didn't want to force it on me.  She said when she asked me, I shook my head with all the passion a 4 year old can muster.  I said "NOOOO!!!  I want to watch s****. Doo!!!"

Oh well...she tried.  I wish I HAD done it though......

Answer 4

My daughter is from Taiwan, where they speak Mandarin.  My husband is Chinese American (not adopted, his familily immigrated when he was little).  His whole family speaks English, Cantonese, and Mandarin, so our daughter is around Mandarin.  We intentionally have my husband speak to her in Mandarin a lot so that she will learn it.  (Sometimes it drives me crazy because I don't know what he is saying to our daughter lol!  Try as I have, I haven't been able to learn much Mandarin)  Anyway, I don't know that she'll be as fluent in Mandarin as she is in English, but she will definitely know some of her first language.  It also helped in her transition.  The first week she joined our family, if my husband spoke English while holding her, she would push his face away!  It was definitely comforting to her to hear her familiar language at least when she was going through adjusting to so much else.

Answer 5

We are working on it. I wish I could do more, as I really think this is important, to allow my daughter to have more access to her home country when she is grown. I learned some Mandarin before we adopted her, and with the help of our guides I spoke a lot with her in Chinese for the first few weeks, and it seemed to comfort her, even though it wasn't the same Chinese she had mostly heard. The language in her foster home was Hakka Chinese, but that isn't very feasible to learn in the US and also would not be that widely understood in China or elsewhere, so we are trying to learn Mandarin. We were involved in a class for toddlers and parents, but that fizzled because the teacher had other commitments and didn't really feel comfortable teaching little kids, so I'm working on setting up another one, recruiting teachers and finding a space, etc. I have 2 software systems and dozens of books, but while I've found great stuff to help me learn, I haven't found anything yet that I'm thrilled with for under 5 year olds (if anyone has any suggestions, bring them on!) We do watch children's videos in Mandarin and to learn Mandarin, and as I get a little better I'm trying adult ones, but so far the Chinese films for adults are way too bleak for her--there will be time to learn about the horrors of the Cultural Revolution later!

It is a struggle, but it is important, so I will keep at it. As she gets older, it should be easier to find things at her level and also the teaching of Chinese is expanding quickly.

Answer 6

I've never adopted internationally, and I have no intention to.  If I ever do adopt (I really would like to some day) it will be from foster care.  

However, I really believe that if you adopt internationally you SHOULD make efforts to help the child learn their "native" language.  (I said "native" since technically a "native language" is the one you grow up speaking.)  I don't know many international adoptees, but I do know alot of hispanics in my area who were raised during the "Spanish makes you a second class citizen" era.  Their parents purposely denied their learning the language.  (On a side note, my mother also highly discouraged my own attempts to learn Polish from my dad's mother because she considered that to be a "dirty" side of my herritage)  It has been really hard on them as adults because people expect them, as hispanics, to speak Spanish.  Maybe people shouldn't expect this, but in practice, they do.  It is frustrating and embarassing for them to have to explain that they don't speak the language.  

I'm not sure international adoptees would ever face quite the same situation.  After all, there are many many Chinease-Americans who don't speak a l**k of anything other than English.  However, as a parent, wouldn't you want to make sure your child never has to EXPLAIN that they don't know a language their face says they should know?  Besides that, it's a good way to get cultural emersion, and second languages are good for everyone.  I sure wish I had a second language!  All my attempts at aquiring one as an adult have proved less than useful.

Answer 7

Friends of our's just adopted from Guatemala, and I wondered the one day why they were calling her by two names.  I found out that they were using spanish and english for everything to help her associate the new surroundings.  I'm sure it will be less frequent as she learns to speak, but at least they are giving it thought now.  Plus in our area, Spanish is basically becoming the primary language, so I know that she will have a lot of experience with it.