Teaching my kids English
I'm rarely home. My stay-at-home wife doesn't speak any English. (Native Japanese)
Also, I've gotten to the point where I rarely speak English, and (when I get angry etc.) times where I used to fall back to English have now switched to defaulting/falling back to Japanese.
My 6 year old actively avoids me when I make an effort to speak English around him, but when I speak Japanese he loves his papa.
I didn't think much of it, but when we went back home he had a meltdown and screamed about how he was NOT and "america-jin" but he was a "nihongojin" and wanted to go back to Japan.
I am thinking of sending him to eikaiwa to get him started / liking English and going from there.
Or should I go gung ho spartan and refuse to speak Japanese?
Any advice is appreciated.
Agree with this. If this isn't going to change the only option you have left is an expensive international school.
You simply need to put the time in with the kid if he is going to have any chance of speaking English natively.
I have been trying to get my partner on board with remote work... to no avail... :-(
Do you mind if I ask why, if it's not prying? I'm a huge advocate of this and would love to see it have more of a foothold in Japan. First time I heard of a spouse (with young kids no less!) objecting.
Mine gets annoyed when I insist on watching English shows or speaking English because “it makes them resent English and not want you to spend time with them.”
Is this your spouse you're referring to? Or your kid?
I am gonna re edit my comment, I spoke too bluntly.
I advocate the full spartan approach, just go all English. The kid will come around but you will have to work with him and start from the basics. Get some english books and flash cards and start practicing with him.
If your kid speaking English is a priority, you should send him to international school. Force the English. A little tough love now will pay off in the future.
Yeah, no, tried that: then I'm accused of harrying them and causing trouble because “it makes them resent English and not want you to spend time with them.”
In short, the only thing that works is to have both parents agree that both languages matter.
I have been trying to get my partner on board with remote work
Sorry what do you mean by this? Do you mean your partner to do remote work with you?
And does this mean you also work remotely or you're thinking of transitioning?
I think he means partner in the traditional sense, business partner.
Only buy English video games :)
edit: Also put the family computer into English
edit 2: Also watch movies in English
edit 3: Arrange play dates with English-speaking kids
I forced my son to only play games in English and his reading comprehension has skyrocketed.
I started learning english with Shenmue. I’m a French native speaker. Shenmue’s story takes place in Japan and the whole game was in English. It somehow worked for me.
As a Danish kid, I learned English entirely from runes ape and wow.
Who is this rune fellow? His ape sounds like a very impressive teacher! ;p ( autocorrect can be a ducking nuisance eh?)
I learned English by playing games that were only available in English. It worked out for me, I now consider English my first language and it is better than my French. I was also part of an English immersion program in high school if they have such a thing in Japan.
Re: #3 where to find English-speaking kids outside international school?
Facebook has tons of international parenting groups and they have a lot of meetups and play dates. But OP would have to make time to go himself because they frown on Japanese parents coming for the sole purpose of teaching their kids English.
Facebook has tons of international parenting groups and they have a lot of meetups and play dates. But OP would have to make time to go himself because they frown on Japanese parents coming for the sole purpose of teaching their kids English.
hahaa, this sounds like proper drama.
My sister did this with my niece but, in Arabic. Put on cartoons in Arabic and have her play with the cousins/friends whose primary language was Arabic. She’s 3, so a bit more malleable but, I know that it helped me get more comfortable with Japanese by growing up watching all that subtitled anime when I was younger
How does this make them a neckbeard exactly?...
At least they're giving suggestions rather than namecalling like a...brat?
Whatever you do, don’t count on eikaiwa teaching your kid any practical English. It’ll be him and 2-10 other kids drilling “I like bananas. Do you like bananas?” for an hour, in perpetuity. If anything it’ll probably make him dislike the language more and at a huge expense to you.
As an Eikaiwa monkey, I can back this up. The customers of Eikaiwas are the parents. If the kids can recite a few lines immediately after the lesson in front of the parents, then it's a job well done.
eikaiwa is total failure, if it was good why are the japanese as a nation terrible at english?
Agreed, huge waste of money for small English improvements...eikaiwa for kids is more like childcare than actual education.
I wish Japanese parents could hear foreigners with knowledge of what a sham it is saying there is no way in hell they'd ever send their own kids to Eikaiwa.
Shhh, it’s my 6000 yen an hour gravy train (doesn’t pull into the station that often, but I’ll do it whenever I get the call!)
So, it's basically the Japanese School system's version of English, just in a cram school? Makes sense. Whoever makes these curricula knows nothing about practical English.
Agreed.
Your kid is going to get some tired, unmotivated teacher. The course itself makes false promises but by the end of the course your kid will just know a few stock phrases such as "My name is...". Trust me, they won't learn how to say which body part hurts, give directions to McDonald's or deliver a plane announcement.
Source: I work in a big eikaiwa chain.
I noticed however, the kids that really excel are those who seem to enjoy it at school. They are already getting the best English marks at their primary school and so when they come to eikaiwa class they floor the other kids. That's the only advice I can give you, try and see if you can make English one of their favourite subjects at school maybe by doing the homework together.
DVDs at home in a relaxed way... a shit ton of Frozen or Toy Story in English.
Check out the site http://bilingualmonkeys.com/ for a lot of information and advice about raising children to be bilingual.
The bad news is that it's not easy and not automatic. I found that once my son entered kindergarten and all his friends and other people around him spoke Japanese only, he stopped speaking English at home completely. His listening comprehension is still quite good, but he doesn't like to speak it. At all.
You're right, it is. However there's still a lot of good information and articles on there that don't require buying any of his stuff.
If there are better sites to recommend, please do.
Encouragement from your wife would mean a lot in this situation. If your kid sees his mom trying to learn English and gets encouragement from her that it's a good thing, it'll mean more than coming from you, the native speaker.
This is long, sorry! But I hope it can help, so bear with me!
Kids only realize that other kids are different around late 5 to 6 years old. When our son was graduating kindergarten, one of his friends pulled my sleeve, and asked, 'Ano....chotto omottakedo....T-kun ha, hyotto shitara, gaijin chau ka?' (you can tell we're in Kansai ;-) ) 'Um....I was thinking.....is it possible...is T-kun maybe a gaijin?' These kids were together for two years at this point. I explained that yes, he is part gaijin because of me, and part Japanese from his Dad. He ran off to tell his news, and I kept hearing. 'Honma ni!' and 'Eeeeeh!'....they really hadn't noticed until then. The kid himself hadn't!
This is where you son is now. He has just discovered he is different, new info to him. His solid identity as one and the same as his friends has taken a hit, and it's earth-shattering to a 6-year-old. He is rethinking everything.
The meltdown has me wondering if he is being teased or bullied as the 'difference' has become apparent to his peers. It's possible that he's being called an Americajin, being told he's not Japanese, or being called things like 'gaikotsu-jin' to get a rise out of him. It's the same stuff that happens everywhere...kids being called 'four-eyes', 'fatty' etc, kids are obnoxious and and cruel to anyone who doesn't fit the mold of their little world exactly. They'll zero in on his lighter hair, or different colored eyes. My son would only speak English with me at home after this, and would tell me, when he was planning to have friends over, 'Remember now, Kaachan, no speaking English while my friends are here!' (as if they are not going to notice Mum's a gaijin as long as she keeps speaking Japanese!). I complied, it gave him a buffer from the struggle he was dealing with. His uncertainty continued into 2nd grade, and then he got a handle on it all and was fine.
He did rebel in high school, again struggling with his identity. He was getting a lot of 'You're hafu! Why aren't you going into the English course instead of the math/science course'? and 'Of course he gets good marks in English, he has a live-in tutor!' and other ignorant remarks blurted out by people without thinking. Gaijin = English and that was that, I guess. He got really frustrated. He got through that, too.
Sorry this is so long, but the problem is probably bigger than hating English. See if he's comfortable in his own skin, see if kids are giving him a hard time. If he's being bullied for being hafu, then in a child's mind, that's your fault. Kid logic....don't be upset with it, ask questions, encourage him to ask you questions he may have on his mind.
I think you need to get your wife on board. He has a native English-speaking father, it's a great leg up on learning English, I hope she can see that. Many foreign families have the native speaker speak only English at home, some had English Sundays/Mondays etc all their kids' lives, one day a week during which only English is allowed. You may have missed the boat on this now timing-wise. When he's not upset anymore, try again. It's never too late.
That’s really rough. Teaching our own children is nightmarish in my experience. If you want him to thrive in an English speaking place one day or if you think you’d ever relocate as a family I’d persevere but I’d find a funner way than studying subliminally with you or formally at a language school. Is connecting with your family an option? Could anyone visit? It’s a bad sign he already has these ideas in his head at 6. School or somebody is possibly talking to him along these lines. I think it’s the rarely home part that’s allowed this to happen but I’m sure it’s not by choice. Still, perhaps you can make changes?
Traveling to see them is also a great way of increasing the kid's interest in learning that language.
Because OP speaks Japanese, his child doesn't have a real motivation to learn English. Being in a situation where it is the only option, is a hell of a motivation.
Plus, showing him around, having some cultural immersion so the kid has a link to the language beyond "it's necessary to find a job" works wonders.
Edit: Yikes... I just re-read OPs bit about the meltdown...
Yeah, but I think all your strike-through suggestions still stand.
Kids are smart enough to figure out when tantrums work and when they don’t. His son might be having real feelings of frustration and discomfort surrounding speaking English (which is fair— I’m sure we’ve all felt this way when learning a foreign language), but he’ll figure out soon enough that having a meltdown won’t change the situation and magically make people speak Japanese.
Reading is an incredible way to have a child learn a second language that a parent speaks. If you read often to your child in English, that would help, and he would probably enjoy it. There are many great picture books that kids love.
I have seen this first hand: children learn a second language because one parent read to the child every night.
_
It's not about refusing to speak Japanese ever. It's about refusing to speak Japanese and only speaking English at certain times. You can increase this over time. This also works well - making the child listen to English and later speak in English to you.
If you really want good advice on this, find the experts. Find the parents who have done this. Don't value the advice of random people who might have zero experience in this area.
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