norsk i hus

Up until recently, whenever we were home and I would speak Norwegian with Leona, she would say she wanted me to speak English, and if I persisted, she would start crying. Sometimes I would do the whole "it's ok that you don't want me to speak Norwegian, and that your are angry/sad I am speaking it; I am going to speak Norwegian because I want to, it is important that you hear more Norwegian so your Norwegian can improve and you can more easily play with kids, etc." and let her scream about it, while often I haven't had the energy to go that route and just pretty quickly slipped back to English.

Then, last week or so, Judge came home from school where they had read an article about how kids who are not in kindergarten, when they go to their four or five year check up, also get their Norwegian skills checked, as this is important for when they start school both in terms of learning and in terms of integrating themselves with the other children.

For those who come from bilingual families, it said, about half do not pass, and are then offered a space in a kindergarten or an open kindergarten, as well as some professional help if necessary.

Since I've noticed Leona have a hard time integrating herself in the play of others when they come visit us---partially due to them not understanding what she's saying---I took this as a kick in the butt to really start speaking mainly Norwegian at home.

At first she was really unhappy about it, but didn't scream as much as before because both Judge and I explained repeatedly why it was important. Whenever I would slip up and speak English though, she'd be super happy and say "you can speak English now?" and I would say that, no, I am still going to be speaking Norwegian, I had just forgotten. And at the end of the day she would be crying again sometimes, wanting me to speak English, I think because her brain was tired.

For the first few days she mostly spoke Norwegian back to me, but these last few days she's almost solely spoken English to me. Sometimes, though, she'll still switch to Norwegian - and her vocabulary is actually pretty decent; it's her rhythm and pronunciation that I think makes it hard for other kids to understand her.

Judge has actually started speaking mainly Mandarin with the girls as well, as he noticed Leona's Mandarin is not as good as it should (could?) be. Previously he's mainly spoken English with them, so I think this is a good turn of events as well.

Oh, the bumps along the way of multilinguality.

[Leona's latest development within her plastic-bead journey

- more complex forms and (a)symmetry]

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