Until last week I had only instructed my youngun to speak English: when she spoke to me in Lithuanian, I would say, "speak English." I didn't see any functional difference between this and another method often used by parents rearing bilingual children, which replaces the instruction with mock misunderstanding/deafness: "I can't understand/hear you."
Boy was I wrong. Apparently, with a daughter as stubborn as mine, instruction will only take you so far (not very far). She is happy indeed to disregard my instructions. But she is not happy to be ignored, oh hells no. I don't believe that she doesn't realize I do understand her completely all the time, but she's willing to play along with "I can't hear you." And after a week of this routine she's finally chiming in in English without being reminded.
So after three years of little progress, I've finally broken through. It was really frustrating after such lingual success with #1.
Christmas miracle? Thanks Jesus!
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1 comment:
Thanks. I will be using this!
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