My daughter's gone off nursery

A nation awaits. What happened next?

He’s busy sorting his POS car out at the moment. Education can wait when there’s an ECU to be fixed.

Ok, so on the following day Mrs Grips hung around to observe for an hour. It’s a Welsh nursery, and my daughter seems to have been having anxiety issues about the language. She was much more withdrawn than usual around the adults (she’s normally the kind to talk everyone’s ear off) and when they spoke directly to her she covered her ears!

We’ve often spoken to her in other languages at home and she’s usually gone NO! NO!! and covered her ears then too. I think that’s just due to the different-ness of it, she doesn’t like things being different. She does understand different words for things though, she code-switches between British and American vocabulary seamlessly when talking to me or Mrs Grips.

That evening she brought me over a book to read and it was a kids teach-yourself-Welsh type book with lots of pictures, although it’s really for like 10 year olds. How she knew it was a Welsh book without reading the title I don’t know though 😯 but we went through it, and we went through the pictures looking for the ci, the cath and the mochyn cwta which went well. Next morning we over hear her practicing her Welsh numbers under her breath. So she’s been working on it in her own way.. just like Daddy does 🙂

Anyway the day after I made this post she actually ran away from Nursery and had to be chased down by Mrs Grips and they had a heart to heart on the kerbside.. but now things have improved and she seems happy to go again. Hopefully she’s overcoming her mental block about the language. We’ve got some picture books and learning materials ordered so that they can do more at home. She doesn’t seem to like the full immersion much because she doesn’t understand what’s going on, but she seems willing to learn vocabulary within an English setting so hopefully that will help her get a foot in the door.

It’s a Welsh nursery, and my daughter seems to have been having anxiety issues about the language.

Thank you for a fuller picture. Sending a child (at the ‘control’ stage of development) to a nursery that speaks in a foreign language is quite a thing to do. I’d be pretty freaked out if everyone around me was speaking in a different language and I was only just getting to grips with the one I was using on a daily basis.

She doesn’t seem to like the full immersion much because she doesn’t understand what’s going on

I can’t blame her one little bit.

you’ve a sterner heart than me..

No doubt she’ll thank you for it one day

Sending a child (at the ‘control’ stage of development) to a nursery that speaks in a foreign language is quite a thing to do

It’s commonly regarded as a good idea and it works well with most kids, but there are a few reasons why she has had trouble I think. One is that she shares her mother’s tendency to run away from things she can’t deal with immediately, and the other is my feeling that her language had already developed beyond the matching sounds to things phase and into a (relatively) good understanding of language and grammar so it was all difficult to understand.

She seems to be figuring it out now though with a bit of help.

you’ve a sterner heart than me.

Who, me? Why?

Does change the picture a bit, the immersion part.

But don’t underestimate the adaptability of small kids, mine are bilingual and switch from English to Spanish without any problems. A lot of the local schools here are also bilingual*, friends’ kids would come home with comments like “the teacher talks weird” but they’d soon get the hang of it. The usual tactic (from what I’ve seen and read) is to answer native language questions in the second language, with lots of signing and arm waving, and not force the kid to speak the second language… they soon pick it up.

* Bilingual state schools: send the teacher to the UK or Ireland for a month, and supposedly they’re fluent in English… Listening to them talk can be pretty painful at times 🙄

I was just thinking about this thread. On Monday, at playgroup, Rose got scratched on the face by another girl in some kind of kiddy tussle, and for the rest of the week, she’s been saying ‘no playgroup today’, all the time. So yesterday, when it was actually playgroup day, I popped her in the bike trailer and went round the corner to her friend’s house and gave her and her best friend a lift to playgroup, so that they both got there at the same time. When we got to playgroup, they both raced to get in, and there were no problems.

So my new top tip for this kind of thing is if she already knows some kids who go there, to offer to give one of them a lift there with her, so that she doesn’t have the ‘going into a big noisy room on her own’ thing. If she doesn’t, maybe it’s time to make friends with the parents and see if they’d like to bring their kids over to yours to play.

It’s commonly regarded as a good idea and it works well with most kids

It’s an excellent idea, your daughter will be a lot better at learning other (more useful 🙂 ) languages in the future.

Something like 80% of the intake to this school is English speaking only kids. So the staff are well used to dealing with it. I think the issue is my daughter’s personality, but she does want to figure things out – hence the practicing things under her breath etc and her willingness to learn with us at home.

Who, me? Why?

I’m not criticising, I’m envious in fact, because I couldn’t bare to put my boy through the confusion.. I’m probably not smart enough to be able to steer him through it, or strong enough to make it seem less daunting..

me = big wimp

EDIT: slightly less daunting in light of your last post I think, maybe.. 😕

I couldn’t bare to put my boy through the confusion

I see.. well going by the theory, the kids are ok. Where we live there are few native speakers, but lots of interest in the schools.

As it turns out she’s had confusion, but I’m hoping that with a bit of help and support from us she can figure it out 🙂

It really does work well for most kids.

There was a big thread about this a while ago from Glupton in Scotland. I wonder how his boy’s getting on..