August 17, 2008

A couple of years ago I read the speech “A Borderless World” given by Patricia Evangelista, who at age 19 won the International Public Speaking Competition in London on May 2004. In it she wrote about the Filipino diaspora- the voluntary and involuntary dispersion and immigration of Filipinos worldwide. To quote some paragraphs from her speech:

I, too, am a part of the Filipino diaspora along with the 11 million Filipinos scattered around the world. There are those in it for the financial and career opportunities, I, on the other hand, started out in the same path but ended up being married to a foreigner. Thus my story is of vying for permanent residency here in the Netherlands where my husband is a native of.

As the world become borderless, relationships too became borderless. Nowadays families with multicultural origins are common. A good example is that of my immediate family now. My husband is born Dutch but his roots come from half Russian and half Serbian ancestry. His older brother is married also to a Dutch lady but of Afghani origin. The youngest sibling is now based in Spain living with a Spanish partner.

Moving to a new country with different cultures and specially different language is a difficult transition. Good thing that we Filipinos have a knack for adapting to our environment. Growing up with both Filipino and English as a means of communication, it is easier for us to be mainstreamed in English speaking societies. However, I did not foresee that at 32 years of age I would be adding a third language to my list. What compounds the challenges though are on issues regarding raising children of multicultural parents.

Being parents to a 16 month old and in a couple of weeks time to another little bundle of joy, there were choices we had to make on how best raise our children within our multicultural family. We needed to find a way to give our children a cultural heritage amidst the different cultures that we have in our family and in our present environment –with Netherlands being a very mixed cultural environment.

Raising children as most parents would agree is not an easy task. If only children come with instruction manuals, but then again they don’t and they also don’t tell you what to do when you have a toddler eager to learn about the world but is faced with different languages and practices. Good thing I have an early childhood education background that has served me well as an educator and now in my role as a parent. I can rely on what I know and what current practices are pointing us at how to best raise up children in multicultural settings – particularly in language learning.

This is what I know and where we have in part based our decision to have a multilingual family upon:

Brain research in the past few years have helped parents re-shape their parenting styles and strategies. What our parents didn’t know before on how brain activity affects the child’s growth and development- we, on the other hand, have the information at our fingertips. Internet along with parenting books on what to and how to are prevalent.

A good example of how new understanding has impacted families is on the use of different languages at home- bilingualism or multilingualism was a big no-no in the olden times. The old prejudice is that multilingualism confuses children and they will learn neither their own nor the other language well. Yet recent research has provided evidence for the opposite view: children who grow up multilingual in their early years are more perceptive and intellectually more flexible.

Studies have proven three valuable points when it comes to language learning:

First, language development begins early- that an infant is capable of responding to sounds even 10 weeks before birth, infants are more receptive to sound perception than adults. The sponge-like capacity of the infant’s brain to distinguish the sound of different languages heard is immense. It is from infancy till the early childhood stage that connections to the brain are rapidly made due in fact to the bombardment of experiences.

Second, it is during the first years in life that the brain is in its most flexible and critical stage. Experts now agree that the critical period for native-like language skills (time in the early stages in life where it displays a heightened sensitivity to certain environmental experiences) ends gradually at around six or seven years of age. Reinforcing what we know about the importance of early experiences.

Third, parents provide the means for language learning. Brain development information simply affirms much of what early childhood experts have been suggesting for years- the development of language is tremendously influenced by parent-child interactions.

Taking advantage of these facts, families nowadays are given an option on how best to promote language learning at home. For multicultural families like ours the choice was made for us based on our composition. The questions though were more on what languages and how many?

Naturally, our daughter is expected to learn the native language of the country we are in. Dutch being the native language is spoken to by my husband to her. My in-laws, on the other hand, are exposing her to their native tongue- Serbian. As for me, the choice was a little bit more difficult. Should I teach her Filipino or English?

Providing meaningful language exposure is the goal and given that my husband and I speak English to each other, it was inevitable that I speak English to her. Why should it be so? Researchers claim that for very young children going beyond four simultaneous languages is difficult and that success rate starts to fall significantly. More so, a child needs to be exposed to a language 30% of their waking time to actively speak it. Since her exposure to the first three languages are more it was then decided that it is the best approach for the moment or at least for the first five years of her life.

Making use of the One Person One Language (OPOL) system we know we are on the right track of promoting multilingualism in our family. This means that the parents and other caregivers consistently speak only one language each to the child. Given the pros that growing up in a multilingual environment is the fastest and easiest way to learn a foreign language -which in today’s society is a plus factor- and how being multilingual also affects analytical, social and academic skills, we feel we are really giving our daughter and future children a better head start in life.

But the deciding factor in our decision to teach different languages to our little one is the need for her to be attached to her cultural roots. Having more contact with her grandparents it is important for her to be able to relate to them. Being a Dutch citizen also means that she needs to have a firm grasp of the language specially when she enters school. And the English? It was a choice of convenience since it is also a language she hears a lot between me and my husband.

With our daughter being a product of the Filipino diaspora, I feel it is my task to let her know about her Filipino heritage. Although learning the language will come in time, for now her Filipino roots are not at all lost as she is exposed to food and other practices like being called “Ate Katie” at home. In a few more years our little Katie will be adding Filipino to her repertoire with me making sure that she would have the same affinity for my native tongue as the rest of the languages she is learning now.

In the words of Patricia Evangelista “A borderless world doesn’t preclude the idea of a home. I’m a Filipino, and I’ll always be one” and our daughter will also know that wherever she is in the world, she also is a Filipino and will always be one.

About the author: