José and Gabriela came to live with us in May of 2008. Knowing that they'd start school in September, we did everything we could to get them to start learning English. TV in English. Movies in English. They spoke to me in Spanish, and I replied in English. They hated it. They'd had enough change. They didn't want to learn a new language too.
José, curious, acute, and mechanically-minded as he is, figured out how to change the language on the DVD to Spanish when I wasn't looking. Gabriela, younger and the less mechanically-minded of the two, didn't figure out José's trick. To this day, she hasn't figured it out. So, she watched Cinderella, one of the only movies in English she could tolerate, over and over and over again. She scrubbed the floor like Cinderella. When Cinderella danced with the Prince, Gabriela would twirl around the room holding a broom. Never saying anything. Just watching and dancing.
That is, until one night I asked her to brush her teeth. "Gabriela, tienes que lavarte los dientes," I told her. "It's time to go to bed." No response. "Gabriela." Nothing. "Gabriela!" Swiftly she turned to me and, with one hand on her hip and her eyes pointed at me like little daggers, she said, in the most perfectly enunciated English, "Yes, Stepmother!"
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Kids say the Darnest things! No matter what their language or lack there of... they always have their own ways of being heard.
ReplyDelete"stepmother" funny.....kids are great! Do your kids speak English now? It's hard being force to speak another language. I think they will pick it up since they now go to school here. You can definatly help them since you are a TESOL grad student.
ReplyDeleteWow! It's hard to know what kids feel. Sometimes you try to help them and they don't understand that. You are brave enough to deal with children that aren't yours!
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