Doch, English! Bilingual Children in Germany

A smug feeling crept through my chest as I read about the struggles expat mom has with encouraging her son to retain his English in Madrid. Ha. My little half-expat has embraced both her father and mother tongue, to the point where she was translating some of her German kindergarten (preschool over here) songs for my parents over skype. Ah, yes, glory be to the parents who have it all together.

Of course, if we were ever to have another child of a slightly other disposition, any feelings of smugness could be blown out of the water. A next child could be a stubborn monolingual, too. It could have a different personality, talents and behavior patterns, and that instruction book in my mind based on my first child is about as useful as a manual for Gateway Computers. But, I'm not there yet, my child has embraced bilingualism (so far), and I'll fantasize about being that good. I wonder, though, if Germany has built an advantage for raising bilinguals in its own growing multiculturalism.

I was warned that my daughter might reject bilingualism when she entered kindergarten. It happened to a Scottish-German neighbor couple. Their children were doing fine in English until they entered kindergarten full of children who only knew German. No one shared a second language, so they felt isolated and uncomfortable using it. The added fact that children are talented in finding ways to put each other down, and the children suppressed their knowledge of their mother tongue.

Not so for our daughter. Her kindergarten is in the "downtown" part of our little city, which is its own little melting pot. In her kindergarten, monolinguals are the minority. It's not a strange thing to speak a second language; it's the norm. The fact that she's the only English speaker isn't a big deal, but bilingualism by itself seems to count. Whenever I come to pick her up, I'm surrounded by mixed marriages and people speaking Turkish, Russian, Vietnamese, Polish, Greek, Italian, Armenian, and more. Oh yes, German too. These happy babel sounds mean that the ones who suddenly express themselves in another language aren't some horrifying school-child anomaly, like being the only kid in a tacky Christmas sweater in June. It's just something everyone does.

If economic trends continue, things will stay this way. Germany's economy is chugging a long, and it's continuing to attract the most employable young southern Europeans. Many of these technically gifted immigrants, like the Turkish guest workers and Russian-German immigrants before them, will stay, settle, and raise wonderfully bilingual families.

When I spoke to him about his own bilingual children, a French-German father I know shrugged his shoulders and said, "it's completely normal." "Completely normal." All the kids here are bilingual. This encourages my daughter to retain her father tongue, but there's a downside. I've no reason to be smug.

Ten Things To Say to Young Children That Guarantee Their Parents Will Never Ask You To Babysit Them Again

You know you've thought it. You watched the darling couple get married, settle down, blossom, and then, oh tears of happiness! the woman's belly turned into a baby bump, grew, and, before you can shake a pastel-pink rattle - pop - that plushy miniature human is resting and cooing in the arms of a glowing young Mother.

Twelve-thousand Facebook photos later (good luck analyzing those, NSA!), those two parents, all smug and smiling on the Internet, really need a break. I mean, they haven't seen a film since the first Ironman came out, and the wife always mutters "vodka cranberry" every time her bundle of joy comes running. So, they ask you, their very dear friend to babysit. Of course, they think you'd babysit! You've known them since college, were present at every significant event, you wept at their wedding (and overpaid for that tux/bridesmaids dress, mind you) and kept a social media vigil while their child was being born! I mean, of course!

You have two options. You could tell them the truth: "I don't think your kids like me, besides, I can't be confined to your house when you don't even have HBO! I mean, hello, Game of Thrones!"

Nah, I didn't think so. The best approach is the passive-aggressive approach, because it keeps relational conflict below the surface - where it belongs. So option number two is to warp the minds of their kid(s) into such a twisted little pre-kindergarten knot that those mooching parents never ask you to babysit again. You'll have to sacrifice one night of freedom, of course. But to be free for the rest of your life, tell those lil' anklebiters any combination of the following:

1. "Interesting how your dad made you eat all that salad. Dinner at my house was always a snickers bar with a side of gummy bears. Healthy, and better tasting too."
2. "Baseball is an indoor sport. Extra points if you hit Mom's blender!"
3. "Why doesn't your mom still breast feed you? I guarantee you everyone else in preschool is still breast fed."
4. "Your bed is a dangerous place. If your parents loved you, they'd let you sleep in their room."
5. "Yeah, I smoked to impress people at school. It worked, too! Don't regret it one bit." 
6. "I brought over my favorite movie! It's about a little girl like you! It's called The Exorcist!"
7. "Baths are completely unnecessary. A waste of time, if you ask me." 
8. "Wiping your bottom is completely unnecessary. A waste of time, if you ask me." 
9. "Let's call your granny and ask her why Mommy always pays more attention to her iPad than to me." 
10. "Good night! Remember, I promise you can drink a Coke for breakfast." 

Oh, and if you try any of these with my daughter, I'll release a live badger your living room. 

Meanings of Life

Ben Yu asks, "What do you live for?" (HT: Karin)

A brief summary: Yu subscribes to Absurdism and sees life as fundamentally meaningless given the random nature of evolution, as well as the size and age of the universe compared with our mortality and that of our species. If life is meaningless, then what do (or should) any of us live for? So he crowd sourced the question and got some interesting responses. I thought I'd give it a shot. Even though he asked for answers in email, I'm so late composing my thoughts that I thought I'd use it as a chance to blog.

So, what do I live for? More often than not, I find a sense meaning in meeting my own needs. I don't think this is the larger sense of meaning that Yu is looking for (though I suppose this fits with Absurdism), but let's start at the shallow end of the pool. Meeting needs is a very temporary and superficial form of meaning, but I think it's meaning nonetheless. When I'm hungry, I live for food; when I'm thirsty, I live for drink, however temporarily. Then I start to live for companionship, intimacy, occupation, comfort, work, friendship - however you rank them, much of my life revolves around fulfilling my needs in various contexts with different levels of urgency. I choose to live, because I want these things. It's not the big picture, but there's not much time to think about the big picture when your body tells you that you really need a drink of water. Besides, Wu's post implies that next our lives must be absurd when compared to the size and age of the universe. On that scale, our own need-meeting is not much smaller than say, dedicating body and soul to human progress.

It's once I get to my family where I find myself living for other people. I write this with a delightful three-year-old in the room behind me. I've been interrupted to help color and sniff a candle that smells like strawberries. I'm keeping an eye on her so that my wife can fill a another part of her soul - keeping our garden. I got to observe this kind of behavior most of my, coming from a good family where my family seemed to answer Wu's question with, "you." And when I can move on, follow my families example, I live for them, and when I'm at my best, I live for those who I can come across, those who I'm close enough to effectively help. My neighbor.

We're still small and finite, but I don't see why meaning should be intimidated by humanity's relative smallness and finitude. Sure, we're small. How important is that really? Mountains are teensy compared to the size of the world, which is teensy compared to the Solar System, which is which is teensy compared to the Milky Way, etc... In my eyes, mountains are something regal, and their royal beauty is something self evident, and while I can't wrap it in any sort of reason, I walk away from such an experience with a deeper.

These are some of the reasons my faith is Christianity. Christianity offers a deeper sort of meaning that touches not only the unimaginable breadth of the universe(s), but the little meanings we give ourselves, love and altruism, through work and art, down to familial care and meeting our own needs. This implies that there is a God beyond our vast universe(s), who's taken interest in this tiny planet to the point that he became one of us, to be with us.

I'm alerted to God's presence in many ways, not in the least of which is the knowledge of our own smallness in the light of everything science has been teaching us about time and space, past and future. However, he seldom dwells where he can be prodded and studied, but stays where he can be followed with trust, a trust that knows that he is and has lived out the ultimate source of love. If he exists, then he dances like some sort of woodland fairy, unmeasurable, supplying us with love for him and love for others. I find it immensely comforting that, while he remains beyond our measuring devices, he's never beyond basic human intimacy. Can there be more meaning than this?

Christianity reveals a God beyond all measure who was willing to live and die as we do that he may be with us. For those of us who have trusted in him, he becomes our partner as we meet our needs, love our neighbors, and, if all works out, make the world a better place. It attaches me to a community of Christians, locally and internationally, throughout our species (short) time here. It's an amazing gift, and the offer is there. It's meaning, yes. But it's also life and joy and love.

PS: If you like a think, read Yu's blog.