Shamed by HV for not exposing DD to a second language

[Skedaddledaway]

I had DDs 12 months appointment yesterday. This time was better than previous times as she only managed to say something vaguely offensive 3 times during the 10 minute appointment.

However, there was one comment she made that filled me up with 'mum guilt' about not exposing DD to a second language. I live in a very multicultural area where most children are being brought learning 2 or 3 languages so seeing a child just speaking English is probably less common.

I speak good french (lived and worked in France for several years) but haven't used french for at least 4 years so am rusty! Speaking french with DD didn't feel natural compared to using my mother tongue. Now I am questioning whether that was a poor decision.

As a single mum I have a lot on my plate but I am thinking of starting to expose DD to some french.
My thoughts were:

• Turning her doll into a francophone so when ever we play with it use french.
• incorporating some simple everyday phrases into our daily routine
• reading books in french in the morning during breakfast
• listening to some nursery rhymes in french

Does this approach sound reasonable?

My now DD28 who works in a professional job and earns loads never ever did any 2nd languages at GCSE

You inspire me to do the exact opposite 😜

I think this might actually win the prize for the most batshit piece of advice given to a mumsnetter by a health visitor.

My husband is French but he isn’t around a lot of the time my children are awake in the week. My level of French is basic (A2) and I sing with them in French and play French songs. If they speak to me in French I will respond- my three year old doesn’t ask anything so sophisticated I don’t understand… yet. I say go for it. I’m actually learning French by reading to my girls. I don’t think it’s unreasonable at all to try and incorporate another language. We also only have screen time in French- never English, it makes the Disney movies a bit disappointing to be honest though 🤣

I did, in more of a feedback way that their behaviour was really unhelpful than a formal complaint. The manager was lovely, and asked me to come to one of their meetings as 'feedback from the parents perspective around how we can best support mums with PND. I saw the offending midwife squirming in her seat and trying not to make eye contact with me.
I agree, there are a small number of amazing ones, and many ones who look bored and like they don't want to be there.

No it's not insane. All of this sounds completely brilliant for introducing a second language to a child at a young age which will help her throughout her life, even if she later chooses to learn different languages. But yeah, be a typical Brit who doesn't see the point of any 'foreign nonsense'. In most other countries children routinely learn second (and third) languages from a very young age because it's proven to a) be the best time to learn b) have loads of other benefits. It's only the arrogance of English speaking nations who don't think it's worth bothering with other languages.

The OP didn't think it was worth bothering with other languages until the health visitor told her to...

I found the one year mark quite difficult. It felt like we should be celebrating,.and we were - but in our case, with an extremely high needs poor sleeper, it was celebrating survival more than anything else!

Through the fog of extreme sleep deprivation I worried a lot about whether I was doing "the right things" for my baby, especially as I was a SAHP (although my husband is a very hands on parent when he's at home, he works very long hours and does on calls at weekends and so on so I felt like a lot of it was on me if that makes sense).

I also had a heath visitor with, shall we say, poor communication skills who said some things that came across as very judgemental and negative. With my second baby I can't even remember seeing a HV 😂 We did the one year check via video call I think??

Try to keep a sense of proportion. No child is let down by not being taught a second language. One of my friends was incredibly judgy that we hadn't started swimming lessons. Surprise surprise by the time we, in our laissez-faire attitude, got around to it (when our son asked for lessons!) he took to it right away. My friend's child still can't swim and it's two years later now. She's pushed it so hard he's terrified of the water poor mite.

No family can do everything with their children. Some families are musical. Some cook a lot. Some are outdoorsy. Some have lots of pets. Some are very creative. No one needs to (or can) do all of the things. Pick the ones you like and are good at and go with those. If you WANT to speak French with her then do, but if you'd rather spend your time and energy on other stuff then do that :-)

That’s sadly quite an uninformed answer. The reason for the OP to ignore the HV’s strange advice is nothing to do with being an anti-foreign Brit. It’s to do with the fact that it’s poor and inappropriate advice. You overgeneralise about ’other countries’ in a way that makes it sound like British parents with English as their sole first languages are just not bothering to raise their kids bilingual or multilingual. Whereas the reality is that in countries where children are bilingual or trilingual from birth or a very early age, it’s because they have more than one first language in the home, or perhaps in the immediate society around them.

Your HV sounds crackers. I would actually probably be reporting her back for some quite inappropriate comments that really aren't accurate as to child development.

OP - communicate with your child lots. Talk and sing and chat in your mother tongue. Children typically learn other languages at home where parents have not got the same mother tongue or in multigenerational households with a grandparents speaking a different language etc.

You've never been to the Netherlands then? It's very normal for children and adults to speak English, French, Spanish, German etc well or even fluently (often more than one of these), not because they have these languages in their family environment but because they recognise the benefits of multilingualism.

The HV may well be being ridiculous in suggesting the OP is doing something wrong by not introducing a second language. And nobody should feel shamed by an HV into doing something they don't want to do.

But equally choosing to introduce a second language at a young age is not ridiculous at all and is actually beneficial.

Scandinavia is similar.

I’m very very sceptical about that claim, and would love to see some sources. It’s not true of Scandinavia either - yes, there are large numbers of multilingual children in for example Sweden, but this is either because they have two first languages in the home, or because they have their first language and then start in preschool from an early age, and acquire Swedish as the societal shared language. But for many multilingual children like that, while they may have a functional everyday use of Swedish, they do not always have an equivalent functional ’school Swedish’. English is a large part of everyday life in Sweden, even for the youngest children, but they are absolutely not using it in an equivalent way to their first languages or to Swedish.

There isn’t any harm in introducing a foreign language for fun with preschoolers, in the same way there isn’t any harm in them trying out football or gymnastics or nature club or whatever. But with a child of 12 months, there would arguably be more potential problems than benefits if a close caregiver is systematically or semi systematically using a foreign language for the purpose of teaching it to the child, when that language is not their first language. Listening to songs in other languages, especially familiar ones, looking at books in other languages as part of a broad repertoire of books shared together, talking about languages and countering deficit talk about multilingualism etc etc is fabulous and important. But the advice the OP got from the HV was poor at best.

With that said, one thing that is true is that Sweden has a particularly positive attitude towards multilingualism that is reflected in its legislation around language and in the support multilingual children get in school, for example. Children have the right to weekly lessons in their first language(s), to enable them to develop in that or those languages as well as Swedish. Sweden also has the school subject SVA which is basically the same course as Swedish, and worth the same amount of grade points for getting into sixth form education, but which is specifically aimed at second language speakers.

Christ, chill your interrogative tits, Mrs Health Visitor.

This has touched your nerve hasn't it. Wonder why .....

I'd stop going to see the HV if I were you. Some of them do seem to take great pleasure in making you feel bad about yourself.

Is the SVA course considered to be on the same level as mother tongue Swedish? Because in Finland we have S2 which is Finnish as a second language for children who don't have Finnish as their mother tongue but it's definitely considered lesser, and in some schools they also teach other subjects differently to S2 students, so they're not getting the same level of education. It's become quite notorious, with immigrant parents wanting to get their children out of S2 and into the normal Finnish lessons (thankfully both my children were taken out of S2 early by the school as they proved their abilities and its a good school, DD in 2nd grade and DS half way through preschool)

In official and legal senses, it is equivalent; and it can be the case that a class has their Swedish lessons together, but some are assessed for the SVA course and some for Swedish. But as you mention, in reality, anecdotally it is not ranked quite as highly so if eg. admissions staff or employers are looking at which courses a pupil took rather than just points, then there is possibly still some bias there :-( But i’m not sure of the actual prevalence of this…. Interesting re the Finnish equivalent - I haven’t heard of similar issues here but I am certain they must be happen. My eldest has moved from SVA into Swedish (within the same class) but not my littlest yet, so we’ll see what happens there

Excuse me? That's not fair, or remotely accurate. I took DD to a bilingual baby group, played her nursery rhymes in french from birth and read a couple of french books. It was always important to me which is why the HV comment triggered (possibly irrational) mum guilt that I had not been consistent and hadn't prioritised language learning enough.

My excuse was the typical 'i don't have time', 'life gets in the way' but honestly I believe that you make time for what's important. I think the HVs delivery was terrible but at the same time, maybe she did have a point.

As later posters have rightly said the UK has a particularly complacent attitude towards foreign languages, probably because English is so widely spoken.

It got me thinking anyway and so I have decided to incorporate some french into our daily life NOT as a replacement for English but to supplement as a fun activity and will continue to do so for as long as she enjoys it (or at least doesn't resist it!).

This is really interesting!

Change HV if that's possible. They are supposed to support you, not shame you.
As a single parent it would be very difficult to introduce a second language in the same way that two parents can (mummy speaks like this but daddy says...). Your child will get horribly confused. If it's important to you (and f*ck what HV thinks), then you can expose your child via TV, language clubs, games, etc, when they're a little older.

I know how I used to overanalyse with my first child and be anxious to get things right. To be fair, that anxiety has created a very intelligent teenager who is fairly studious. So just be reassured, the fact you feel guilt about doing it right tells me you are doing a great job.
I have read up on bilingualism and my kids are bilingual. I am mother tongue english and we live abroad so we do minority language at home with me, and a mix with their dad. Most of the literature agrees that bilingualism relies on exposure to other mother tongue speakers. Even at c1 level you'll be making errors in your french and culturally your language will be less rich (you won't know your own childhood nursery rhymes, your mother's sayings etc). Your approach is the right one, to incorporate some french if you enjoy it and to do it in a fun way. The easiest way is actually just pretend your TV only has french, your radio is only in french etc. That would give them a huge amount of latent language. Few people would do that though unless they were true Francophiles. I think the health visitor is being very weird. Yes, she's going to meet lots of bilingual kids as they have parents who are first or second generation immigrants. That's not your situation!

Sounds like it's not so bad in Sweden then, if it was you'd certainly know about it.

However, there was one comment she made that filled me up with 'mum guilt' about not exposing DD to a second language.

I took DD to a bilingual baby group, played her nursery rhymes in french from birth and read a couple of french books.

These cannot both be true, @Skedaddledaway. If you have exposed her to a second language, via the baby group, nursery rhymes and books, your first post doesn't make sense- the health visitor can't shame you for not doing something that you are, in fact, doing.

Also:
I am thinking of starting to expose DD to some french

How can you start to expose her to something you say she's been exposed to since birth?