Die Kaffeestube Teil 2 - virtual Kaffeeklatsch in Germany and Austria

[cheaspicks]

Chat for those living in a German-speaking country, or anyone else who is interested.

My s is sticky - shoulf be "wos the shoh nais? :o

She meant to write:

Mummy was the show nice? Then why don't you come to the next one, 'The Four Fairies', a day before my birthday? Do you want to?

English this is too cute looks like some German influence there, don't you think.

I found learning to read hard (I actually remember learning, which I think shows it was a struggle! I also remember my mother yelling at me that I was just being awkward and wasn't trying...)

Once I got the hang of it though I was a compulsive reader, the child who reads under the covers with a torch all night, read 'The Hobbit' in a night at 19 and 'The Lord of the Rings' in 3 days and nights (my uncle who I hated was staying so I hid in my room and read) at 10... I also lived in a small village with nothing to do, I read all the time... But I could never spell, spelling was the bain of my school life, still can't spell as well as I should be able to, as an English teacher :o

Read the hobbit at 9 obviously, would hardly be an achievement at 19!

english

I will be off MN in a minute as the sky has cleared up and no rain anymore, which I want to take advantage off while doing my weekly grocery shopping.

Really interesting discussion. I highly recommend "Listen To Your Child" by David Crystal for those of you with barely-talking or unborn children. I go back to it every few months to look up what stage dd is at - there are always things to look out for and ideas for ways to record speech development. It's not at all dumbed-down though, it's clearly written by a scientist and based on research and controlled observation - a fascinating and substantial read. One thing, though, he barely covers bilingualism except to say that the perceived delay in speech acquistion is in fact less than the measured difference between boys and girls.

One thing to remember is that our sort of bilingualism, whether OPOL or home language/outside language is really rare. We're all highly educated parents who read parenting books/websites, automatically buy books for our kids, sing songs to and with them and generally see ourselves as their primary educators. I guess many primary school teachers think of "bilingual" children as those from economic migrant families who struggle with their family language and can barely communicate at all in the environmental language when they start school.

Contrary to what world has written, everything I've read on the subject suggests that 2nd children are generally the slowest to speak because the parental attention is diluted by the presence of the older sibling. 3rd and subsequent children do not show this delay, probably because they have more linguistic input from siblings.

The childcare issue is interesting - I was very surprised to read recently that the evidence pointed to childcare for under-3s being beneficial for verbal and cognitive skills, but detrimental for social skills. However the article went on to say that children of highly educated "erziehungs-kompetente" parents (that's us ) missed out on the more intensive stimulation their parents could give them by being in childcare - in other words, those who benefit least from childcare are the ones most likely to be using it!

Hello cheas

What you have added does does not negate what I've shared so far in regards to the only-child comments.
By the time the second and third child arrives, the first is surely not the only child anymore. Also we are talking here about the relevant first three years, should there any other sibling arrive in the meantime then of course all the dynamics have already been altered and how the second or third child would be rated is then a comparison to first child and nothing to do with the example of only-child.

Also, I've mentioned that it could be a typical response of the only child to start speaking much later, due to parent spending lots and lots of one-on-one time WITHOUT there being so much contacts between child and other children or adults such in a KiGa/kinderkrippe, Krabbel/Kleinkindgruppe etc.

So all places where child would have to use and apply language to be understood. If child and parent have established communication where they get each other without many words needed from child, then some children do start talking later, BUT have all the vocabulary (very often above average amount) and sentence structure being worded and expressed at a rapid speed. Very rapid actually.

So, this is only important information to know, IF the parents show up in some professional's practice and are worried why the 2-year-old doesn't really start talking, for example.
Doing an assessment about home life and surroundings, daily routines and also getting a very good impression of parents' verbal and communication skills, parents' personality and also main carer's way of speaking/talking, looking at child's reactions etc. allows safely for the one-child dynamic to be considered as the reason for it.
And again, there is also the opposite development true in many cases, however to assume that only children are always or usually the ones who speak sooner and have a much more elaborate vocabulary early on, is not quite right, based on what I know.

But starting to speak is surely a stage that most first children reach while they are still only children, surely?

Too many surelys .

Surely not, cheas.

world What you said about children not speaking but having all the vocabulary and sentence structure already in place was very true of my brother (two years younger than me), who didn't start speaking until he was three. He used signs and I used to "interpret" for him, but he never actually needed to speak until he was bitten by a duck - which none of us witnessed - so he then came out with an entire sentence ("duck bit me"). He was about to start speech therapy, but it turned out that the only "problem" was that he had relied on me to speak for him.

cheas My comment relates to your second post; I'm not trying to pick an argument.

cheas what if the second child arrives while first one is between 1 and 2 1/2 years old.
See not every family has the second child arriving after first one turned 2 1/2 or 3 years old.

And as soon second child becomes middle child the dynamics has changed again, and the age, gender and personality differences is very important to consider as well.
My main aim is always to look at what would be some delay to truly worry about and to take seriously so the child can get the (medical/therapeutic/educational) support as soon and as best as possible. Make the parents feel at ease and give them some proper information which is helpful to their very individual circumstance and not to start feel insecure or down due to so many other information, comments, and boasting from other parents or other people alltogether. Otherwise parents really could have a hard time and get so down on themselves sometimes

Linzer siblings do that a lot. It' s sort of cute too.

And speaking of surely, I am sure that this thread is too lovely for arguments or bun-fights . It's lovely to have an exchange of ideas, opinions, and viewpoints and sometimes to simply agree to disagree and this thread is lovely in that respect, I think.
Has brushed off on me so much, now I started to address the posters directly on other threads as well

world I think most first children are only children for the sake of starting to speak - only twin first bortns and those with a sibling under 18 months younger would not fall into that category IMO, and while there are plenty of first born twins and first borns with a very close in age younger sibling it cannot be the norm I don't think. My first and second born are 24 months and 1 day apart and my first born was speaking very well indeed quite a long time before her brother was born - well enough to ask me, while we were packing to move here, whether she could take her brother (Whom she called "Little-Little") out and cuddle him while I packed :) She was 19 months then. My experience with her would in itself have led me to assume first born and onlys (grouped in one category) would acquire speach quicker, but my experience is negated mainly by the fact my younger 2 comparison children are boys, and I think gender might overide birth order The 2nd born was talking in good clear grammatical sentences by his 2nd birthday, but I'd say was about 3 months later reaching most of the obvious speech acquisition goal posts, and DC3 is about on line with DC2 (3.5 year gap) this time).

world hope you have some time left for RL

i think we probably have a different definition of "starting to speak". According to what I've read, the average age for production of the first word is 11 months, at which age very few first children-to-be have a sibling.

Certainly very few parents I know have had any concerns about the speech development of their first/only child and those with siblings have tended to back up the theory that second children are somewhat slower to speak. But that's obviously a highly skewed sample and I conpletely agree with your point that assessing speech development is primarily intended to identify cases where therapy is necessary, rather than to worry parents whose children are slightly behind average at age 2 or whenever.

I know that speech development is assessed (extremely subjectively in our case at least - parental questionnaire) at the U7a (34-36m). Does that have some relevance to what you are claiming? I still can't really see how first children differ from only children unless you compare their verbal ability at, say, age 3. Unless this all comes down to a cultural difference - I freely admit that everything I've read on speech development has been in English.

I knew a trilingual first born (Rumanian mum spoke Rumanian to him, English dad who was about a lot in the day spoke English to him, living in a small town in Germany socialising with local German speakers mainly). I met him when he was 3 and spoke really fluently in English (and as far as I could tell in Rumanian, as his mum said, though I wouldn't be able to tell :o) his German was lagging a bit behind but he hadn't started Kindergarten. I was shocked when his mum told me he never said a word til he was 2.5! But daily input in 3 languages must be a lot for the brain to sort out! She said he started speaking in "toddler sentences" rather than the single words small toddlers/ babies usually start with. Interestingly though he had an 18 month old brother who was doing the more usual age appropriate single word/ merged word-phrases thing.

I think HV in the UK flag children who don't have 20 single words at age 2 (comprehensible to the parent rather than necessarily to strangers) as having possible delayed speech meriting investigation.

world I think both EnglishWoman and I are questioning your assertion that "only children have a much higher tendency to speak later". Do you mean that a higher proportion of children with significant speech acquistion delay (ie. barely speaking at age 3 or whatever the criteria might be) are only children?

cheas thanks for asking about. Saturday is my weekly cleaning, grocery shopping, keeping up with emails and phone chat day and do that all at the same time, well obvioulsy not the shopping, and I still have one run to Aldi, but it's raining again and I am waiting for the cloud to pass and just watched a wonderful documentary about York on 3Sat.

And yes, U6 and U7 is what I am referring to and also where children usually are at the age of 2 1/2 to 3 years old.
And no I don't mean, the speech which is usually understood by parents and others very close to the child.

I also mentioned when they are only children AND not close to others than parent or one caretaker AND not in any shape of form in childcare, then they could have a much higher tendency to speak later and/or less as they is usually no incentive for them to use language as a tool to communicate, there is so much non-verbal communication as all parents know.
But they have not any less of vocabulary or sentence structure developed than others, so when they do start childcare for example they might be behind their peers, but pick up at an incredible speed within the shortest amount of time.

cheas which is why I am saying what I was referring to prior to that and have written down again, does not go against what you've written, as we were talking about two different things.

When I only had 1 child though, we talked all the time... and left pauses for her to reply, which she did - first in baby babble and with pointing, soon with words. Isn't that normal? I didn't do it because I read it in a book, it seems incredibly weird to me that a parent home all day with 1 child is not automatically encouraging the child to speak, it's a natural thing to do, far more natural than developing some telepathic bond surely? Yes you can predict their needs and wants, but isn't it normal to chat, give the child (contrived, limited) choices etc?

english you wouldn't be the one showing up in a paediatrics practice and be worried then. Or you wouldn't be the parent who would have her child start KiGa when the child turns 2 years old, and wonders about the other kids 'chatting' and yours doesn't, so it wouldn't really matter.

But to other parents who have the opposite experience from yours, it would matter and there I can ensure you that most people would think what you just shared is the 'norm' but in a medical/therapeutic/educational setting in this regard 'norm' extends a little bit further. And no, not all parents automatically encourage the child to SPEAK as they already have some sort of communication going on where the parent doesn't even notice or doesn't have a good point of reference and it's not even wrong or bad, just different.