another new thread for chinese mums

[csa]

gong xi fa chai!

a new thread for a new year? (good idea yingers)

hope everyone had a good celebration this weekend. us? the closest celebration i got to was speaking to my family on new year's eve and hearing about their reunion dinner

Hi everyone, haven't posted for ages. Lots going on. PC not working and then DD teething and waking up in night for couple of hours. Great fun!

V envious of everyone's hols - me gotta wait til May til my hols. Only just submitted DD's passport application, had great fun getting her passport photo.

Hope your DS gets well soon Wyls.

We are off to visit the family in China this summer: bought tickets yesterday so it must be really happening! First visit for ds2 (he'll be 7) and dd only went when she was

Soyabean - sounds fab! How long will you be going for?

Did your children go through a phase of denying they were part-Chinese and then becoming more curious about that side of their heritage again?

Thanks snowmum and soyabean. DS is better today but all his friends have got chicken pox and they all met 2 weeks ago. I am just waiting to see if he's going to get it. If he does then we might not be able to go on holiday. :(

Anyway, snowmum, are u using anything for teething? Medised is good for helping them to sleep and ease the pain and anbesol is good too.

Not really Rojak they have all always been pretty happy to acknowledeg their Chinese-ness, and bring things in to school at CNY etc. There arent many Chinese children in their school altho it is very ethnically mixed. They dont speak much Chinese but that is more due to the fact that dh rarely speaks it to them unless I keep nagging! Dont know why, his Enfglish is far from perfect. If it was hte other way round I couldnt have let them grow up not speaking English.

My Enfglish is also not perfect...

wyls - cyprus sounds blissful, I am only going to centreparcs with my family in July but am very excited about it!

Ro - wow your spa experience is exactly what I need but exactly what I won't get!!!! Saving money for rebuilding an extension........

My dd1 who is only 3 said to me the other day "I am english but you are not mummy", isn't it weird what they pick up even at this age!

Hope everyone is well.

blossom - club med, is it child friendly? And if you don't mind how much are you paying?

Hello ladies, i need yr advice/suggestions on a posh restuarant for Dim sum in chinatown, good food also. we're taking dh's boss and kids out to dimsum - any ideas???

thanx in advance

Blossom - my suggestion for posh restaurant for dim sum would be Yauatcha. Gorgeous food, v stylish, vgd for impressing DH's boss!

Wyls - thanks for teething suggestions and yes we have tried those remedies. I'm not sure if DD is waking due to teething or not, its just that she's started to wake around 3am and won't go back to sleep for ages. Not sure if its separation anxiety. She is v clingy at the mo. Is your DS going thru a similar stage?

Blossom, definitely go to Yauatcha they do excellent dim sum and really posh. Also, let me know how you get on with clubmed cos i would like to try them next year.

Snowmum, my DS is waking up in the morning too. He seems to be waking up at 2am and then 5am and then 6am. He's waking up more since his illness and last night he's waking up every 2 hours and i think he was hungry or teething. :) (who knows really)

He's not that clingy but he doesnt like going to nursery. He will cry when I leave him, especially when he's tired. But apparently he's always very happy after a while.

Btw, is your DD saying anything yet? My DS is not saying ma ma or da da or anything. We speak both chinese and english to him and he seems to understand bye bye and certain chinese words but he's definitely not trying to speak at all. The HV pointed it out and apparently i have to watch that. Anyone have similar experience? I know that my sister didnt speak until quite late cos again we used to speak both chinese and english to her.

Tryingtobegood, isnt it funny what your dd1 said to you? Did she ask why you are not english?

Soyabean, my english is not perfect either.

Blossom, the link to Yauatcha

www.london-eating.co.uk/4028.htm

Btw, this is not in chinatown, if you want a nice one in chinatown then try the imperial china.

Check it out www.imperial-china.co.uk/homepage.htm

Wyls, I hope I didnt offend anyone, wasnt meaning that dh shouldnt speak English to the kids as his Eng is not perfect. Just that I find it really hard to understand why he disnt /doesnt make more effort to speak Chinese with them, given that it is hard for him to express homself in English.
Dh only really started to learn English in his late twenties and only came to UK then, so there is a lot that he can't say and it does cause some difficulties bewteen him and the children esp as they get older. Which is sad.

And I would feel sooo frustrated if I had to speak to my kids in Chinese and they couldnt speak much English..

Funny isnt it cos i dont really speak much chinese to my son. My mum does though and we see her almost everyday and i speak chinese when i am with my mum.

I know a lot chinese people will only speak chinese to their kids and somehow the kids pick up english when they go to school or from the television. I dont really know how it works but they seem to be speaking perfect english.

WYLS - my HV told me that bilingual kids tend to speak a bit later but they're still processing that information but when they do speak, they can speak and understand both lanuguages so continue what you're doing and don't worry too much about him not speaking yet.

Soyabean - I would love to be able to speak to my kids in Chinese but unfortunately, I am what my aunt calls a "banana" (yellow on the outside etc etc) and I just don't have enough of it to pass on.

However I am thinking of sending my kids to weekend Mandarin classes.

Tt2bg - my DS tells me his skin is white and mine is brown and that he is Irish and I am Chinese so I have taken to telling him that Daddy is Irish, I am Chinese and he and his baby sister are part Irish and part Chinese.

lurk lurk
hello, how is everyone?
Agree bilingual kids about 3 months behind.

Hi Suzy - what time is it with you?

Wyls - my DD only says ma-ma, but everything is ma-ma inlcuding DH! :) She does seem to understand quite a bit I think. I try to speak a mixture of chinese and english to her. However DH and I speak in english to each other and DH hardly ever speaks in chinese. I do, but only to my family.

Continuing the bi-lingual discussion, my folks were quite strict about only speaking to me in chinese and forcing my elder sister and brothers to do the same. My parents reasoned I would learn english at school. My chinese isn't that great but its ok. With my DH, his parents spoke to him in chinese when he was younger. However when he started school, he struggled and his teachers advised his parents to speak to him only in english which is what they did. Now my DH has forgotten all his chinese! So I think its best to have both languages spoken at home if possible, there's little danger of children not picking up english from school/friends/tv etc but much harder to pick up chinese.

Like Rojak, we are thinking of sending DD to weekend Mandarin classes. To encourage her to learn, we are thinking of signing up ourselves! :o

hello everybody. sorry for the long long silence. haven't had much time to log on the last few months. little babe have been ill from one thing after another (expected it once he started nursery) and have been trying to juggle work, doctors and nursery runs. also, am hoping to move house at the end of the month. don't know if it is going to happen tho cos we haven't exchanged yet and we are suppose to be completing in 2 weeks time. so, i have been spending most of my spare time hassling solicitors, my selling agent, my vendor's agent and my financial advisor and when i've done the rounds, i start all over again. they are so sick of me now that i am sure they are avoiding my calls :o
keep your fingers crossed for me girls. can't wait to move so i can go shopping!!!

ds1 told me the other day that he was half-Chinese and half-Liverpool! for those of you who knows, dh is a big liverpool fan so it would appear that ds1 is well and truly converted into a liverpool fan too :o

rojak, have been looking for mandarin classes too for ds1. thought he might enjoy it and like you, my mandarin is terrible. it was dismal to start with before i came over to the uk but after 15 years of not using it, it is now atrocious!!!

My dd went to Mandarin Sunday classes for a while but she/we found it really uninspiring. It was one mandarin class in a big school of Cantonese classes and it was very much a Cantonese environment. there were only two or 3 other mixed race children and all the admin/meetings/dixcussions etc seemed to be Cantonese sowe felt a bit left out. Also the range of ages in the class was huge.
So we gave up and dh teaches her and ds2 at the weekend (about 30 mins on a sunday morning. Ds1 is 14 and spurred on by the knowledge that a friend is learning, is having lessons and aiming to do GCSE next year, so that is great, we are really pleased. he didnt want to learn with either of us but having a teacher with a friend suit shis competitive spirit!

Definitely, send your kids to learn mandarin. I am planning to do the same too. Shame i dont speak it myself but I am thinking of learning it too.

Have you heard that a school in Brighton has made mandarin a compulsory subject. news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/southern_counties/4616640.stm

I think that's such great news!!!

CSA, hope your move goes well. My DS has been ill a lot since starting nursery but I have been told that it will settle down after a while.

I am a cantonese speakerb (although not fluent) and being in west london, it is the reverse for us, the local chinese school which is very close only teaches mandarin but I cannot speak a word of it! Rojak, am also often referred to as a banana so don't you worry there are a pair of us now!!!!!! My mum used to always say to other parents who complained about their kids being bananas - 'what did you expect? You came to this country, of course their first language is going to be english and they are going to think english!'. Pretty much all my little cousins are bananas apart from one who has moved to Hong Kong and is much happier there!

Guys - whos free over the easter hols? i thought we could perhaps arrange a meet up in the science museum, which will be much cheaper than china town, keep our kiddies amused and also probably be less crowded!

Weaning - what age did you wean your babies. with first dd, it was at 4 months, but now they say 6 months. My dd2 seems ready at 4 and half months, will wait till 5 months but can't see her holding out to 6.

Hope you are well and had a good weekend. I managed to get out with my dh to see lucky sleven, good to see a chinese actress not play a 'chinese' character as such!

er speaker not speakerb

I took the kiddies to the Science Museum over half term - on your recommendation actually tt2bg - and it was great - they loved it but it was quite crowded.

Haven't watched Lucky Number Slevin (actually don't get out to watch movies at all!) so will have to wait for DVD.

I too have a pet peeve in relation to how Chinese women are portrayed - but this is particularly with authors and the worst culprits tend to be Chinese women authors.

The stories are always tragic, the heroines always long suffering and victims of circumstances. I'm thinking Amy Tan here! So I've given up on this genre.

csa - are you moving far from where you are and will you have to move the kids out of nursery etc? Good luck with the move! Keep tormenting the various agents / solicitors!

i quite agree with you rojak about amy tan. she can be so depressing after awhile and her women are always really long suffering. but then, maybe we have it good?

no, not moving that far off. just about 10 miles down the road to another village. will probably keep kiddos in the same nursery for now although it won't be that kind to the environment cos i would basically need to take a detour to work to drop them off. ds1 starts school in september and it seems mean to move him now. maybe, after that, we will move ds2 to a nursery closer to my work. will have to see. and thanks. keep your fingers crossed for me girls. seeing solicitor tomorrow to sign some documents - maybe i can torture him into telling us when the exchange date will be :o