Ever had other children making fun of bilingual DC?

[stickygotstuck]

Well, that's happened to DD today at the local library with two girls, who seemed a couple of years older than DD.

At the back of my mind, I thought this might happen sooner or later, but dismissed it. My mind was racing to give DD a satisfactory, graceful and non-traumatic answer, but luckily, DD just shrugged her shoulders at me, smiled and shook her head. When the girls went to the toilet I told her. "I bet those girls think you can't understand them". DD's face lit up and said "Oh, I am going to pretend I can't understand when they come back". And thus she thought of it as a game and my one neuron was spared .

They started talking made-up gibberish very loudly, and laughing whenever they looked at DD or me, and said in a made up accent "I speak Polish blah blah". They were all at the colouring table, I was sat a bit away from them but had spoken to DD a couple of times before sitting down in Minority Language (not Polish, but I know there are a few Poles in our town, who are probably the more sizeable 'minority' so these girls will have met a few, so I guess they think 'if it's not English it's Polish' . Very small town/big village tye of place, not very diverse).

Does anybody have any canned replies I can arm DD with for this type of situation?

She is 5 and so far we have been lucky that she's never felt self-conscious and we've never had any unwanted reactions. DD is very sensitive to 'being different'. I'd hate to spoil all the hard work and the enjoyment she gets out of speaking the minority language.

I think a stern response from your dd of 'I can speak English too' with suffice.

It reminds of something, actually. About 15 years ago, I lived next to a Polish lady. One day, my partner and I were out in the garden and she was next door, in her garden, with her friend, they were obviously talking about me, in Polish. My dad is Polish, but I understand next to nothing (a few swear words!). Luckily, I was wearing a t-shirt that my dad had bought me, which said Polska in big letters on the front. I cheerfully walled to the low part of our dividing fence and said 'dien dobra' to her. Her face was a picture!

Thanks Countess

I was wondering whether to be nicey-nicey with them or more serious. My natural first reaction would habe been strict, straight faced. But I wondered if trying to be diplomatic might be best.

I don't know them, but the impression I got from those two specific girls was that one of them was naturally a bit gobby and the other one a follower, so a stern reply would have worked best I guess.

Anybody else with similar experiences?

Your Polish neighbour reminds me of my Finnish flatmate. She was the offending party (though I understand nothing nasty was said about the incognito Finnish speaker) and she was suitably mortified for days after!

We've had a situation and tbh I'm as clueless as you are. We live abroad now (my home country) and ds (also 5) is still struggling with the language plus he had a phase when he repeated the first word of a sentence up to ten times. The boy from next door (6) told him how annoying this was to him and laughed every time my son used a wrong article. Thank god ds is a very confident talker and maybe he didn't even realise but it made me worry. Apparently it's not an issue at nursery so hopefully it was a one off.

Sorry, been away.

Pink, I guess when they are little they won't take much notice thankfully.
But as they get older, it is trickier to shield them.

I was dreading DD starting school in case she became self-conscious. Luckily she hasn't so far but it's early days, so I'm trying to be prepared!

We haven't had a situation like that before. I guess we have been lucky so far.
When we were living in London I actually never worried about that. Everywhere we went it was so common to hear so many different languages around, that the fact that we were always speaking in the minority language never felt out of place. At DS1's nursery, playgroups, etc it was fairly common that 8 out of 10 children were exposed or spoke another language at home. The English monolingual children were the minority.

We now live in a much smaller town, and I sort of wondered how that would affect DS1 bilingualism. After a few months he eventually observed one day he had noticed we were the only ones who spoke our language here. We talked about it, and I explained why that meant it was even more important that we continued talking in the minority language among ourselves so we could practise it and keep it.

When he started school (next big challenge I thought), hardly any of the other children took notice that he spoke a different language to me at the school gates. They could hear I spoke in a different language to him, but they just accepted/ignore it. A few children did ask me why I spoke a different language, and I explained my reasons. On the other hand, his teachers have always complimented him on his language skills, always wanted to know how to say things in his language, and said how envious they were he could speak two languages. All of these has contributed to a sort of pride so that he feels lucky and proud that he is able to speak other languages and not everybody else can do this.

To the point that one time when he was playing with another boy we had met from our street, they were being competitive the way 5 year-old boys usually are, and the other boy was saying to my son "look how fast I can run", to which my son would say "I can also run very fast, look at me". Then the other boy would say "look how high I can jump" and my son would say he could do the same. And then out of the blue my son just said to the boy: can you speak another language? I can. After that they just kept playing. But to my son's mind, I guess he felt he had won as he quickly found something someone else couldn't do. I couldn't believe it, but in a way I think being proud of your bilingualism is so important at that age, and will likely contribute to him continuing the bilingual path and not lose all we have achieved so far.

In your situation, I probably would have been the same; but what I wish I had done/said would be something like engaging in a super friendly way with the girls saying: Oh, you speak Polish! How nice! I also speak two languages, English and XXX. How do you say hello in Polish? I like learning how to say hello in different languages... (and then see what the girls' reaction would have been!).

Thanks Ellle.

Good to hear your son takes it as something to be proud of. DD does too, and she has asked a few times how come we speak the minority language if I can also speak English (she had gone on pretending to believe the fantasy that I didn't, even if I do, every day to DH and everybody else . They all do that, don't they?). I explained the same as you - that if we didn't she would forget it and she wouldn't be able to speak to grandparents, cousins, etc.

Her school is in a small village and I spoke to the teachers and the head very early on and said that my main concern was for it not to become an issue for anybody. And to be fair, they have been very good, and they even had a TA who spoke a bit of the minority language and taught all the children in her class a few words. That gave DD a lot of Kudos, and she was pleased as punch for a few days. But then she took it as unwanted attention - you can't win with her sometimes

But yes, I guess the very friendly approach is best. I have been doing that on the odd occasion other kids have said anything, but I must admit I didn't like this particular girl's attitude.

But I think it would be harder for DD to adopt the same approach. I don't think I can expect her to teach new words to just about anybody - unless she happens to like them! I think a more matter of fact approach such as Countess' suggestion above could work ('I speak English too').

Stickygotstuck, you are right about our children pretending to believe the fantasy that we don't speak English. I never thought of it like that, but I guess that's what DS1 is doing.

He has always been able to see that I speak in English to the GP, his teachers, his school friends' parents, and even at the beginning when his English was not as strong as the minority language, he would ask me how he could say this or that in English to his friends; yet when we are at home, he tells DH off if he speaks in English to me and says "you know mummy doesn't speak English, don't speak to her in English!" :)

Well, these girls did sound mean. That's why I said that's the thing I wished I had said to them but probably not the one that I would have done.
Another non-confrontational option if you want the other girls to clearly know that you and your daughter speak English without addressing them directly would be to switch back and forwards between English and the minority language as it suits you (as some multilingual families do, sometimes DH asks me something in my language and I answer to him in English or viceversa).
That way the girls can clearly see that your daughter speaks perfect English and realise that you can understand everything they say, and indirectly it is a way to show it in their faces that not only she can speak English but another language as well that they don't.

I think at the end it's just a matter of confidence and self-esteem. As long as we can ensure our children have lots of it, they should be able to brave situations like these. There will always be mean kids who will find things to make fun of other people, and assuming that someone else cannot speak English as well as them is just one of many. All we can do is prepare our children as best as we can, and support them when the need comes.
But it's not easy, isn't it? I can only imagine how it would be when it's our turn. Anyway, it sounds like your daughter managed pretty well and was unaffected by it. Well done to her!