Speech Therapy / Bilingualism

[kindersurprise]

I posted on this topic a while back when our paeditrician recommended speech therapy for our DD.

She is 5.10yo and is bilingual, English/German. As we live in Germany and she goes to Kindergarten, German is her stronger language but her English is very good. She does not want to speak English with me at the moment, but understands when I speak to her and talks fluently with my parents.

We thought about a bilingual therapist at the time and got some good advice here. We decided to go for the local speech therapist as the the kindergarten teacher and speech therapist in kindergarten were a bit surprised as they thought that her speech "defect" very slight. I hoped that the 10 weeks of therapy would be enough.

Now the speech therapist has said that she needs another 10 weeks therapy. If we are to do this, then I would prefer to go to a bilingual therapist. I am not completely happy with the therapist at the moment anyway.

I have found several therapists reasonably close to our home. Does anyone have any experience with bilingual speech therapy and could give me advice on what to look for?

DD and DS are starting French lessons in January (we might be moving to Switzerland next year). My instinct is that we should still do this, but what do you think?

Any advice gratefully received.

...

I'm a bilingual salt (work in English and Welsh) and I was brought up bilingually.
I speak French too.

I wouldn't advise using a salt who is not fluent in both languages of a child.

What is the problem exactly?

The SALT wrote that she has a "language development disfunction" with a "Schetismus", ie. not able to pronounce sch, she says swein instead of schwein.

She said that they have practiced in the initial, medial and finalposition of the words. (I hope this makes sense, it is a very basic translation from the German). DD is good when practicing with the salt but not so good when speaking normally. She does catch herself sometimes and corrects herself.

Would the SALT have to be a native speaker to offer English therapy? The ones I have found are Dutch, I think. (We live quite near the Dutch border)

I am kicking myself for not going against the paed and going straight to the bilingual therapist.

DD was not so happy with her SALT so I am unsure about going to another one.

I have been making her speak more English today and noticed that she gets her verbs wrong. For instance she said, "I breaked it".

She is able to form the irregular verbs in German so I assume that she should be doing this in English are her age?

She is trying to speak more English but is quite reluctant. Should I force her? Not answer when she speaks German? I almost always speak English with her but she answers in German.

We made it into a game today. Anyone caught speaking German had to give someone else a back rub, which she loves doing.

My children still say treaded, and they are 11, 10 and 8 (also multi-lingual).

They get to practise the irregular german verbs at school.

Do your children speak English with you, Nighty? I have been hesitant to "force" her as I do not want her to reject the language completely but she will not speak a word of English with me.

I am a bit concerned about DS too. He is 3.6 and never speaks English either, he does understand though.

It is sometimes disheartening. I was so enthusiastic about them growing up bilingual. I did not realise that it is bloody hard work. And the thought of learning a third language.

yes, they do speak english with me. I never spoke german with them, because my german is fairly crappy.

The schools are optimised around mono-lingual children, and will punish them for being bilingual by making them repeat the year (my children simply do not have the depth/breadth of german that a mono lingual german child has), but will spend hours teaching them english in a few years time.

As long as we are still here then we should be ok as they are both much stronger in German than English.

Kinder,I understand exactly what you mean.

The 'sh' sound you mention exists in English (althoguh am not a German speaker so would need to see it written phonetically to be absolutely sure-there may be some small difference) so it could be addressed by a non German speaker although placing sounds in context easier for someone who speaks the language.

Personally ,I don't see stuff like this as a problem. 99% of the time it resolves itself ( Ii seriously wonder whether salts doing this kind of work are even necessary on most cases, but that is of course personal opinion and not a professional stance.) Similarly the syntactic errors you mention are no big deal.

Maintaining a bilingual home os hard work ,especially in the early stages 9even my sister, a speicalist language teacher and product of a bilingual home, is having huge difficulty ensuring her boys are bilinguals, to the extent that she is planning to live in her dh's country, so that they are not completely drowned in English as is happeneing to them in the UK. Advice wise, I would suggest you do not make an issue of it , nad that you keep on talking English to them.If you start speaking German, then they will be 'lost' to the cause. I'm sorry , but this is generally what happens. Have a look at this website. It's for Welsh/English speakers, but lots of good info. on bringing a child up bilingually.

Here

PS never assume a paed. knows anything about language. How could they? It's not their specialist field.

You could contact the Dutch ones and see if you can get a spot. THey may well not have a place available. If they do, why not just try it? If you were unhappy anyway with the woman you have, I don't see the point in perservering with her.

Also really IMO this sch thing is not a big deal. It's one of the standard things they test in one of those numbered "U-" Untersuchungen you have to take the dc to. It's a standard test because it is so common I'd imagine. Anyway, dd also had a problem with this and the GP went "ah-ha the sch, we'd better do speech therapy". Now dd enjoyed her therapy and the woman we had was lovely (just German) but it didn't achieve much tbh and in my experience it all came right of its own accord. She wanted us to continue with it and so we did another 10 weeks or whatever it is and after that I just didn't bother with it, although they will keep asking you to do another 10 weeks. Goes on for a year or two sometimes.

Your dd will get the sch sound in time. I'd imagine it's just the initial position that's a problem like Schule but not Tisch or lauschen. I think it's a transfer problem from English more than anything but if she can pronounce it sometimes, there isn't a major difficulty.

Go ahead with French, if it's presented in a fun child-orientated way, they'll enjoy it.

For English you need an English speaking environment outside the home. Don't remember where you are and what may be available there.

dd is 4, and can't say Sch yet. When she wants me to stop singing she hisses "Ssssss." She also has trouble with Rs, eg "My Playmobil Pwincess."

I am looking the other way and resolutely refusing to get worried.

I just discovered that she needs a test at 6 to go to school. Also, they are thinking of making the red book thing compulsory here for under 5s. Those little red books that I never bothered to fill in.....

I am not going to laugh at Germans for being health obsessed though, because I have sorted out 2 longstanding health problems since I came here, that British doctors didnt have a clue about!!

Thanks for all your replies.

I am trying not to get to obsessed with this at the moment. I am normally very laid back but the added worry about DD perhaps starting school in a French speaking school is getting me nervous. She is a bright little thing and I am sure that she will manage ok but I am a bit uptight with the not knowing where and when we will be moving.

I think I will see if I can get an appointment with the Dutch therapist. Definately not going back to the German one, DD told me it is boring, she just has to sit and say words.

I was surprised that the SALT sat at a desk with DD. Poor darling looked like she was at a job interview.

Nighty
Here in NRW they do tests when the DCs are 4 to see if they need any therapy at that stage to get them ready for starting school when they are 6. The scheme just started this year so DD missed it. She is due her Schuleignungstest after the hols.

Thing is, dd2 never really has got into the system, because she was 2 when we arrived here, and she is v healthy touch wood, so only met the doctor when she needed a checkup to get into KG. I dont have time to trot her round loads of therapists, tbh.

Are you moving to France? schools there are much more laid back, my children joined aged 6, 4 and 2 and had no probs at all. They were fluent by the end of the year. They are not so progress obsessed as the german system during the first few years.

AAARRRGGGHH!!

After all that, I finally got hold of the Dutch/German therapist and she says that she would first treat the main language, ie. German. Then work on English.

I asked if she would not work on both languages paralell and she was a bit evasive. She finally admitted that she has never done this before. The Dutch therapist has occasionally done a bilingual therapy but she has no experience.

I then asked if she would feel comfortable trying it and she said that, although her English is very good, (school English plus a year in England) she would not feel confident about offering a therapy in English.

Why does she advertise as a bilingual SALT then?

Back to square one. I am going out with DD's kindergarten teacher at the weekend (she is on maternity leave) I will ask her what she thinks, I am leaning towards just leaving it.

Btw, we have started making her speak English at home and she is getting on better. She had to give lots of back rubs to begin with though.

We are going to the Anglican Church on Sunday in Cologne, there is a Sunday School there. Hopefully the children will get to speak some Englsih. I have also made contact with a colleaugue who has bilingual children, we are going to meet up soon. I hope this helps.

Thanks again for all your replies.

Sunday school is good for keeping up the English and possibly working on the obeying your parents bit too. I'm making sure that bit sinks in! They will have the odd social occasion too so all that gives your dc motivation to keep up the language I've found.

What might be good if you have it round there is brownies or it'll probably be American-run via some American church or organisation so it'll be "girl scouts".

Lemme google...

There is a scout group in Mönchengladbach which is not too far from us, but I seem to recall that they start at cub age, so 8yo. Never thought about brownies. Duh, considering I was one!

kindersurprise - can you increase the amount/quality of English (or German, for that matter) that your DD hears at home by buying some really good DVDs and having her watching them repeatedly? My daughter doesn't watch TV at all in any language, but I have bought her a complete set of Angelina Ballerina DVDs (the English is really very high quality with really excellent actors for the voiceovers) and she watches them a lot and has learnt a lot of vocabulary and pronunciation from them.

Oh, and my sister bought some BBC CDs of English children's poetry with the accompanying book and her elder children know the poems by heart now, they have listened to them so much, which has had an excellent impact on their pronunciation/vocabulary.

Anna
We had a sat dish installed about a month or two ago, primarily so that the DCs could watch Cbeebies. (although DH seems to spend a lot of time watching Top Gear )

To begin with DD always said that she would prefer to watch something in German, now she is actually asking us to put on English channels.

We read everyday to them and are always buying new English books. I was amazed how early they understood that Oma cannot read these books, and that they have to get a German book for Oma.

That might well help - a month is not much time in language development, the results will show up in due course.

The point about DVDs and CDs though is the constant repetition of the same phrases in RP (which children being brought up outside England really need to hear as it is the easiest form of English from which to learn to read, and they are hearing so much less English than a child in England would).

I don't buy Charlie and Lola for my daughter because of the weird grammar - I probably wouldn't mind were we in England because the weird grammar in C&L would be offset by all the correct grammar she would hear in the normal course of life.

I think if you are going to try the Sunday school, I'd wait and see if you meet families there you like. They'll have advice about other activities and it'll spin off from there.

I'm very lucky in that I have a Kenyan friend who seems to know everyone and always knows where activities in English are held. She's been a great mine of information to me over the years. I've found other ex-pats are always very helpful.

When will you know about the move to Switzerland?

Soon hopefully, Sandy. Basically we are waiting for a postition to open in the company's HQ.

Funnily enough, I have never felt the need to contact other expats before. I find I am becoming more British as time goes on, even the meals that I cook are more and more British.

I will end up a walking cliche, like one of those 3rd generation Irish-Americans, sitting in a pub in New York drinking Guinness and singing Danny Boy.