Yes, the exact same response from the 3-year-old and the 14-year-old. They both got the same response from me, too. ;o)

And I agree with Love and Logic, I even find myself using the strategies with my husband sometimes.

One of the things I learned from adult adoptees was that you shouldn’t say “this is your culture, go learn about it”. That puts the child separate from the family and makes them feel as if they are “different”. It can also make them resent learning about the culture of their birth country. So many of them had such bad feelings around being dropped off to learn “their culture”, I didn’t want to do that to my kids. Yet, the ones who never learned the language often have resentment, as well.

So, we are all learning Chinese, it’s not something we’ll send them off to learn. We do it as a family.

I’m sure RK and I are going to make our own mistakes, but we’re trying hard to learn from the families who have gone before us so we don’t make their mistakes.

As for books–friends recently bought this one. I just love the title of the book, so that’s enough to peak my interest. :) It’s a little older than tweens, but they bought it for their tween.

Get Out of My Life, but First Could You Drive Me & Cheryl to the Mall: A Parent’s Guide to the New Teenager

http://www.amazon.com/Life-First-Could-Drive-Cheryl/dp/0374528535

I have had many friends say to me, (regarding my soon-to-be 4YO), that what
I am currently experiencing with her will not be unlike what awaits me when puberty hits. (Hers, not mine.)

I have to say that, as a high school teacher of freshmen, there appears to be a lot of validity to that. I deal with the SAME things … only in bigger (more hormonal) bodies.

BTW… I see the same “anglification” [is that even a word?] in some of my Spanish textbooks: rosbif (roastbeef), honron (homerun), pudin (pudding).

: )
M2I
http://www.MyChineseShamrock.blogspot.com

Most of what she knows she’s learned from RK and I, and from videos and songs and just playing around with it. She’s learning about pinyin in Chinese classes, and a little bit of Chinese characters, too. We mostly just do conversation stuff at home.

When we decide to “speak Chinese” for a set amount of time, we end up with part chinese and part english, and when someone says something half and half we all decide how best to say it in Chinese, or we help by filling in the words the person didn’t know. Sometimes I have my netbook handy so I can look words up, but we don’t do that when we are eating.

That meal was a good one to speak Chinese in because you had to ask for tomato, onion, pickles, etc.

TT doesn’t contribute much in Chinese – she knows fruits and vegetables and parts of the body and colors and she can count, but that’s pretty much it. She’ll say a few words in Chinese when we do that, but mostly she struggles with English too much to focus much on Chinese. She’s absorbing a lot, and when she’s ready I’m sure she’ll put it to use. But she’s not ready yet.

It sounds like you are doing a lot of work on conversation, which is good. We have been at DD’s school for three years and haven’t gotten anything close to what you are able to do.