I’m going to come right out and tell you that I know, to
varying degrees, a pile of languages. A pile of five languages. I was a Japanese
major in college for the love of all that is good. And my joy at the prospect of teaching them to my kids,
a long anticipated thrill, has been thwarted.
Four. Times. Over.
One was excused from the Spanish requirement because of
his speech issues, one dismissed from the language requirement because
of anxiety related to dyslexia, one kid went to a whole school against the
learning of foreign languages. One by
one my miniature linguists have slipped through my fingers. And while it tears me apart a tiny bit I am, in the same breath, thrilled for them because learning a language has been akin to medieval torture.
Actually our entire journey down Learning Disability Lane
was kicked off by the study of Hebrew.
And a kid who just couldn’t, no matter what we did, remember the letters
or read even a single three letter word that recurred again and again. There were tears and frustrations and angry
stomping to rooms. There were kit kat
rewards and on line games. And it just
didn’t stick. And what do you know… Turns out there was a reason for that pain
and suffering.
I’m not kidding about being desperate for my kids to learn
another language. I feel like it expands
your mind, introduces you to different parts of the world, changes your
perspective. And so last night in our
house you might have come across a crazy scene – the 6 of us sitting on the
sofa wildly flailing our arms about with a sign language instructor, possibly laughing her butt off at our tries.
All the while one of my kids shaking his head at me “you are loving this way too
much, Mom.”
I’ll go down trying – you know I'm nothing if not perseverant. And if it’s not a written or spoken
language – it’s gonna be American Sign Language. What the heck, it is the third most used language in the US and it fulfills the college language requirements so why not mine? Two of the four kids love this
adventure. One even said “finally a
language I’m good at”. One is
humiliated. One is goofy. One is full of questions. One is showing off. One has such performance anxiety that they are
hidden behind another. (I see that’s
more than 4 – some are represented more than once, I know…)
So we are trying this out because of that whole one door closes
and another door opens thing. Or just
because I’m stubborn. Either way – if
you see 6 people walking down the street awkwardly practicing the signs for
household items and farm animals, that’s us – hitting the homework hard.