Gorillas and Dharmas

Following my earlier post about raising multilingual child(ren), I am happy to report that in the past few days June's language skills have developed tremendously. English is still a little weak, although she has added another word to her vocabulary ("gorilla"--and yes, Eric Carle's From Head to Toe has been her favourite book for a few weeks now). Words she currently uses most frequently are kore and koko ("this" and "here" in Japanese, respectively) in Japanese, and in French, la (used as "here"). The amount of babbling has increased tremendously, though most of the time it is difficult for us to decipher what she is saying. She is also pointing at everything and asking what it is. Or at least that's what we think she is doing. She also says "caca" a lot, which, although it means "poo" in French, she is using the word to indicate her (wet or dirty) diapers. She also says o (in the "tail" sense, in Japanese) a lot, due to another favourite book of hers, a series of three books with a Dharma doll (だるまさん) as the main character. I am surprised that despite all the talking we do, it's the books that are teaching our daughter vocabulary.

According to some recent studies, the amount of books one has at home is correlated with the years of schooling a child will complete. This finding is not at all surprising, from my point of view--my father's hobby is buying books (but not necessarily always reading them, to the great frustration of my mother). We grew up surrounded by books, and both my brother and I have our PhDs. What's intriguing is that, according to another study quoted in "Book owners have smarter kids",

simply giving low-income children 12 books (of their own choosing) on the first day of summer vacation "may be as effective as summer school" in preventing "summer slide" -- the degree to which lower-income students slip behind their more affluent peers academically every year.

This finding gives us a lot of hope in putting a stop to the vicious cycle that perpetuates poverty--lack of education. At the same time, I cannot help but wonder about the important role of libraries--libraries are an important place where children from lower-income households can access books.

Fortunately (or unfortunately?), I have inherited my father's hobby, and our house is full of books. I do hope that the shelves full of books will have a positive impact on her--we want to encourage June to pursue higher studies, and will certainly give her every opportunity she needs.