Khmer letters game with Daddy

Over the last few weeks our older toddler has enjoyed his pre bed time playing with Daddy. After the four of us read some books, I take the younger toddler out and Daddy and Older Toddler get this Khmer alphabet puzzle out to play with. Its fun to see this happening as it feels like there is already so much play with the English alphabet.

He has taken to making the Khmer letters with the toy wooden roads we have around, its become a really fun thing for him at the moment.

I pretty much always speak to my toddler in English, but i notice when I speak khmer to him he switches to answer in Khmer. Like today I didn't know if he wanted to pray or play, we often have that confusion with his requests, switching to khmer solves that mystery

trying to fill a gap?

“Incy wincy spider went up the water spout,”…

I didn’t think about it before having children, but as soon as I had a baby I started singing and reading to him.  I grew up with countless nursery rhymes, many with actions.  It just seemed to happen naturally, singing to the baby, and now he’s a bit older he and I sing to the new baby. And I’m still finding I have more songs to teach him, even though I’m not a musical person at all. Since I was pregnant we have been acquiring children’s books. Board books at first, now ones for older kids. They come to us from others whose kids have grown up, new ones as gifts, some we buy.

I keep expecting to hear and see the Cambodian version of all of this. My husband is Cambodian and we live in his country. So far I haven’t really observed anything equivalent to our nursery rhyme tradition. Whereas as some adults from my own cultural background seem to burst into song when left to play with kids; I haven’t noticed this with Cambodians.

Whenever I mention to other expat or Aussie friends that its hard to find Khmer kids books they often suggest making them, or tell me where I can buy some. Literacy doesn’t have such a big place in Cambodia. We’ve tried to make some books, we’ve bought a few after much hunting. But our Khmer book collection will never be of the same volume and quality as our English collection. . Even though our kids haven’t lived in an English speaking country we have quite a collection of books- filled with animals, numbers, shapes, letters, thing to touch, interesting stories.

I keep trying to find reasons why it seems there is a gap where I expect something. Was it lost during the war? Did it not have a chance to develop because of poverty and domestic violence? Is it that people don’t pay much attention to children? Is that the flip of respect for the elderly that Asian culture is known for? Is because we live in a tourist town so the level of English is high? Or is it that I’ve had limited experience and I just haven’t had a chance to learn about it yet? Or maybe I’m looking at it in the wrong way?

After singing “Old MacDonald had a farm” and “Twinkle twinkle little star” with our son and some Khmer adults I feel like it’s time for a Khmer song.

“Now sing one in Khmer.” I demand.

So far it hasn’t produced the results I was hoping for. Sometimes I look things up on youtube, but that also hasn’t led to any Khmer nursery rhyme discovery either. Maybe I haven’t worked out how to ask.

I feel like I’m often trying to encourage Khmer adults in the family and at church to sing and read to my kids in Khmer. So far it mainly feels like I’m forcing something on them that they wouldn’t normally do.

 Songs and books are such natural part of fun and learning for me, every day we read and sing with our children but mostly in English. The only Khmer songs we sing are Christian hymns, which is great but it feels so limited.  

Without me even thinking about it our son knew the alphabet song and was able to recognize some letters before he was two years old. I certainly didn’t set out to make that happen, it just occurred naturally. I assume that will help him when it comes time to read.  We are hoping to bring the kids up bilingual so I just assume Cambodian songs and books will be part of their childhood as equally as English ones are. But maybe their Cambodian language is going to develop differently?

playing with friends and grandma

The other day we had some friends over, similar family situation to us. Usually the kids speak English to each other for play. Sort of hoping they will see Khmer as an option for play. With Grandma and some chalk they listened and play with khmer numbers and some other words like "jump".

This article  is about different strategies for different language environments

Raising Bilingual Children: Who Should Speak What?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kevin-wong2/raising-bilingual-childre_b_9558006.html
There's like a million things on the internet, I'm starting to look to see if any useful sites,
Here are some links to come back and read:
http://bilingualmonkeys.com/
http://multilingualparenting.com/

Khmer Kid Song 2014

So just coming back to this blog after many years, now going to focus on raising bilingual kids. have yet to check if the old links here work, but time to start collecting links related to kids.

"Ask Grandma if she wants to come in." I said to my toddler today as his Khmer Grandma stood outside the front door.

He turned to her and did just what I asked in Khmer! He speaks to me in English so it's hard for me to know what his Khmer is like.

He often goes on church trips and outings where everyone else is Khmer, so that's when he gets to hear a lot of Khmer, when I'm not there.

Just in that moment today it was nice to see that he understood me in English, and he knew to speak Khmer to Grandma, and he knew how to say it in Khmer.

So far it feels like it's just kind of happened , our kids are being exposed to two languages. But recently I've been chatting to a friend in a similar family situation and feeling like we need to make an effort to make sure the kids have some Khmer language exposure at this point in their lives.

We're raising Khmer kids in Cambodia with the one Khmer parent, so it should be easy, right?

English is so important to Cambodians so many people know it, even some toddlers at church seem to know English and speak it with their parents.  Apart from the government schools it seems like most schools are in English. My friend has been searching high and low all over town to find a school with a Khmer program.

It seems like reading to and singing to our kids comes naturally to many parents from English speaking countries, but its not such a big thing for Cambodians.

There are less books and less literacy around to start with, unlike where I come from most people can read and write and it's really important to us. We've been reading books to our kids since they were babies, some other expats gave me their old board books they had for their kids. We have made an effort to seek out some Khmer kids books, and we read those too. But in volume its never going to compare to all the amazing kids books in English.

And singing- so many songs in English to sing with and for kids. Including the alphabet song- so long before you actually start reading you already know the alphabet. There is an alphabet sort-of song ish in Khmer, our toddler has been learning it too, but it doesn't seem to have the same place in the culture.

I've been asking around and searching for Khmer kids songs, I haven't really come up with that much. A friend has offered to teach us some she translated from English, so that will be fun! And another friend directed us to some songs made by a project to teach health, they are also fun and easy to listen to. But so far I haven't found anything like our nursery rhymes.