Language to Speak to Children

When Ching Lam was born, I started to talk to her in English. Then we came back to Hong Kong for good. I hesitated.

It is kind of weired as everyone around you is speaking Chinese. Also, for me, my mother tongue is Chinese, of course I feel more comfortable and natural to speak in Chinese. I need to pay extra effort in order to communicate in English. Then, the nurses keep telling me we should speak to her in one language before starting another.

All these hindered me from talking to her in English. I am lucky that I made a decision to keep on going. I learn something from this incident.

She can pick up two languages easily.
I have a girlfriend who has a son with similar age with Ching Lam. Her husband is American. She talks to her son in Chinese and her husband speak in English (for sure!). She has worried that her son can't understand her husband parents' English when they visit them. But the result is that her son has totally no problem in communicating in English.

We should set high standard and believe that they can do it.
We should "impose" expectation to our children. We have to believe and trust that they can do it. Actually children will behave as what we expect. Our belief builds up their confident. This reminds me a boss when I worked in Canada. He has a daughter who was diagnosed that she can't run when she was very little. He didn't tell her the truth as she grows. He didn't even believe that and treated his child as normal. In final, her daughter can run. So sometimes we have to ridiculously believe what human being can do to achieve more.

Have confident in yourself
Sometimes it is not about that we don't have belief in our children. But we lose confident in ourselves. I guess it is the fear of failure, which is extremely powerful. We have to know 80% of what we are afraid of does not really happen (count it!). We tend to find evidents of telling us what we can't do instead of what we can do, so as to do less. As a parent, we are the one who know our children the best but not other experts. So stay firm and preserve.