Most parents desire to see their children grow up with good mastery of the English language. Many parents have gone ahead and ruled out the conversation in vernacular or Swahili in the home environment of their children and English has been introduced as the only language of communication at home.
This has forced little children who are early learners to
surrender to the rules of their parents and play along. It is now common to see
parents conversing with their little children in English. And I mean little children
as little as 4 years.
While these parents want their children to have a command
and mastery of the English language and make them be seen as the brightest
children in the neighborhood, they have no idea of the adverse effects they are
submitting their children to when it comes to child development.
The bitter pill is that parents who are doing these to their
children were never taken through the same by their parents while they were
still young. More so, they were taught by teachers who used to teach them in
their vernacular language during their early years in pre-primary classes. Were
there teachers so wrong?
Am a teacher by profession and sincerely speaking I will
never advise any parent to introduce and force their children to start
conversing in English at such an early age. Am a parent as well and this is the
last mistake, I can ever take my child through. Children are very delicate, and
all teachers are usually trained on child development stages and how to handle
children at each stage as they grow. A child missing any of the stages can
permanently damage their growth and development.
Why Introducing English to your child at an early age is
harmful
Here are reasons why you should never force English on your child at an early age.
It Affects the foundation of a child
Learning is a progressive process that transitions from
known to unknown. At the point when you are taking your child to school,
they have already known how to speak their first language. This is the
language they grew up with, the common language in the household and
neighborhood. This is what we refer to as first language or vernacular
language. In most modern Kenyan settings, the first language of many children
is Swahili, while in rural areas it is the local mother tongue common in the
area.
At the point your child is joining the school, they already know
how to communicate in their first language. All curricula in the world use the
first language as the language of communication and instruction with the
learners. For them to learn what they do not know, you must communicate with
them in a language they understand and start with what they know.
Here, teachers prepare learners to be ready to learn. At
this stage your child will be learning to read, on the other hand,
learners from higher grades read to learn. They will be introduced
to vowels, numerals, and alphabets. They will be taught how to read them and
pronounce them correctly. All teachers are trained on how to introduce these to
learners in stages.
When you force your child to start communicating in a
foreign language, you completely disrupt their learning and development
process. You are literally forcing them to speak a language they don’t
understand.
Many parents copy the western world life, they want their
children to master and speak the English language just like the European
children from the western culture. What they fail to understand is that most of
the western countries use English as their first language. They are born with
everyone around them speaking and communicating in English.
Once the foundation of a child in the learning process has
been tampered with, it is so hard to undo it. They will grow up constructing
sentences with poor grammar, and tenses, and this will affect their writing as
well. It is therefore critical that your child should be handled by a
professional who will understand the processes your child should undergo in
learning.
It affects their self-esteem
Children who converse in English with either their peers or
elders do so not because they like it but because their parents have instructed
them to do so. The fear that dad or mum will punish me if they find me speaking
in Swahili or vernacular forces your child to live in fear knowing that someone
is watching them. This denies your child the freedom of being children and
freely expressing themselves in a language they understand well.
Because of this fear, your child will be affected
physiologically, when they don’t know what to say and how to say in the
language forced on them, they resort to keeping quiet to avoid punishment. They
will as well be afraid of being laughed at when they try to express themselves
in broken English.
Mastery Of English Is not a measure of intelligence
Whoever told some parents that if their children are
speaking fluent English then they are the brightest children must have misled
them. Intelligence is never measured by how fluent one has mastered a foreign
language. Teachers know this well and that’s why English is never mandatory for
learners in lower classes. It is only encouraged in the upper classes since
it is the major examination language.
Some of the most developed countries like Russia, France, and
China have their local languages as the primary language of instruction across
all levels of learning. So why are you forcing a foreign language on your
child?
Literacy is anchored on three pillars, Reading, Writing, and
arithmetics. It doesn’t matter the language in which these are carried out in.
Thinking that European children who have a good mastery of the English language from
childhood are more intelligent than your son or daughter who communicates in
fluent Luhya, Kikuyu or Kisii language is backward thinking.
What should you do as a parent?
All that said and done, what should you do as a parent? The
answer to this question is simple, let children be children. Don’t force them
to master and speak fluent English as you do. You were never born speaking
English. In fact, it took you years to master the English language and
articulate it properly. Why do you want your child to master it overnight?
Don’t complain to teachers about how your child hasn’t mastered a foreign
language.
Encourage your children to converse in their first language and mother tongue. Do not let your children lose their identity. When they grow up, now encourage them to speak and practice the English language the same way their teachers do. The keyword is to encourage them. Do not force them.
$ads={2}