Languages

For Reese, obviously English is considered his mother tongue. He speaks nothing but English. Then when he was 1+, we discovered he know some Chinese (Mandarin) words from watching a children program in Chinese! So I took the opportunity to teach him some Chinese and urged my parents to speak to him in Chinese (Mandarin and Cantonese). They used to complain that I should speak Chinese to him so that he won't be a total 'banana' and yet..... hahaha... they themselves conversed in English with him! Anyway.... as of now, he knows quite a lot of Chinese words. I am bugging my mother to get some flash cards to teach him to recognize Chinese characters! I tried looking for it but I am just clueless, everything is written in Chinese and I can't read. Bleh!

About two months back, he started to pick up some Bahasa words too! Now he knows eyes, mouth, nose, ears, hand, leg, hair, head, milk, clothes and also one or two phases in Bahasa. My maid taught him some of them. Even though I am homeschooling him, I realized that if he wants to study in a local college, he will need to have at least Standard 6 level Bahasa Malaysia so there is no escaping! He needs to learn Bahasa and I am bad at it. Will probably get a tutor for him then. :)

I read that introducing different languages to a child should be done after the child turns two so I guess it's good timing for my little boy. Reese is at a stage where he can really absorb whatever you teach him and I really want to make use of this time to teach him as many words as we can!!

So how many languages does your child speaks?