Posted in German with the Kinder

Posted in German with the Kinder

I haven't posted an update on the children's language progress lately because there has really been nothing to say. They are doing much better in English though! However, recently two things happened in regards to German that I wanted to document.

Ryan has always really liked colors, and when we got a cool German book from Alphabet Garten called "Die Farben" it made its way to his room instead of being placed on the German shelf.  Gabrielle has recently been reading to him before bed, and apparently he had asked her to read that book several times.  Each time she told him, "That book is in German, and I can't read German."

One night, Gabrielle was busy and Ryan had to settle for a story from plain old mom.  While I sat in his room waiting for him to finish brushing his teeth, I picked up "Die Farben" and started looking through it.  He came back in and saw the book in my hand and his eyes lit up.  I could see the wheels turning in his mind.  "Can you read that book to me, Mommy?  Can you read German?"  So he finally got to understand the illustrations.  I read it to him in German, but explained some things in English.

Then, last week I said something to Brogan in German, and Ryan looked at me and asked me why I could speak Spanish.  I'm not sure if he thought the German was Spanish, or why he said that.  But anyway, I told him, "I can speak German and Spanish because I have studied them for a long time."  The children have been watching episodes of Liberty's Kids, and the character Henri is French, so Ryan said that French was a language too.  Then he asked me if I could speak French.  "Just a little tiny bit," I replied.

Today the speech therapist was here and brough some of her Spanish materials by mistake.  Ryan was trying to tell her that I could speak Spanish, but kept saying "English" instead so she didn't understand him.  She said, "I know your mom can speak German!"

So I guess you could say that we have made progress in that Ryan realizes that there are different languages.  Now, to actually teach him some German!  I'm hoping to actually do that one of these days...

Posted in German with the Kinder

Three is my threshold for not being able to speak.  Before age three, fine.  Once you are three, though, I'd really like to be able to understand you!  So at the twins' three-year-old checkup last fall, the pediatrician and I discussed starting speech therapy.  She sent in the referral and I was contacted a little while later by a speech therapist who then came to our house to evaluate them.

It was very difficult to separate them for their evaluations, because they have never really been apart.  However, we managed well enough and soon the verdict was in: both twins were delayed at least a year in comprehension and over a year in expression.  They both had a handy word "mih-dow" which could mean anything they wanted it to. Our insurance approved them for therapy done in our home, two sessions a week.

Twins are commonly speech delayed, and of all kinds of twins, identical twin boys tend to be the most delayed.  They understand each other perfectly fine (I once watched them have a complete argument with resolution without any words at all!), so they really have no motivation to speak. 

Just before Christmas, we began therapy.  She came twice and then we took a two week break for Christmas and New Year's.  Then she came two more times and then got sick.  Through the rest of January, I heard from her once.  It was frustrating to me, because even with that tiny bit of therapy, I had seen improvement, and then through January, they regressed.  Mid-February, I got a call from the therapy place.  They said that they had not heard from the therapist and didn't know where she was.  Then they explained that when a therapist can't come for whatever reason, they don't stop therapy - they assign a temporary therapist.  "So would you like a new therapist?" they asked.  Of course!

A few days later I got a call from the new therapist, who works at the local elementary school.  She is absolutely wonderful and a much better therapist than the first one!  She actually plans out the sessions (aside from just what games she brings) and works with them for a full hour.  Meanwhile I have been able to actually clean up the kitchen or make dinner.  It is wonderful to have that break for an hour while another adult entertains them!

Both therapists noticed that Ryan is still, at 5 1/2, having trouble with some sounds.  The first therapist was including him in their sessions, but not really helping him.  This one had me fill out a sheet so that she could evaluate him separately, which she did yesterday.  She also is planning to come three times a week some weeks to make up the sessions they missed in January.

So all this is promising, but both therapists told me that they will most likely continue needing therapy up to and possibly including school age. I was feeling guilty about having spent a year speaking German to them, even though I knew that they were delayed before I started speaking only German to them.  And I've really been wanting to start with some German again, but I kept asking myself, "How can I do it when they are so delayed?"

Then all of a sudden I realized, "Hey, I've been speaking only English to them for seven months, and they aren't suddenly speaking in Shakespeare sonnets!  So they could be delayed and have one language, or they could be delayed and have two languages.  Which is better?  Obviously two!"

So there you go.  Speech therapy at home has the added benefit of making me clean up before she gets here!  Both therapists have also been very supportive of homeschooling as well.

I always thought that the movie Monsters, Inc. was unrealistic in that Boo is potty-trained but can't really speak.  Guess what? I now have two potty-trained, non-speaking children!

Posted in German with the Kinder

It may be because I am nine months pregnant.

It may be because it's really hot here.

It may be because I am really tired.

It may be because I see very little chance of providing any other German input for at least the next year.

It may be because I have a lot of other things on my mind.

It may be because this morning when Alexander said something that sounded like, "My drop" when he dropped a toy, I wanted to simply say, "Yes, you dropped it" instead of however you say that in German.

It may be because it seems harder and harder to figure out how to say anything in German.

It may be because they are 2 and 3/4 years old and still not really speaking much.

Whatever the reason, it's been really difficult to make myself speak German with the twins the last week or so.  I'm feeling quite discouraged.

Posted in German with the Kinder

A while back when I was still trying to force my daughters to study German, I ordered two Magic Treehouse books from Alphabet Garten.  At the time, they were very into Magic Treehouse and I thought it might help spark some interest in German. It didn't work.

Reading to the twins had not been too successful so far.  They didn't seem to understand that they were supposed to sit and listen.  I now have a pretty good collection of little picture books in German, but they would just take the one I was reading and fight over the other ones and trade them back and forth, and not much listening was going on.

The first Magic Treehouse book is about dinosaurs.  We have lots of dinosaur toys because Gabrielle really likes dinosaurs, and the twins have been playing with them (although Christopher seems to believe that all of them should belong to him for some reason).  So I decided to read "Im Tal der Dinosaurier" (In the Valley of Dinosaurs) to the twins.

I give them some little picture books to look at and read them a chapter or two of the book.  There are pictures on just about every page and the twins like to point them out.  I like reading that to them instead of the little picture books because they are hearing much more German.  And I have noticed that they pay extra attention when they hear me reading something that I say to them frequently, like "Warte!" (wait) or "Komm schnell!" (come quickly).  They often look at the book when I say a word they recognize.

We are about halfway through the book now.  I have been trying to read to them when I get them up from their afternoon nap. I really would never have thought that the answer to getting the twins to listen to me read was to read them something longer and more complicated!  But it's working!

Posted in German with the Kinder

Since my last entry, I have been pondering how some would view what I wrote.  How can what I said in German be meaningful to the twins if I didn't even know it before I looked it up? They've certainly never heard it before! However, I think the issue of meaning to them is secondary right now.  As I read somewhere recently, if we waited to say something to a child until we were sure he or she could understand it, they would never learn language at all.  And this is the reasoning (as limited as my understanding is of this method) of TPR - Total Physical Response.  You can see a video about this method here.  If I say, "Lass sein Hemd los!" while removing Christopher's hand from Alexander's shirt, they will eventually know what those words mean.  And I will have learned it also, because those words have meaning to me as well.

When I think back to how I learned vocabulary that I will never forget, it was all related to some physical object or action.  When Robert and I were in Germany, we went on a Rodelbahn.  It's kind of like a bobsled track going down the side of a mountain.  We were on a little sled-like thing, with a handle that you pulled back to brake.  Robert, who was 5 at the time, really wanted to go by himself, but they said he was too young.  So I told him we would go together but he could drive.  I had no idea that it would be so difficult!  At first it wasn't bad, and I noticed that there were signs at every curve that said, "Bremsen!"  I didn't know what that meant.  As we picked up more and more speed, I yelled at Robert to brake and he yelled that he couldn't.  We lost control, the sled went out from under us, and we slid on the concrete track until we tumbled into the grass.  Because I had tried to shield Robert from the concrete, I was hurt worse than him, but we were both scared and shaken up.  I thought about walking down the rest of the mountain, but we had not gone very far and I could not walk that far down a mountain with my knee hurt.  I convinced Robert that we had to get back on but promised that we would go very slow.  And that thing was hard to brake!  Have you guessed what "bremsen" means now?  Yep, "to brake!"  We were blessed we didn't "brake" any bones!  And I will never forget that word either!

Another time on our trip to Germany, I went to pick Robert up from the family he spent the mornings with while I was in school.  He said that the 19 year old daughter of the family had done something really cool and he wanted her to show me too.  The problem was that he didn't know what the thing was called in English, and she didn't know what he might have been referring to.  So I spent at least ten minutes trying to get more details out of Robert and thumbing through my German-English dictionary.  I was trying to avoid him having a complete meltdown.  Finally, I thought she might have done a cartwheel so I looked that up. "Radschlagen" was the German equivalent.  I turned to her, said "Radschlagen?" and she smiled and did a perfect cartwheel, and Robert was happy.  Will I ever forget the word "radschlagen" even though I have never once used it again speaking German?  Of course not!

Language is for communication.  We speak because we want to say something, because we need to communicate.  My daughters sometimes like to translate everything I say to the twins in German.  They know what I have said - usually - from the context of what is going on.  And eventually the twins will learn too - "This is what you say when this happens" and then hopefully they will start speaking more too.  Words aren't just abstract, they are intrinsically linked with the object, action, or feeling they are describing.

One of my goals for this summer: study TPR a bit more!

Posted in German with the Kinder

Probably nobody but me is interested in the tiny little details of what German the twins produce, but it encourages me to keep up with this, so I am doing it anyway.  It is my blog after all!

Alexander said "Ritter" to me, which means knight.  He was holding one of Ryan's toy knights at the time.  Then the next day, Christopher said "Butter" to me.  Their favorite breakfast is peanut butter on bread, so I say, "Erdnußbutter" to them many times a day. (Butter is pronounced differently in German and English although spelled the same.) The past few days I have been focusing on saying "Nase" (nose) to them and touching their noses.  Alexander likes to grab my nose which is I think what started this.  So this morning he was sitting on my lap and I said, "Gib mir einen Kuß, bitte!" (give me a kiss, please), which he has reliably done for quite some time.  Then I changed it to, "Gib der Nase einen Kuß!" and he leaned forward and kissed me on the nose!

I think that they have been producing more words because of 2 things.  One, I have been focusing on speaking a lot to them.  Two, I decided a week or so ago that in addition to speaking to them, I would emphasize certain words by repeating them separately.  For example, saying, "Hier ist deine Tasse" (here is your cup) and then repeating, "Tasse."  Or, "Willst du Milch?" (do you want milk?) and then saying, "Milch."

School is almost over and I can't wait to spend more time with them!  Oh, and today I learned how to say "to let go of something or somebody."  I had to look it up because Alexander was pulling Christopher's shirt from behind and nearly choking him!  Don't worry, I dealt with that first and then looked it up! It's "loslassen" if you are interested - Lass sein Hemd los!

I have also been practicing how to say, "I miss you," "I will miss you," and "I missed you!"  It's funny in German because it's backwards - you say, "You are missing to me" in effect - du fehlst mir.  It takes some practice to be able to say it naturally!

Another little tidbit - I was reading that Fingerspiele book today, marking ones I want to learn, and discovered a German version of the "Where is Thumbkin?" fingerplay I did as a child.  You have both hands behind your back and sing, "Where is Thumbkin? Where is Thumbkin?" and then bring one hand out, thumb up, and sing "Here I am!"  Then the other hand, thumb up and sing "Here I am!" again.  Then they talk to each other, yadda yadda yadda.  Remember that one?  So the book tells me that this is sung to the tune of "Bruder Jakob" - otherwise known as Frere Jacques.  So then I had to sit there and compare the two and I realized that it is that tune!  Now you all know how musically inclined I am!  The words are more important to me than the music in any song.  I remember watching a documentary about ABBA once and Benny and Björn saying that they wrote the music first and then words to fit the music and I really couldn't comprehend how one would do that!!

Of course, I am the same person who never would have noticed that the "ABC song" and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star have the same tune as well!

Posted in German with the Kinder

Today I spent some time cleaning up the twins' room.  My progress was hampered by the contributions of three little boys - guess who? 

At one point, Christopher came over to me to have me do something, get a toy started or something like that.  And he said, "Bitte" quite clearly, before I did it.

In German, "bitte" means both "please" and "you're welcome."  So a conversation could go, "Bitte? Danke!" "Bitte!"  I say things to them like, "Komm hier, bitte!"  but I had never heard either one of them say "bitte" as please.  I was thrilled!

Later, I was talking to one of the twins and must have said, "Was machst du?" (what are you doing?).  Ryan then said to me, "You say 'was machst du' all the time!"  It was so funny, the tone he said it in.  I have been talking to him lately about German.  I will say things like, "Want me to count in German?" or "yellow is 'gelb' in German."  So I replied, " 'Was machst du?' means 'What are you doing?'"  He didn't say anything more about it.  I thought that his comment was very interesting, because it shows several things. 1) He is listening to the German.  2) He can say it correctly. 3) He is noticing a lot about language.

Also, the latest issue of Multilingual Living Magazine is out.  Sarah's regular column is really interesting this month - it's about how speaking French to her newborn son is different from doing it with her nephew once a week.  And there is also an article by a lady who is speaking German with her two-year-old twins but not with her older children.  Wait, she sounds like me!  She is me!  LOL!

Posted in German with the Kinder

It occurred to me sometime yesterday that I could probably find a website in German that shows the baby's development, just like I look at in English.  So I did a search on google.de just now and found this adorable website: Rund ums Baby.  I am currently 27 weeks pregnant so here is what is happening with das Baby:

Es gähnt, streckt und reckt sich, wird in seinen Bewegungen einem "fertigen" Baby immer ähnlicher. Die Augen kann es jetzt öffnen, nach oben, unten, links und rechts sehen. In dieser Zeit beginnt das Baby, eine Fettschicht anzulegen, die es später vor der Kälte "draußen" schützen soll.
Seine Länge beträgt jetzt 30 - 35 cm.

Neben der sichtbaren Entwicklung hat sich auch das akustische Wahrnehmungsvermögen weiter ausgebildet - Babys in diesem Alter hören bereits den Herzschlag der Mutter und nehmen einen immer größeren Anteil an ihrer Umwelt. Sie können Stimmen, Alltagsgeräusche und Musik "mithören" - wenn auch durch das Fruchtwasser gedämpft - und darauf reagieren. Überhaupt ist Musik sehr beliebt.

Die meisten Babys entwickeln einen klaren Hang zur Klassik. Mozart und Vivaldi sind dabei die Renner. Ihrem Unmut gegenüber hartem Rock oder Techno machen sie dagegen mit heftigem Strampeln Luft. Bildlich könnte man sagen, es stehen ihnen die Haare zu Berge. Haare ? Doch, ja ... wenn auch noch nicht viele auf dem Kopf, so haben sie in dieser Zeit einen sehr feinen, wolligen Flaum auf dem Rücken und teilweise an Armen und Beinen. Diese "Lanugo-Behaarung" wird bis zur Geburt jedoch wieder verschwunden sein.

"The baby yawns and stretches and moves more like a real baby.  The eyes can open and look all around.  The baby is starting to develop a layer of fat to protect itself from the cold 'outside.'  It is now 30-35 cm long" (whatever that is in inches LOL!)  Then it goes on to talk about the baby's hearing and what kind of music babies like.

This is a great way for me to learn baby vocabulary in context!  And there is so much on this website: baby names, breastfeeding forums (the verb in German is "stillen" and I really like that!), my own personal pregnancy calendar:

Isn't that cool?  Now I know the words for "ultrasound" and all the other tests I always decline!  But I didn't even know how to say "due date" before looking at this (Geburtstermin).  So I'm thinking I will be spending a lot of time on this site.  Oh, and it has these adorable illustrations!  Click on this to see a drawing of a baby about to nurse.  Isn't that cute?

I also got a book called Fingerspiele: Klassiker und neue Ideen fuer Babys und Kleinkinder from Alphabet Garten recently.  I love it!  I have memorized two games to play with the twins and they always laugh.  One is just like a game my father used to play with me, saying "Creep mousy, creep mousy, creep mousy" all the way up the child's body until you touch the nose.  In German it's "kommt ein Mäuschen, kommt ein Mäuschen, macht klingeling, ist wer im Häuschen?"  (a little mouse comes, a little mouse comes, rings the bell, is anyone home?) I also will use this book with German classes I teach!  Using these little rhymes is a great way to learn vocabulary and internalize the language. 

Hmm, I think I might be getting excited about speaking German with the new baby...

Posted in German with the Kinder

Know what two little birdies told me?

Actually, they don't tell me anything.  But they do come visit me on a regular basis.  Alexander flies the blue jay over and it lands on my arm and I speak German to it, and then it flies away.  And then Christopher flies the robin over and it lands near me and I talk to it in German and then it flies away.

I need to bone up on my bird vocabulary, but I am pretty sure they know "Vogel" means bird now!

Posted in German with the Kinder

I went away last weekend by myself, for the first time since 2001.  It was my mother's birthday on Sunday.  I actually flew up Friday and returned on Monday.  Since I hadn't flown anywhere since 1995, the experience was a little different!  I got to spend a lot of time with my mom, my aunt (who will be 90 this year), and two of my sisters.  It definitely was a change of pace for me!  The timing seemed right in my pregnancy for a trip - I'm not too sick and not too big.

While all that is interesting I'm sure, what I really wanted to mention was that I spoke to Alexander in German on the phone.  I called and Robert was changing his diaper and put me on speaker phone.  I said, "Hi, Alexander!" and then all of sudden it hit me - I need to speak German!  Anyone who has learned another language knows that speaking on the phone is hard, and it just didn't occur to me before I actually started talking to him.  But then I said my usual, "Hast du gut geschlafen?" (Did you sleep well?) and he made a noise like he knew it was me.  Then I had no idea what to say.

On another note, I got another copy of Bilingual Baby German because our first one got destroyed.  However, when I put it on yesterday for the twins, Ryan sat there saying everything that appeared on the screen in English.  He used to repeat the German or Swedish.  I guess I will have to put it on for the twins and take Ryan in the other room for preschool!

After floundering around for a while, I think I have finally come up with a way for me to improve my German, something doable for right now.  I got the Usborne Internet-Linked German Dictionary for Beginners, which I would link to if I could find a good link LOL.  I really like this book because unlike most picture dictionaries, it doesn't just have nouns.  Each page has a theme and there are words and phrases that go with the theme.  It says that it has 2000 total words and phrases.  Now, a lot of this I already know, but there is enough mixed in that I don't know to make it worthwhile.  On the very first page, Meeting People, there was a phrase I didn't know: to shake hands (die Hand schuetteln).  And the other cool thing about this book is that, if you don't know how to pronounce something, you can go online and listen to it (hence the whole "Internet-Linked" thing).

So what I did was: I wrote down the phrase in my notepad and then looked up the verb schuetteln in my mondo-huge German dictionary.   It means "to shake."  I then wrote out how to say, "I shake his hand" and "Shake my hand!"  I also saw that you can use the same verb for "shake one's head" and "shake one's fist" (but, of course, with two different prepositions for whom one is shaking about!)  The last two days I practiced telling the twins to shake my hand.  I recently read that you need to use a word or phrase sixty times (yes, sixty!) in order to have actually learned it.  My first thought was, "No wonder I can't remember all those words I look up once!"

Last night I looked up another verb on that page, one I already knew but I figured a little review wouldn't hurt.  I discovered that besides meaning "to meet," "treffen" means "to hit" and that you can use the past participle "Getroffen!" to mean "you've got it!"  I wrote out how to say, "Don't hit him in the face!" with treffen and actually got a chance to use that today (does that surprise anyone since I have 2 two year old boys?)  So my plan is to keep working through the book, learning what I don't know and reviewing what I do know, and then incorporating it into what I say to Alexander and Christopher.

Posted in German with the Kinder

Alexander and Christopher are doing well with German!  I realized a week or so ago that again I was slipping into, "If I can't say it in German I won't say anything at all" which is VERY bad for their language development!  Instead my attitude needs to be, "I may not know how to say what I would have said in English just now, but I can still say something relevant in German, so I will and then I will look up the other later!"  I realized that they had plateaued again with their English, and so I have to keep myself talking.

Their passive understanding has increased, Alexander especially.  Alexander loves to take away anything that is keeping me warm, such as blankets I might be using, my slippers, my socks...So one day he had taken my blanket and my slippers and carried them off.  A few minutes later I asked him, "Wo ist meine Decke? Es ist mir kalt!"  (Where's my blanket?  I'm cold!)  He stopped what he was doing, looked at me, then went into the toy room and came back a minute later with my blanket.  Alexander knew the word "Decke" because he likes to sleep with a blanket, and I always say, "Hier ist deine Decke" when I put him to bed.  But what impressed me about that was that it wasn't right away that I asked him where my blanket was.  He had to think and figure out what I was talking about and then go get my blanket for me.

They still love the word "Hose" (pants) and every time I dress them, we chant "Hose! Hose! Hose!" and I have started saying what color they are too.  Alexander always seemed more in tune with the German, but today Christopher twice showed his understanding.  This morning he climbed up onto my lap, and I asked, "Willst du stillen?" (Do you want to nurse?) and he said, "Ja."  They also like to say "Bye!" when they are walking away from you, and so I started saying, "Tschues!" just a couple of days ago.  When I was putting on their sleepers last night, I was saying, "Tschues, Fuss!" (Bye, foot! it rhymes) as I put  their feet into the sleepers.  Today, Christopher was playing and walked away from me and I said, "Tschues!" and he said, "Bye!" so he obviously knows what it means.

Alexander showed that he understood "Socken" (socks, but pronounced with a "z" sound at the beginning so it doesn't sound the same) by pointing to the bin I keep their socks in when I said "Socken."

A list of words I am pretty sure they know:

Ball, Decke, Hausschuhe (slippers), Socken, Tschues, Kuss (kiss), ja, nein, Hose, stillen, possibly springen (jump)

And I did actually manage to read 2 books to them today auf Deutsch.

I'm debating about how much German to speak with the new baby...

Posted in German with the Kinder

Mary told me on the way home from the Scandinavian Fair that a few days ago, she asked Alexander if he wanted something (in English) and he answered, "Nein."

That is the first time that either of the twins have said something German without repeating it!

Posted in German with the Kinder

Hmm, which one of the million blog posts that have been circling my brain will I write, considering that I am up at 5 AM (but it's really 6 AM since we fell back last night) and have nothing to do?

I guess I will give the promised update on my German language efforts with the little ones.

My last entry about this was when Ryan had said to me, "Mommy, why you talk like that?" when I was playing finger puppets with him and making them speak German.  That did upset me, but as I calmed down, I realized that it was quite interesting.  It showed that he is aware that there is more than one way to talk, something that maybe a lot of just-turned-four-year-olds may not know.  And I think he was tired also.  I remember when I was in Germany, when I was tired, I would want people to turn off the German and switch on the English too.  I haven't let his comment deter me, and I still speak German with him at times.  I make an effort to say different things to Ryan and the twins, and not just the same things all the time.  I challenge myself to switch pronouns quickly and to say more complicated things.

A day or two after Ryan said that, I was helping him and he asked me a question.  I said, "Ja" and he immediately turned to his sister Gabrielle and said, "Mama said 'ja' so I can!"  That amused me.  My challenge with Ryan at this point is that we are conversing on a different level than I can easily handle in German, using vocabulary that I don't know.  So it's hard to use a lot of German with him, because he needs to be able to understand what I am saying to him.

Now, for the twins.  They both say "danke" and "bitte" (they are very polite LOL).  They just had a checkup last Monday and the doctor agreed that they had made progress and so didn't feel that they needed to be evaluated.  I told him the German words they say, and he said to one of them, "Sprichst du Deutsch? Ja? Nein?"  I was looking at the baby's face - I can't remember whether it was Christopher or Alexander - and he was just staring at the doctor.  But when the doctor said, "Nein?" there was a flash of recognition on his face.  I do say "Nein" a lot to them LOL!  That was exciting to me, because I could almost see the thought process - "What is this guy saying to me? I don't get it.  Oh! that's a word that Mama uses!"

On a side note: our doctor is taking an extended indefinite leave because his wife has cancer and the chemo did not work.  He is a lovely person, a wonderful doctor, a kind man.  His wife is also a doctor, and they have a young son.  I think he's five.  This couple is only a few years older than my husband and me.  Their whole family is going to go to Colombia and spend time together.  Please, if you feel led, pray for them all.

Back to the topic: these little stories are helping me to keep going with speaking German to them when it gets tough.  I also need to work on getting more input to them, playing CDs and reading books, etc.  It has just been a crazy couple of months here.  I am thankful though, that my whole family is healthy and relatively happy.

Posted in German with the Kinder

I don't have to teach today, so I went and met my German tutor for the first time in months.  I was rusty, but it felt good.  When I got home, I continued cleaning up our toy room.  Ryan came over and noticed the finger puppets and we started playing with them.  I was having all of mine speak German, and Ryan seemed fine with that.  He even responded appropriately in English to several things.  But I guess it was the most sustained speaking in German I had done with him in a while, and all of a sudden he turned to me and said, "Mom, why you talk like that?  Can't you just talk like me and Mary and Gabrielle?"

I could cry just typing that.

I feel like I spent the last two months trying to adjust to teaching and getting everything done, and I missed my window of opportunity, and now he is too old and doesn't want to hear German.  Wow, if I am this upset about him saying that, it must be even worse for parents when it's their native language that the children reject!