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Developing Abilities
 Last summer, a friend from Massachusetts visited us for a few days before she headed to her first year in medical school. Michelle, who loves children and wants to become a pediatrician, had known Kelvin, my four year old son, since he was born and had always enjoyed holding him and playing with him even though she was not able to communicate effectively with him. Although we moved from Massachusetts when Kelvin was only two, we had seen Michelle in May of last year, only three months earlier, so Kelvin, who was almost three and a half and more aware of language differences, remembered her and said, “But mama, I won’t be able to talk to Michelle, because she speaks English!”
I am glad to report that in the past two months since I began writing this column, Kelvin’s English has been developing pretty quickly, even though he still does not interact with many English-speaking people. We have been having several conversations entirely in English and when he does not know how to say something, he asks me. He is quite good in using the words he knows creatively to try to convey what he wants to say in a way that reminds me of when I started to learn English almost 20 years ago. The tendency to use “please” and “thank you” in English continues, and sometimes we have a good laugh when my youngest (who is two) starts saying “thank you” as well.
We are spending some days in Massachusetts, so we got together with several English speaking friends and I was able to observe first-hand Kelvin’s budding English communication abilities. Last night, when we visited some friends, Kelvin was a bit shy in the beginning, but he soon asked me to tell the 11-year-old Tony that he wanted to play cars with him. Once they started playing, I left him on his own and just observed. Linton, who’s almost two, joined the game. I was quite surprised to hear Kelvin giving his brother some instructions in English, telling him to place the little cars “right there,” undoubtedly an expression he had just learned from Tony.
This morning Kelvin was anxiously asking me about Michelle and when she was getting here, because he knew she was coming to see us. When she arrived, he went to sit on her lap, and she was very surprised to see how communicative he was. He was not able to have an actual conversation with her just yet, but he was much braver and used the words he knew in addition to other kinds of communication, like simply being silly together. I don’t think he was much worried about not speaking English this time, and they had lots of fun together. We’re excited that Michelle is going to Brazil to do some research this summer, so in the future, she can practice speaking Portuguese with Kelvin and he can practice English with her! I can’t wait to see the look in his face when she says some Portuguese words to him in the future, since he’s always surprised and very pleased when English-speaking people talk to himself in Portuguese.
©Lilian W. - http://mamaintranslation.blogspot.com/
Lilian W. is a monthly contributing editor and columnist for BBFN. She is a foreign student from Brazil currently working on her Ph.D. dissertation in the humanities. She and her husband speak Portuguese at home with their sons, but she is hoping they will start learning English soon. Check out her family's journey in her One Family One Language column each month. You can learn more about Lilian at her blog.
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