Communication... often taken for granted until challenged. During the 6 weeks that Lily has been in our home, this has been a growing frustration of mine. Of course, it's not her fault. She didn't ask to be removed from her native land and be transplanted on the other side of the globe, where she is forced to learn a totally different language. And, when I think about it, she should be the one with more frustration. After all, I only struggle to understand one person in my life and she struggles to understand EVERYONE! It doesn't appear to bother her much.
Our first few days, we developed a crude set of gestures, sufficient to get by. In the days that followed, we refined our gesturing skills, and found them to be fairly adequate to meet basic communication needs. In recent weeks, we have found ourselves gesturing even when speaking to those outside our family, purely out of habit. Each consecutive week, her comprehension of English (with gestures) continues to improve, but we still only comprehend the same 3, or so, Chinese words. (It's a good thing communication doesn't rely on our learning of Chinese!) She has been repeating many English words for several weeks, but, naturally, speaking them has been difficult. I think the height of frustration came about a week ago, when she transitioned from mostly Chinese to a form of mumble-babble that we called "Chinglish". For a few days it seemed that her speech resembled neither Chinese nor English.
In the past few days, however, she has begun to use some English words. A really neat example of this occurred last evening. I was at the garage, grilling some burgers. Lily was outside with me. The burgers were about done and I needed some cheese slices. Our garage is detached and sits about 30-40 feet behind the house. I started for the house to get the cheese, taking her with me, so she would not touch the grill. I decided, instead, to see if she could handle the task. I asked her to go the the house and ask Mama for some cheese. I told her to just tell Mama, "cheese", and she would understand. Lily nodded that she had understood me and excitedly headed for the house. About 2/3 to the house, she stopped, looked back and me, and said, "Mama, cheese", rehearsing her line to make sure she had it right. I nodded and gave her a thumbs up. She smiled and went to the kitchen door and said, "Mama", "cheese" (gesturing taking a picture with a pretend camera-- evidently this is the context to which she relates cheese!), "Baba" (pointing toward me and the garage). Jen understood her request and handed her some American singles. She looked back toward the garage with a slightly puzzled look, held up the cheese for me to see, and said, "cheese?" I affirmed that it was what I needed and she bounded back to the garage, proudly handed me each slice individually, saying, "CHEESE!" each time she gave me one. The exchange of communication was entirely in English (and gesture, of course)! So, from Chinglish to cheese in 6 weeks, she's making progress! ...pretty amazing what the mind of a child is capable of!
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