Watching one’s grandchildren grow up is the ultimate payback for all the demands of parenting. One has the privilege of being close to the extraordinary and unrepeatable phenomenon of childhood without having to shoulder all the responsibility. But, like parenting, grandparenting is turning out to be full of surprises. Thus far it’s been a kinder, gentler learning curve
—so much of what comes along is a spruced-up 21st-century version of what I remember living through thirty or so years ago—but any learning curve is going to lead to unexpected vantage points. Continue reading
daycare
Raising a multilingual child (part 2) or why I chose a monolingual daycare (by Dr. Catherine Levasseur)
As a new language-learning-crazy-mom who tries to expose her child to a maximum of languages, I made what would seem a bad decision: I chose a monolingual daycare for my baby. Yes I did. Even worse than that, I chose a monolingual day care in the majority language. Adios! Goodbye! Au revoir! plurilinguisme, le sort en est jeté, direz-vous. Well, I had my reasons and I haven’t lost hope in raising a wonderful multilingual child. Here is why. Continue reading
Pas devant les enfants: when is a language dangerous for children to hear? (by Dr. Mela Sarkar)
Language policy is part of the air we breathe, here in Quebec. In our BILD blog posts, most of us have taken our musings about how Quebec language policy affects our lives, and woven them into our writing.
In fact, we are presenting our collective thoughts on “Micro-level case studies of policy as lived experience” at an upcoming conference at McGill May 5, 6 and 7, called For and against models of official multiculturalism and multilingualism (here’s the program). However, we won’t have time to tell very many or very long stories. So in case there isn’t time there, I will tell mine here. Continue reading
