Tip 19: Good morning Haruka!

After week 2, the eye sight of the baby gets better and the baby can see daddy and mummy at close distances. This is the time to smile more and put some good expressions when you greet the baby. And this is also the time to start to speak more as the baby can see you moving your lips and mouths. When I was speaking Japanese greetings earlier, now I decided to play the role of the English speaking daddy while Tomomi would speak only Japanese language. We read a book that below the age of 1 year old, the baby begins to develop his/her mother tongue. And why not a father tongue too.

The book written by a Japanese writer mentioned that for children to be natural bilinguals, both parents can speak in different languages and the bright young baby will later want to emulate their parents. Before the age of 1 year old, the baby watches and hears the parents closely and begin to try to mentally map the voice, pitch, sylabus of the words most frequently uttered by his/her parents. As Haruka's eyes start to glue at me when I sing a nursery rhyme or recite my A, B, C, Haruka is letting the tune sink into her brain and slowly even the words. So its no longer Ohio Haruka-chan now but Good morning Haruka! the Robin Williams way. Let me experiment this and see how soon can Haruka learn to be a bilingual baby.