So this is going to be about hang-ups of middle class people like me, so you’re welcome to leave if you’re just tired of hitting reads about people’s gripes in this life blah blah or blogs whose authors like to talk about themselves like there’s never gonna be tomorrow.
All righty then, I was just wondering whether I made a mistake in telling my househelp to speak in English whenever she talks to the little kid. Last night I heard her say “Where’s your baybs [beybs]?” She meant “bib” of course. But how’s the little kid gonna know that? I was worried about the little kid picking up wrong pronunciations and now it seems that it was perfectly reasonable to have trivial worries like that. This is the first time that my househelp has been in Manila, she came four months ago and she came with a Visayan accent. Not to belittle or humiliate in any way our friends from the Visayan Islands but you see, I am an English teacher — or at least, was, and I refuse to have my son speaking bad English.
And this is where the “hang-ups” part comes in. You see, I want the little kid to learn English from the cradle and so I had planned on imposing that everyone speaks in English (whether or not they’re talking to the little kid) when they are within the little kid’s hearing, the very moment he comes out of the hospital’s nursery. Kinda like “English zone”, so to speak. But anyway, since we stayed at my in-laws immediately after our hospital discharge, I couldn’t foist rules like that. Not, when we’re not even in our own house. And so I had been lax the first month that we have been staying there, but the minute we arrived home, I morphed into this insanely prudent prudish mom whose vocabulary consisted of “yes, sir”, “yes, ma’am”, “please” and who insisted on speaking in straight English to the little kid.
But kind sir, I do not think that I’m doing the country dishonor. I do simply want my child to grow up globally competitive. OK OK, so maybe I am, but the thing is, I learned a lifetime ago from developmental psychologists’ point of view, that a child may have speech delays, obviously brought about by confusion, if spoken to in different languages. But hey, I’m ditching “delay” right staright in the bin in favor of “developing great capacity to master languages”, or so recent studies claim if a child was exposed to many languages. These studies though do not discount speech delays, so I guess it’s a choice, eh?
And that’s why I asked everybody to speak English when speaking to the little kid. But while the little kid’s nanny can speak basic, simple, passable English, the help cannot. [And that's why it's totally impossible to ask everyone in the house to speak English ONLY whether they're talking to the little kid or not!]. But with the “baybs” incident, I don’t know, I might as well feed the little kid to selective mutism phobics.
What say you?
at times, we tease maru to talk to simone in english lang pero we realized that she picks up either english or tagalog naman easily so we never pressured maru to speak english na rin. plus, ayoko din kasi ng trying hard so either you speak well tagalog or well english.
so in our case, simon speaks to simone in tagalog while i in english or taglish. 
i worried about the confusion thing too but she’s 2 now and she speaks and understands both languages, so i dont think it will affect neyo too 
hehe, para sakin naman, “trying hard” is good. it’s a positive attitude after all, what i don’t like is speaking in English and tagalog in the same breath
sounds really “conyo” (excuse me) to me. Mag-tagalog kung magtatagalog at mag-English kung mag-e English 
Altho I admit to writing in both English and tagalog sa forums (to soften my tone and not sound uppity or something). hehe.
yeah, i’m sure neyo already can distinguish between the two languages (they say babies are that intelligent) but I always worry about speech delay
Nove presents a problem but his yaya really can speak good English. She actually reads my English paperbacks here
o di ba?
Total waste of perfectly good worry. Children learn to distinguish languages inside their first year. If you want your child to “grow up to be globally competitive”, limiting the kid to English is the wrong thing to do, by 180 degrees. The “speech delays” might happen but they are completely inconsequential compared to the incredible advantage of having, from birth, twice the number of languages.
My own kids had a bilingual environment from birth, and are now at 5 and 8 happily working on their third language – and they find it a breeze, especially when compared to their contemporaries.
Save the worry for strange diseases, drugs and accidents. There’s plenty of that to worry about
yes! you’re right. delay is totally inconsequential. especially in the face of diseases and other serious things. like the fact that in a month’s time I’ll have to decide whether to have him vaccined for measles(the growing link of mmr vaccine to autism, as I’m sure you know).
anyway, we’ll be teaching the little kid some Chinese, too. but mostly because his name is Tan, and because he’s part Chinese