Today we went to see a child-minder because our child-minder is on sick leave. The lady is already looking after a little boy three months younger than our girl. We stayed for a while and the two of them played. There was a little tent in the room, and they had been in and out […]

It’s always nice when the subject gets positive treatment in the mainstream media. Here is a recent article from the NY TImes / International Herald Tribune titled “Why Bilinguals are Smarter – The Benefits of Bilingualism”.

It’s been a while since I last ran after my girl with the mike. Not for lack of expression on her part, on the contrary, but rather for lack of mastery of said mike, which is integrated in my walkman, one of her favourite “tech toys”. But this morning she was so engrossed in sorting […]

Last night, I regretted having neglected the teaching of baby signs, when my little girl cried and cried and wouldn’t stop. Then her daddy had a great idea: He put her down and let her walk off. Where she went? Straight into the living room and to her high chair. The message was clear: “I’m […]

We never tire of research, it seems. The “BabyLab – LBB” of the Laboratoire Psychologique de la Perception at Paris V – Descartes University still has us in the files (from this participation at 10 months), and this time they were looking for 16-months-old babies. So we went there for a study on the use […]

Deutschsprachige Artikel zu dem Thema finde ich nicht so häufig, aber hier ist einer, in der Form eines Interviews mit einer Forscherin des Babysprachlabors an der Universität Konstanz: “Mehrsprachigkeit hat positive Effekte”

Wir sind die kuh-verrückteste Familie, die ich kenne. Wir haben Kühe in allen Formen, Farben und Größen. Mein Computer und mein Telefon muhen, meine Bettdecke ist schwarz-weiß gefleckt, und unsere Kuhsammlung steht in einem Regal, das bis zur Decke geht. Wir fahren jedes Jahr in die Normandie und gehen mehrmals auf die Landwirtschaftsausstellung. Unsere Website […]

The other day my little girl did not like what I was doing (I think I was taking something away…), and I suddenly realised her “naiiiii” might well be “nein”. (Sadly, “no” is a word she hears often from me, i.e. in German.) On the same night I found myself wondering if the oft-repeated syllable […]

In the TED talks series, here is one on language acquisition that shows some quite fascinating findings. Watch it here.

This week I came across an article about a new university study on bilingual babies. The study, published online Aug. 17 in Journal of Phonetics, is the first to measure brain activity throughout infancy and relate it to language exposure and speaking ability. […] [The study’s observations] suggest[s] that the bilingual brain remains flexible to […]