Why would you hold off on teaching someone how to read in a language they speak? Our daughter is learning to read in English and in Russian and I wouldn't delay either for one instant.
But your daughter has parents competent to guide her with her Russian and English.
Her parents understand spoken American English and can read it, but as for guiding her or correcting her syntax/grammar, they're far more limited. They also live in a very French area, not in Montreal. But I doubt they would stop her from reading a book in English if she wished to, they just won't push her to read in English for now.
But I extrapolate. Aside from an expressed preference for French pre-school literature over what they've seen available in English, I don't really know their motivations. Both teach young kids and don't read English books in translation (not even when it's the translation they offer in class), so they have tons of books in English for older kids at home (from 6 to 12, roughly). Eventually she'll get a much larger access to English children books than most kids from a francophone background do (for most, it's none at all).
It's already much better than us. We started reading in English only around 12 (in school, with Christie's Murder on the Orient Express) and there's never been a single book in English at home as we grew up. I wish I would have started earlier, but OTOH I suspect the fact I read so many French classics and contemporary literature as a teenager owes much to the fact I didn't read regularly in English before I was about 16.
We're more or less the first generation for which learning English was somewhat encouraged (less so than now, for political reasons) and part of the public school curriculum. In my parents' youth, the Catholic Church still held control of public schools and discouraged learning English. One more mean to shield us from the so-called "evils" of protestantism.
Books for very small children: suggestions?
20/04/2012 12:19:39 AM
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Really, before 18 months you're wasting your time
20/04/2012 01:26:05 AM
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I dunno. I really enjoyed books when I was that young
20/04/2012 03:12:29 AM
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At a year and a half?
20/04/2012 06:18:01 PM
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I don't remember reading quite that young, but I do remember not long after that.
20/04/2012 09:35:11 PM
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Color me slightly skeptical.
21/04/2012 01:17:51 PM
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I double checked. I was confusing it with another event. I was about 2.5 *NM*
22/04/2012 12:19:09 AM
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Similar experience here...
20/04/2012 07:04:51 PM
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Yah, I was a bit like your niece
20/04/2012 09:30:02 PM
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Re: Yah, I was a bit like your niece
20/04/2012 11:48:12 PM
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That's weird.
21/04/2012 01:22:24 PM
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Re: That's weird.
21/04/2012 05:41:27 PM
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Doesn't need to be an extended period of time, though. A few minutes is enough at the beginning.
23/04/2012 12:42:23 PM
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No problem, if you just want to flush money down a toilet.
23/04/2012 02:29:57 PM
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Re: No problem, if you just want to flush money down a toilet.
23/04/2012 03:32:22 PM
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Look, it's useless to discuss at this point but let's have the discussion again in 2 years.
23/04/2012 04:39:47 PM
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I'm really interested in the evidence for the crawling thing.
25/04/2012 08:11:31 PM
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I can't find actual scientific studies on the web
25/04/2012 09:56:14 PM
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Re: I can't find actual scientific studies on the web
26/04/2012 03:45:40 AM
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anyone who thinks an infant sleeping on its stomach is dangerous is behind the times.
26/04/2012 01:51:59 PM
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If there was a big ad campaign in the UK about this then no-one told my medical team.
26/04/2012 07:40:48 PM
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Hmmm. *shrug* I don't know. I trust this professor to have his facts straight.
26/04/2012 08:01:53 PM
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Possible answer is difference between Scottish and English health systems.
26/04/2012 08:28:38 PM
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weird. maybe trends have swung back the other way.
26/04/2012 10:01:01 PM
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I hope you don't have it mixed up...
26/04/2012 10:18:00 PM
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blagh. maybe I do...I hope not. I hate it when that happens. let me pull out that notebook...
27/04/2012 12:01:47 AM
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Re: Look, it's useless to discuss at this point but let's have the discussion again in 2 years.
26/04/2012 01:39:25 PM
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OH! Another suggestion!
20/04/2012 03:36:45 AM
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I LOVE that book.
23/04/2012 12:44:08 PM
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I...actually had a really long post at one point. I don't know where it went
23/04/2012 02:43:25 PM
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Books by Ruth Brown
20/04/2012 04:26:18 PM
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I loved books like that too. That had little "Easter Eggs" hidden in the pictures ^_^ *NM*
20/04/2012 05:29:50 PM
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