Judging Progress

Leilani speaks fantastic English for a three year old, which occasionally makes judging her progress in Spanish difficult.  Is she behind all 3 year olds, or is her advanced English making her Spanish look bad?  We really can't tell.

Informally we can't help but compare her to her cousins, even though this is utter foolishness.  We look and see that Ellie speaks better Spanish and wonder, "Gosh are we doing enough?  Will she end up forgetting her Spanish the like the older kids did?  Are we failures as parents?  When will family services take the children away?"

The moral?  Parents are idiots.

Fortunately Language Stars has this thing they call the "Learning Ladder" which they use to gauge your child's progress against learning steps, rather than other children.  There doesn't seem to be a copy of the specifics on the internet, but you can read about it here.  There's no grades fortunately, but your child is compared to various levels on the ladder so that the teachers can respond to them appropriately.  Even amongst a classroom I've seen the teachers treat students slightly differently, in a way that doesn't call the differences out, so that nobody is taught at too slow or too fast a pace.  More importantly it helps me gauge my little angel's progress.

In the last week I've noticed two things about Leilani.  The first is that more and more she is responding to her mother and grandparents in Spanish when they speak to her.  This is hopefully a sign that her mini-rebellion against Spanish is over.  In addition she's using more phrases spontaneously, occasionally even speaking complex sentences.  Looking at the Learning Ladder notes I see:

• Repeating Sentences / Using Single Words Spontaneously within the second season.

In their first and second year, children will develop their verbal mastery to include an increasing number of language structures, within the Spontaneous Speaking Stage:

• Using Single Words Spontaneously / Using Key Phrases Spontaneously within the first year.

So it looks like "Princesa" is right on schedule.  Perfect.