Languange as a Foundation for Children Development
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Just like Vygotsky, I strongly believe that language plays important role for child mental development. I think that almost all parents would think the same. Nowadays, many parents put their toddlers to kindergarten that use dual languages as the medium. Their goal might be good to equip their children with language skills, but for this case I use a different approach for my child. I do not want to ‘suffering’ my children with having to learn multiple languages at an early age. Children need a strong foundation before learning a foreign language. This foundation is a mother language or in this context Bahasa Indonesia. So I want to make sure my child mastering his mother language first in order to interact seamlessly with his immediate social environment (which is family) where he can see, understand, and acquire knowledge, attitudes, and values. This foundation is also very important when he started interacting with other environments outside the family (friends, teachers, etc.) to enhance the experience and knowledge. Language is a mechanism for thinking, a mental tool. Language makes thinking becomes more abstract, flexible, and independent. Language allows children to imagine, manipulate, create new ideas, and share ideas with others. Thus the language has two main functions; to develop thinking and language skills and being part of the process of thought. Language can be used to create a variety of strategies to master many mental functions such as attention, memory, feelings, and solving problems. Mastery of language- especially mother language, is absolutely required for the child to develop optimally including for learn foreign languages.
In relation with adult life, I refer to one interesting question created by Kevin Hogan;
“What is the difference between the top 20% of people who earn 80% of the money and the 80% of the people who earn 20% of the money?”
The answers are:
- 20% of people that are experts in the field of communication. They know how to ask questions and find the needs and desires of others.
- Successful people are experts in two areas. First, in the field of their work that they are communicating very well with others. Second, communication at the subconscious level.
Once again, it all involves high language skills.
Bagus banget tulisannya Bro n setuju buanget. Skrg tlalu banyak orangtua yg latah dgn mengajari anaknya banyak bahasa trus 2 tahun udah sekolah di sekolah dengan 3 bahasa. Banyak klienku dgn permasalahan speech delay gara2 diajak ngomong 3 bahasa sekaligus dirumah, sekolah..
Well actually, my thought has been criticized lately. Some people do think that teaching more languages to children in early ages is a very good strategy. I do somewhat agree with the opinion. Indeed parents will do everything and give the best actions for their children but sometimes they might forgot or not realized about their child’s real capability. For me, just give enough time for our children to play and not to ‘torture’ them with a lot of ‘useful’ (based on parent’s own perspective) activities.