Thanks for responding, Magda, and I am glad your trip went well. I agree with David and wish you all the strength and patience with your child and with yourself. We can only do so much... and at some point the child realizes that she is independent. I also feel you shouldn't give up or give in. No matter how pointless it may seem to you, your actions, the words you choose, and the language you choose to speak them in will make some difference in her, if only to give her have that understanding. Can you outlaw the TV? I know that peers have a large influence on children, my four-year-old has many peculiar (to her funny) sayings that she is picking up in English from her schoolmates (even though its Chinese immersion), and she rattles them off, laughing constantly. Is there anyway to turn the Polish situation into something... likable to her? Is there anything that she particularly enjoys doing/playing and somehow incorporate the Polish into that? Making up a story together in Polish. Sit down to make up a mother/daughter fairy-tale (choose characters/draw them, choose plots) and even if she continues in English, shrugging it off and modeling in Polish. And so she won't have entirely stayed within the Polish-speaking rules, she will have a positive memory and/or experience equated with the Polish. I think David mentioned that, too: modeling with your behavior. Can you enlist your husband to help? He could often and when you three are together ask you to translate things, or ask you how to say things, and even try to say them in Polish himself, and you could all giggle at how funny he says it... but you see turning it into a game that she wants to play?. You probably have thought of these things and exhausted yourself, I'm sure. It is easy for someone else to tell you to keep going, but perhaps when we are on the verge of giving up, is when we must laugh the loudest, love the most and work the hardest! Much luck and perseverance, to you!
|
