5years or so after coming cack to this country, still I am asked by my child why I chose bilingual kindergarten in Germany. He insisted he had lost the good expereince of learning Japanese. He contends that he should have enrolled in Japanese kindergarten at that time.
His range of vocabulary is still not as wide as other monolingual playmates, both in Japanese and English/German.
These days, I am unsure about my choice. Is the experience really useful in this country? In the first place, will he need English or German in his life except exams? Maybe it's much useful to know a lot of kanji characters?
In my small town, a child speaking foreing languages is a kind of "disgraceful" to local people. The cultur is very old and unopen. As a result, my child stopped showing his abilty of speaking second language, maybe because of the cultural pressure. It does not mean somebody directed him to use only Japanese. However, the pressure, the cultural pressure is strong enough.
For me, it was reall important to speak German at that time to survive. In the case of emergency, German was the only language which was useful. Who speaks Japanese in Munich?
Also, as a mother with two infants, I wanted to get in to local community. So I did. And, such time is reall "precious" to me still now.
I feel so great to have friends from all over the world.
I hope somedays he can say that he is proud of his experience.....