Hellobee Boards

@CC Mommy: When you say "make those sounds" are you referring to pronouncing the words? I dont know much about it but I dont think its true that exposure to languages helps pronounciation down the road. My parents spoke a different language around us all our lives and I still cant pronounce any of it correctly to save my life. I know many others in a similar situation. It will help them understand the language if they hear it spoken but the only thing that helps with pronounciation is actually speaking it

Just follow your LOs cues. I think you'll see if they're gravitating toward exposure to different languages, or if it overstimulates them (is getting more music/screen time making them laugh, or cry?)

Do you speak multiple languages at home, or have a preference about what you want them to learn? If you do, it's easier to reinforce exposure to those, because it would be something frequent, not a one-shot experience.

Another thing to consider is that part of language development is seeing a real person forming sounds with their mouth, although hearing the sounds is the larger part.

To answer your question though, I would avoid music at sleep time and also have some down time before sleep. Down time and rest is when all that learning will be processed into long term memory!

Cool idea, you will have to post again in 5 to 10 years with results

I think you are overthinking this and I'm a French teacher who's all about speaking multiple languages.

Your kid is going to be way ahead of the game being exposed to three languages from birth. You do not need to expose your baby to every possibility out there.

The ability or lack thereof to pronounce particular phonemes does not mean that your child will not be able to speak whatever language he/she wishes in the future. If you are speaking to someone speaking accented English, you can still generally understand them, right? Accented English is still English.

It is fine to play music and listen to language cds but your child should definitely have quiet time. If you try to force this too much beyond what will naturally occur with being exposed to three languages from the getgo I don't think you are going to get the results your are looking for.

ETA: as I said, I'm a French teacher yet I've never been able to do the legit proper r. I can approximate but it's not perfect. That hasn't stopped me from being fluent in the language.

If you will already have 3 languages in your household, I don’t think you need to go overboard with extra language stimulation. My kids speak 3 languages fluently and are now exposed to a 4th and we’ve never done anything beyond real life usage.

Separately, like @Mrsbells: I grew up hearing my dad speaking Thai and Cantonese, but he never spoke them to me, so I didn’t learn them. That said, the sounds are extremely familiar to my ears. I just started Thai classes a few weeks ago and I find that I’m understanding it reasonably quickly and differentiating between the tones, but I still have a hard time making some of the sounds since I’ve never made them before.