Simplified Chinese and English books about feelings
Your child talks to grandma in Mandarin and to you in English, sometimes in the same sentence. That is not confusion. That is a bilingual brain doing exactly what bilingual brains do.
\nHere is what we hear from a lot of parents: \"I want her to keep Mandarin, but I don't want to fight every night.\" Real. Reading together is one of the gentler ways to do it, because you are not drilling anything. You are just sitting with your kid and a book, in both of your languages.
\nResearchers who study bilingual development have found that kids growing up with two languages do fine across the board, and some work on naming feelings (affect labeling, if you want the term) suggests that putting words to feelings helps children settle a bit faster. We cannot promise your child turns out bilingual from three picture books. We can tell you what the books are: honest stories about big feelings, in Simplified Chinese and English on every spread, so whoever is reading can pick the language that comes naturally that night.
\nSome nights that is Mandarin. Some nights it is English. Some nights it is both, and the pages hold up either way.
\nWe love you no matter how you feel. That line is printed on the back of every book, in every language we make, because some evenings it is the only instruction that matters.
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These books are written by Dr. Anna Huang, a clinical psychologist who works with young children and their parents. She is also a Mandarin-speaking second-generation mom who has had the popsicle meltdown twice in one Target visit. (\"Don't worry, working on it in therapy =p.\") The Chinese text is written for real families, not translated word for word from the English, so it reads the way grandparents actually talk.
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