When Do You Decide to Quit an Acitivity (for kids) that is Important to you?

[happymomma]

I have been really conflicted about whether or not to quit Chinese lessons for the kids. Kids are 10 and 7. They honestly hate having Chinese. We have tried to make it as easy as possible. Both DH and I are Chinese but we don't speak it at home. But I have been having them take Chinese lessons with a private tutor for the past 2 years. It has always been a struggle. We aren't doing much to enforce their language skills since we speak almost all english at home. So now I am contemplating whether or not to just quit. Having a Chinese tutor isn't cheap. We pay almost $200 a month for once a week lessons for the both of them. We can't do Chinese school because they are way too behind. Plus I remember growing up how much I hated Chinese school and I don't want to put them through it. So should I just throw in the towel and just forget about it? If I wasn't so lazy I could probably just teach them to speak Chinese. It's just that my Chinese isn't that great. Plus we would be saving $200/month. I almost feel like they can learn it when they get older should they choose to. Help me alleviate the guilt of quiting or else tell me how much you regret having your child quit something.

[maestramommy]

Hmmm, our activities are not like your situation, but in your case I would quit. I really would. I get your conflict. I would love it if my kids could speak Taiwanese, but I'm the only one that's even close to being fluent, and I had to give it up. I just couldn't remember to keep speaking to them in Taiwanese, it's not my first language. If you hated Chinese school and don't speak to your kids in Chinese, is it any wonder they aren't interested? To them it's just another academic subject. I don't mean ANY of this as a criticism, because I understand wanting to pass on some of your culture. But I have friends whose kids learn the "mother tongue" from parents and it seems to be effective only when at least one of them speaks it as a first language, and/or (I've seen this too) when the kids spend gobs of time with grandparents who speak to them in the native language. My nephew sees his paternal grandparents a lot and they speak to him in Chinese. I believe he does understand it, but he only speaks a few words. If they were secondary caregivers it might be different but for kids (or anyone) to learn a second language naturally it really needs to be an immersion situation.

There's nothing to say your kids won't be interested when they are in HS or college. Yes, it might be harder, but if they are motivated they will find ways to learn to speak it fluently.

[Clarity]

I would decide based on the future importance of the skill. For example, my dd would be permitted to quit soccer but not piano. Piano is a skill that I think many adults wished they had and I'm not going to let her quit. I have to find more ways to make it interesting.
In your case, I would probably not let them quit. They might regret not being able to speak Chinese when they are adults. I would try to make it more relevant for them by speaking Chinese in the home as much as possible. It only gets harder to learn a language when they get older so I would stick with it now.

[blisstwins]

I have the exact same problem except we pay $320 a month and my husband is the Chinese speaker. He NEVER speaks Chinese to my children and it drives me nuts. I almost want to drop it, but then all we have done thus far will have been in vein and I do think some knowledge will provide a foundation later. FWIW, my children enjoy class with their tutor. Can you talk to yours to see if it can be more interesting?

[happymomma]

I have the exact same problem except we pay $320 a month and my husband is the Chinese speaker. He NEVER speaks Chinese to my children and it drives me nuts. I almost want to drop it, but then all we have done thus far will have been in vein and I do think some knowledge will provide a foundation later. FWIW, my children enjoy class with their tutor. Can you talk to yours to see if it can be more interesting?

The tutor that we have is really awesome. I think my kids are just so anti-Chinese at this point. To them it is just more work to know another language. I feel like they really haven't learned that much of Chinese. My 7 year old DD would be okay with continuing but it's my older DS. He has a much harder time with learning the language. But I can't have one quit and not the other. It just feels like I am swimming upstream when it comes to having them learn Chinese.

[Asianmommy]

My kids are learning Chinese with a tutor, as well. Right now, they enjoy it. Visiting Taiwan last year gave them some incentive to learn. But if they hated it and wanted to quit, I'd let them. Nowadays, there are ways to learn Chinese online. My mother-in-law also got them a music box which plays Chinese kids songs, which they like to sing. Maybe that would be more fun for them?

[karstmama]

happy, i see you live near dc - have you tried going to chinatown & trying to navigate & speak? perhaps a field trip and asking for directions in chinese or ordering a meal or what have you might show them why what they're doing is important. just a thought!

[hellokitty]

This is one reason why I haven't signed my kids up for chinese lessons. My parents forced me to go to chinese school on sundays as a kid. I HATED it, and learned basically nothing from it, b/c I hated it so much. One reason I hated it, was due to the fact that the other kids were so much better at it than I was. My parents can speak both taiwanese and mandarin, BUT they decided in their minds that mandarin would be, "more useful." So, they wanted us to learn mandarin. The big problem is that we basically had almost zero conversational mandarin in the household, my parents speak taiwanese to each other and a mish mash of english/mandarin to us. However, the mandarin is mostly baby mandarin, so not useful in terms of being able to converse, just small phrases, like eat, take a bath, get this, go there, etc.. What I REALLY wish my parents would have done was just teach us taiwanese at home, at least I would have been able to carry on a conversation. Instead, here I am at age 40, and I understand some taiwanese (my parents still don't believe me when I tell them I can understand most of their taiwanese) and a little bit of mandarin, and I cannot read or write any of it. I don't care as much about the reading and writing, but I regret not being conversational in at least mandarin or taiwanese. Taiwanese would have been ideal, since it is the language my parents speak at home, but they basically made the wrong decision, flip flopped too many times and dropped the ball.

My brothers are even worse than I am, they barely understand any mandarin or taiwanese and cannot tell the difference btwn mandarin or taiwanese. I was also the child who knew NO english at all, upon entering preschool, since my parents somehow, "forgot" to teach me english, grrrr (and no, they had no intention of going back to taiwan). I'm telling you, being the first child sucks. You are the guinea pig and your parents don't know whta the hell they are doing and screw you up. So, I swung from one extreme, to the other (after the school freaked out, my parents said I could only speak english, and then I basically forgot my chinese and then in jr high, they wanted me to start chinese school and that was a disaster, since I was so behind and had no chance in catching up).

Anyway, I would let your kids quit, I remember being in your kids' shoes and hating it, just shut my mind down to it, and I know that whatever my parents did, it would not have made a difference. We live in a rural area and I have to hire a private tutor if I want chinese lessons, it's expensive, $20 per 30 min per kid!!! DH is korean and speaks korean fluently, since his parents' english is so poor. However, he is not good about trying to speak korean to my kids. The only korean they know are names of korean foods. My dh also thought when we had DS1, that korean wasn't useful. Well, look at the economy now. The korean companies are very strong. It's definitely a useful language to learn!

[happymomma]

This is one reason why I haven't signed my kids up for chinese lessons. My parents forced me to go to chinese school on sundays as a kid. I HATED it, and learned basically nothing from it, b/c I hated it so much. One reason I hated it, was due to the fact that the other kids were so much better at it than I was. My parents can speak both taiwanese and mandarin, BUT they decided in their minds that mandarin would be, "more useful." So, they wanted us to learn mandarin. The big problem is that we basically had almost zero conversational mandarin in the household, my parents speak taiwanese to each other and a mish mash of english/mandarin to us. However, the mandarin is mostly baby mandarin, so not useful in terms of being able to converse, just small phrases, like eat, take a bath, get this, go there, etc.. What I REALLY wish my parents would have done was just teach us taiwanese at home, at least I would have been able to carry on a conversation. Instead, here I am at age 40, and I understand some taiwanese (my parents still don't believe me when I tell them I can understand most of their taiwanese) and a little bit of mandarin, and I cannot read or write any of it. I don't care as much about the reading and writing, but I regret not being conversational in at least mandarin or taiwanese. Taiwanese would have been ideal, since it is the language my parents speak at home, but they basically made the wrong decision, flip flopped too many times and dropped the ball.

My brothers are even worse than I am, they barely understand any mandarin or taiwanese and cannot tell the difference btwn mandarin or taiwanese. I was also the child who knew NO english at all, upon entering preschool, since my parents somehow, "forgot" to teach me english, grrrr (and no, they had no intention of going back to taiwan). I'm telling you, being the first child sucks. You are the guinea pig and your parents don't know whta the hell they are doing and screw you up. So, I swung from one extreme, to the other (after the school freaked out, my parents said I could only speak english, and then I basically forgot my chinese and then in jr high, they wanted me to start chinese school and that was a disaster, since I was so behind and had no chance in catching up).

Anyway, I would let your kids quit, I remember being in your kids' shoes and hating it, just shut my mind down to it, and I know that whatever my parents did, it would not have made a difference. We live in a rural area and I have to hire a private tutor if I want chinese lessons, it's expensive, $20 per 30 min per kid!!! DH is korean and speaks korean fluently, since his parents' english is so poor. However, he is not good about trying to speak korean to my kids. The only korean they know are names of korean foods. My dh also thought when we had DS1, that korean wasn't useful. Well, look at the economy now. The korean companies are very strong. It's definitely a useful language to learn!

Hello Kitty,
This is exactly my situation. I know enough Chinese to get around. I even took 2 years of Chinese in college but forgot all the written and reading part since I never practiced it afterwards. I think it's the same thing. I would be able to teach them the basic chinese but I don't want to send them to Chinese school. I remember as a kid having to go to chinese school and having to be in a much younger age group class because my chinese (reading and writing) was so far behind. It was so embarrasing and I hated it growing up. I definitely don't want them to experience it. Plus chinese school was so not fun and it was awful. That is why I've been having a tutor come out once a week. But I am reassessing it because I feel like it's almost a waste of time if they aren't enjoying it. But my DD would probably have continued it if not for my DS complaining. So it's mostly the older one that complains because it's much harder for him. He didn't start till 8. My DD started at 6 and it's a big difference. I almost feel like it's too late for him because it is so much harder for him to learn the language then my DD.

[AnnieW625]

Not Chinese, but I don't see an issue if your son wants to quit and let your Dd keep going. I think your kids are old enough to decide heir activities and whether or not they truly enjoy them. Good luck.

[happymomma]

Not Chinese, but I don't see an issue if your son wants to quit and let your Dd keep going. I think your kids are old enough to decide heir activities and whether or not they truly enjoy them. Good luck.

The problem is that once he quit, she would want to quit. She doesn't love it and would like to quit also. But I think with her, if I didn't have DS wanting to quit, she would be fine continuing. The problem is that once he quit, she will definitely want to quit.

[crl]

It doesn't sound like it is achieving your goal. They are not learning Chinese. It doesn't sound like there is a way to change that. So I'd let them quit.

Catherine

[schrocat]

I had a similar dilemma recently with Chinese. My 2 older sons (8 and 4) go to Chinese School. I love the syllabus they use. However, it's geared towards native speakers and while I am ethnically Chinese, I'm pretty illiterate in Chinese. I can speak pretty fluently, enough so that I'm complimented often by people from China and Taiwan, however I can barely read and write. I can write a pretty eloquent Chinese essay in Hanyu Pinyin though.

The past 2 years of Chinese school have been pretty intense, so much so that all our free time was spent memorising passages, memorizing strokes, doing spelling and rearranging word cards. DS got As in Chinese class and won the most improved student award every semester. However last semester I was very sick (I have a high risk pregnancy) and I couldn't work with him as much. It felt like such an uphill battle trying to find time to work on the language. I know learning the language is not supposed to be fun but this was torture and my blood pressure kept going up. After mulling it over with DH, we decided to switch him to a lower track class at the same Chinese school for kids whose families do not speak Chinese. We figured that it'd be less stressful.

In the meantime we listen to chinese music, watch chinese TV together and read chinese storybooks. I'm starting my younger kids more intensively by putting them in Chinese Immersion Preschool so that they don't face the same problems as their brother.

You could still do Chinese School with your 7 year old. It's not too late. Just put her in a class that's not so intense.

[codex57]

My opinion is to keep going. Just switch things up a bit. If you're Chinese, people are going to expect your kids to speak Chinese. It's more accepted that the new generation can't speak, but that just gives a glaring advantage to those who do. You can do anything when you're older if motivated. But, with all that you have going on in life at an older age, is that really realistic? The older you are, the harder it is. That's part of why the older one is struggling more. But, it'll be more of a struggle when he's in high school and worse again in college. And the more he learns now, he can take Chinese in high school or college to satisfy the foreign language requirement. He's gonna have to learn a foreign language anyways. Might as well be the one everyone expects him to speak. It's in your culture to power through difficult subjects.

Ok, so don't go full on tiger mom. If you guys are bad at reinforcing at home, watch mandarin movies or tv shows together. Netflix has a bunch. Try and take more activities/vacations where they're more immersed in chinese culture.

For this, I'd really stick with it. I'm not comfortable posting in more depth why, but PM if you want more details as to why.

[Globetrotter]

Can you try to immerse them more in the culture? spend time with grandparents? Use A/V aides that are targeted to kids raised in the disapora? I found that I picked up a few languages simply by being around them and observing, and this is much easier as a child, but in order to learn how to read and write I required tutoring. However, is it important for you that they know how to read and write? I would be thrilled if mine simply knew conversational Hindi, and they did begin but both quit after the basics.

[happymomma]

Can you try to immerse them more in the culture? spend time with grandparents? Use A/V aides that are targeted to kids raised in the disapora? I found that I picked up a few languages simply by being around them and observing, and this is much easier as a child, but in order to learn how to read and write I required tutoring. However, is it important for you that they know how to read and write? I would be thrilled if mine simply knew conversational Hindi, and they did begin but both quit after the basics.

For me it isn't important for them to know how to read and write. I would be happy if they were good conversationally. That may be something I should do instead. Just focus on talking.

[maestramommy]

After reading more replies and your last reply, maybe quitting the tutoring but giving them more opportunities to hear and speak Chinese sounds good. I just realized our similar situation and DD1 and violin. She asked to learn and last fall I started teaching her. She was really eager and motivated for a while but in the last couple of months started saying she wanted to quit. For reasons too long to explain now Dh and I do not want her to quit. But we had more convos to see what it was she didn't like about violin, because it's clear to me that she does like it at least some of the time. She was tired of the same long warmup songs so I have nixed those and moved on to other warmups. I have also started playing my violin with her instead of the piano, which I had been doing exclusively for a while. She seems to enjoy playing with me on violin much more. We also try to strategize practice time so it's more routine, and she is in a better place mentally (like after school).

[94bruin]

My phone is acting up, so I'll only say that my husband's biggest regret/biggest reason for being angry at his parents was that he didn't push him to stay in Chinese school. He regularly tells our kids this. Dd1 is fine with her after school program. We're having a harder time with &DD2. Dd1 goes 3x/week. If DD2 has some activity that kept her from the 3x./weekzid let her do fewer days,but not quit completely.

[Green_Tea]

My answer has nothing to do with language, and admittedly I might feel different if I had a cultural connection, but...

When it comes to any activity, if your kids are not enjoying it and you are not enjoying it, I say stop doing it. Finish the season, perform in the recital, finish what you started - but don't make long terms plans to do something you hate. Not worth it for you or the kids, IMO.

[stefani]

The quick answer to you question is "I don't know" :-) I am struggling with this myself with DS. I had posted asking for various programs for learning Mandarin Chinese. From the advice I have gotten and from experience, consistency and exposure are the keys to keeping the learning motivated. When I study with DS on a daily basis, he complains less and he retains the knowledge better. Watching movies, listening to songs, or audio books, going to Chinatown and being immersed in the language as much as possible helps. OK, so we all know what it takes, the execution is another story :-)

Good luck!

[JBaxter]

Do you speak Chinese at home to them?

[♥ms.pacman♥]

I would quit it for a bit and see how it goes. We're not Chinese but I totally "get it."

Both DH and I are of Hispanic background..i was born in south america and came to US at age 3, whereas DH's family has been here for eons. Both of our moms still speak fluent Spanish. We don't speak Spanish at home AT ALL, but wish the kids would learn it. DH took Spanish classes in HS but forgot a lot of it and his Spanish is rotten. I understand 99% of Spanish but don't speak it bc it feels odd. DH always felt weird taking Spanish classes because exactly the reason you described...felt bad that he wasn't better at it, and everyone else seemed better. So it was embarrassing in that sense. For me it's bad that it was my once my native language and now I can barely speak it.

I started taking Japanese in graduate school at age 25 and managed to learn to write the hiragana/katakana and all 2,000 "general-use" kanji, etc and got pretty good at speaking so I know i am good at languages in general. DH would ask why i would learn Japanese and not Spanish. i don't know, i felt like with Spanish I had no excuse for not speaking it better. Dumb reasoning, but that was it. I just liked the idea of learning a foreign language with absolutely no strings attached if that made any sense. Like i think PP said, the idea of being forced to learn a language tends to really suck the joy out of it.

I mentioned once how I wanted my kids to go to Japanese school on weekends but DH vetoed it and said no that they should learn Spanish first bc of our heritage. But then he says it's a waste for them to go to Spanish school if I could just teach them. But I won't...it feels weird speaking it, i don't speak it well at all (bad grammar). Right now they get most of their Spanish from Dora. How sad is that? So theyre probably doomed to only speak one language. So stupid.. but there you go. LOL. I hope the kids get interested to learn languages at younger age (as I was) and they can choose which language to learn. Based on my experience, I don't think you have to be that young to learn a language really well.

[KpbS]

DH and I have had the conversation several times over the last few months. DS1 begged to take violin lessons last year, insisted on the violin. So we found a teacher and started lessons. She is really great and he enjoys the lessons but h.a.t.e.s. practicing. I told him early on that I would pay for lessons but not nag him to practice. Remind him to practice, yes, make it convenient for him, yes, but absolutely not threaten to take away any privileges etc. if he balked at me telling him it was time to practice. So last spring he grew really tired of practicing but made it through the semester with the promise of having a recital (he loves to perform). But as soon as that ended, the extreme dislike for practicing returned and bad attitude.

I asked my very good friend her thoughts. Her parents made her and her sister take piano lessons for 9 years and she REALLY didn't like it. She was required to wake up 30 minutes early each school day to practice in the morning and said her sister had all of the talent but none of the discipline. She had little talent and lots of discipline. Fast forward to today and she barely remembers any piano and rarely ever plays, but her sister? She plays weekly in church, go figure.

We debated, should he be allowed to quit? He's young and doesn't know what is best for him. We want him to be proficient at an instrument and his teacher felt he was talented and making good progress. However we have no cultural ties to the violin and he is interested in participating in band (we decided on next year) and I honestly didn't want to make him practice, pay for the lessons, and take his siblings along for the practice times so we ultimately let him quit. I am hoping that he will decide to go back to it but I know that is unlikely.

I would let them quit or at the least maybe take the semester off and reevaluate. It's hard!

[twowhat?]

IMO if it's not an immersion program and you don't speak it at home and your kids hate it, I would absolutely quit.

I wish my parents forced me to speak Chinese with them at home but because they didn't, I'm not fluent. So then they did the whole Chinese school thing. Hated it. I think I would've hated a private tutor even more. I got very very little out of Chinese school.

If they hate it, they wont care to try to keep up the skills. I vote quit!!

Eta. If you speak fluently, they will get faaaar more out of you speaking it at home than they would from the tutor.

[Starfish]

This is one reason why I haven't signed my kids up for chinese lessons. My parents forced me to go to chinese school on sundays as a kid. I HATED it, and learned basically nothing from it, b/c I hated it so much. One reason I hated it, was due to the fact that the other kids were so much better at it than I was. My parents can speak both taiwanese and mandarin, BUT they decided in their minds that mandarin would be, "more useful." So, they wanted us to learn mandarin. The big problem is that we basically had almost zero conversational mandarin in the household, my parents speak taiwanese to each other and a mish mash of english/mandarin to us. However, the mandarin is mostly baby mandarin, so not useful in terms of being able to converse, just small phrases, like eat, take a bath, get this, go there, etc.. What I REALLY wish my parents would have done was just teach us taiwanese at home, at least I would have been able to carry on a conversation. Instead, here I am at age 40, and I understand some taiwanese (my parents still don't believe me when I tell them I can understand most of their taiwanese) and a little bit of mandarin, and I cannot read or write any of it. I don't care as much about the reading and writing, but I regret not being conversational in at least mandarin or taiwanese. Taiwanese would have been ideal, since it is the language my parents speak at home, but they basically made the wrong decision, flip flopped too many times and dropped the ball.

My brothers are even worse than I am, they barely understand any mandarin or taiwanese and cannot tell the difference btwn mandarin or taiwanese. I was also the child who knew NO english at all, upon entering preschool, since my parents somehow, "forgot" to teach me english, grrrr (and no, they had no intention of going back to taiwan). I'm telling you, being the first child sucks. You are the guinea pig and your parents don't know whta the hell they are doing and screw you up. So, I swung from one extreme, to the other (after the school freaked out, my parents said I could only speak english, and then I basically forgot my chinese and then in jr high, they wanted me to start chinese school and that was a disaster, since I was so behind and had no chance in catching up).

This whole thread is so interesting to me because I am pretty much in a similar situation w/ my kids. My background: First generation Chinese-American and I remember definitely hating Chinese school because of the same reasons....parents started me too late and it was embarrassing sitting in the back of the class w/ the tops of the desks hitting my knees. Never made it to 1st grade and vowed only to speak English. However, I only heard Cantonese from my mom and grandma and I ended up w/ speaking skills pretty fluent for an ABC (American Born Chinese). I do wish my parents made me stick it out since I'm basically illiterate and wished that I knew more of the written language. I also wished they taught me some Mandarin.

Fast forward to present times...when my husband and I decided to start introducing Chinese to our kids, we picked Mandarin since his family is from Taiwan and we thought it would be 'better' for the kids to know Mandarin in the long run (vs. learning Cantonese). Now based on your experience, I'm not so sure since I see the same exact thing happening to my daughter...she doesn't yet know enough Mandarin to have a conversation and her Cantonese is just going from bad to worse. Not sure if I made the right decision about Mandarin since my IL's live further away and refuse to speak anything but English to them!:banghead::banghead: and at this point, I don't feel like I should be throwing in more Cantonese to this hot mess! I do hope I am not making the same mistake as your parents and that my dd will end up feeling the same way as you. Right now, Chinese school is not her favorite activity and though she is starting to see the value of it, she would quit if we 'allowed' it. She's in 4th grade now (she will never know what grade I got through!) and I feel like she is just at the point where has enough knowledge to be conversant so that's why I feel like we should plow through....though I flip flop all the time about what to do (ie-continue on w/ Chinese school or not, Mandarin vs. Cantonese, immersion tract vs. a more basic class). I will admit...my daughter is a guinea pig! :(

[goldenpig]

I would decide based on the future importance of the skill. For example, my dd would be permitted to quit soccer but not piano. Piano is a skill that I think many adults wished they had and I'm not going to let her quit. I have to find more ways to make it interesting.
In your case, I would probably not let them quit. They might regret not being able to speak Chinese when they are adults. I would try to make it more relevant for them by speaking Chinese in the home as much as possible. It only gets harder to learn a language when they get older so I would stick with it now.

I agree with Clarity. I really wish my parents had spoken to us at home in Mandarin. They had us do Chinese school once a week at our Chinese church, but it didn't help. My Mandarin is awful. I am trying to get my kids to learn at a younger age so they can speak it better, but I'm at a real disadvantage because I don't speak it myself. I would try to make it fun and speak Chinese at home more. Maybe there are Chinese cartoons they can watch? I'm following this thread with interest because I'm trying to decide whether we are going to add Chinese school to our already super-packed schedule!

[94bruin]

I wanted to come back and expand on what I wrote earlier (but couldn't because I was on my phone.) There are certain categories of skills that I want my kids to learn: another language, an art (be it an instrument, theater, etc.) and a sport.
Since we have an obvious cultural connection, we chose Chinese for the language. However, if my kids *really* hated it, I'd let them switch to another language. However, not learning another language is out of the question - what is the question is, which language. If we weren't Chinese, I probably would have chosen Spanish. The same goes with the other categories. DD1 currently plays piano, but is fine with it. If she discovers another instrument or art that she really has a passion for, she can switch.

FWIW, count me in as one of those kids forced to go to Chinese school once a week on the weekends. I hated it, but it was a chance to socialize with other kids. In the end, I'm glad I went. Is there any way to find other kids to join your tutoring sessions to make it more fun for your kids?

[arivecchi]

I completely agree with 94bruin. Foreign languages are a necessary skill as far as I am concerned. I want my kids to be trilingual and learn both Chinese and Spanish.

OP, if you feel the same way. I'd explain to them why it is important and try to make it more fun with movies, day outings or even a trip! I've explained it to my kids who are 4 and 6 and they get it.

I think they will regret it as adults if they don't learn their parents' native language.

[codex57]

In CA at least, learning a foreign language is a requirement in schools IIRC. From high school to college.

[maestramommy]

In CA at least, learning a foreign language is a requirement in schools IIRC. From high school to college.

True, but language is offered in HS, isn't it? It's actually required in a lot of cases for graduation anyway.

[schrocat]

If you keep up with Chinese and eventually switch to Chinese school, you can use your grades from Chinese school as an exemption from high school languages. That's what alot of the chinese kids in our area do.

[happymomma]

In CA at least, learning a foreign language is a requirement in schools IIRC. From high school to college.

Codex57 thank you so much for your pm. I tried to send you a reply but your inbox is full. But I wanted to thank you for advice.

[stefani]

Codex57 thank you so much for your pm. I tried to send you a reply but your inbox is full. But I wanted to thank you for advice.

Yes Codex57, thank you so much, I really appreciate your perspective. You also renewed my resolve to continue DS and myself in learning Mandarin.