Labor Day typically marks the end of summer and official start back-to-school. Parents everywhere are rejoicing! Or are they? I saw the movie “Bad Moms;” PTA meetings and extracurricular activities sound like a whole lot of extra work that you didn’t have over the summer. If your kids are older you are probably also worried about finding the right tutors and making sure your little Einstein is taking all the right classes to get into college. Geez! I sure do not remember focusing that much time or energy on getting into college, but hey maybe I should have…
My daughter is now almost 8-months old and I am far from worried about college for her. She will be very, very lucky if Mommy’s student loans are paid off by the time she enrolls (ha ha ha, no seriously). Pre-school is somewhat in the back of my mind, only because Claire has been talking about it for her son. I definitely did not go to pre-school and I’m positive neither did a lot of my classmates; it just was not a necessity back then. I managed to get a Ph.D. in chemistry without going to pre-school, but unfortunately I don’t think it works that way anymore. There is so much prep work you ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO DO these days to get your kid ready for school. It is completely insane!
I’m trying to give our LO a “leg up” by teaching her sign language and speaking to her in German as well as English. When I get better at Japanese, I will incorporate that into her language as well. I’m not trying to be some freak-mom, rigorously drilling her 8-month old baby on languages, by any means. I am just a bored stay-at-home-mom (SAHM) who doesn’t want her daughter to miss out, but mostly can’t stand to just watch her crawl on the floor and eat Mum-Mums all day. Also, we are moving to Japan in the coming months and I want us both to be somewhat prepared. 
I have found Japanese to be extremely difficult to learn, which may explain why Japanese is actually the most popular language lesson requested for tutoring right now according to Thumbtack’s Back-To-School Guide 2016.
Romance languages (French and Spanish) are still the most requested, but Japanese, Korean, and German are growing at a faster rate.
My husband said he started to learn Spanish in middle school, which is admittedly several years earlier than I was even introduced to a second language. When did you start introducing a second or third language to your children? Did you teach them yourself or get a tutor? What other prep work did you do before your kids went off to school? I’m interested to hear and learn from other moms so please leave us a comment.
Two and Three Quarters 