Over the holidays I was given a mini mothering vacation in the form of my father and his wife, who swept in to take my four-month-old every morning and entertain him for the day. We should all be so lucky to have helpful relatives. Since they live in Moscow, though, the opportunity won’t come often.

While watching my father’s wife chatter constantly to my son in Russian gave me a renewed determination to bring my children up bi-lingual (or tri-, if my husband sticks with speaking German to them), it also left me in a pretty tight spot when they took off to finish New Year’s in Montana.

My son, once he was exposed to the melodious, high-pitched, fast-flowing language, now only responds to Russian. I don’t speak a whole lot of Russian, not the kind you need to chatter to a baby. So imagine my frustration when I discovered this last week that the only way to bring that certain sunshine-smile to my son’s face is to recite “Humpty Dumpty” in Russian. Repeatedly. When I’m done he gives me this look like a cat watching the toilet flush. Do it again. I must have recited it a hundred times this week. It’s the only Russian nursery rhyme I know.

Today, in desperation for something different to recite (reading Dostoevsky to him doesn’t do the trick), I Googled ‘russian children’s poems’ and came up with a pretty neat Web site called Mama Lisa’s World. I went directly to the Russian children’s songs page, thinking this was just a Russian culture site, but it’s something far more interesting. Following the link to Mama Lisa’s World Blog uncovers a site that focuses not just on languages and cultures, but more particularly on children’s songs and traditions worldwide. To my delight, she has links to children’s books in multiple languages, nursery rhymes translated into more languages than I’d care to try out (and that’s saying something), folk songs, and lullabies. It’s a treasure trove for people interested in bringing their children up with multicultural awareness and exposure to languages, especially if you can’t afford to take them to every country on earth. Not only does she post lyrics to nursery rhymes and lullabies in several languages, many of them also have downloadable sheet music and MP3 files so you can hear what the heck all those funny letters are meant to sound like.

Of course, it remains to be seen whether my boy’s current favorite lullaby, sung by a mother envisioning her baby son’s harrowing future as a Cossack soldier, is really the cultural exposure I was looking for.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 7th, 2008 at 4:08 pm and is filed under Antonia projects, world music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.