{"id":976,"date":"2017-01-23T14:32:51","date_gmt":"2017-01-23T12:32:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bettyandcat.com\/?p=976"},"modified":"2017-01-24T14:58:50","modified_gmt":"2017-01-24T12:58:50","slug":"my-dad-would-love-this","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bettyandcat.com\/nl\/2017\/01\/23\/my-dad-would-love-this\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;My dad would love this!&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.bettyandcat.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/Screen-Shot-2016-09-04-at-20.58.19.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-752 size-thumbnail\" src=\"http:\/\/www.bettyandcat.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/Screen-Shot-2016-09-04-at-20.58.19-150x150.png\" alt=\"screen-shot-2016-09-04-at-20-58-19\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" \/><\/a>Craft fairs are fun to do because you risk meeting your market. A few years ago in Amsterdam, I was flogging my Betty &amp; Cat books with moderate success at a Christmas fair, when a young English woman stopped at the stand and got all excited. Her father, her children&#8217;s grandfather, was having trouble bonding with his grandkids. They spoke Dutch among themselves, and of course, he didn&#8217;t.<\/p>\n<p>This woman bought all three books as a Christmas present saying, &#8220;My dad&#8217;s going to love this!&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>You can see how this would play out: Granddad on the couch with a grandchild and a Betty &amp; Cat book. He doesn&#8217;t understand the word <em>thuis<\/em> and has it explained to him; the child doesn&#8217;t understand the word <em>hedge<\/em> and has it explained to her by her grandfather.<\/p>\n<p>The primary objective when I wrote these books was to raise the confidence levels of all concerned. I wanted children reading the books to feel a sense of accomplishment &#8211; as well as finding their bilingual experience reflected in a &#8220;real&#8221; book. I wanted parents reading the books to their kids to feel confident about a target language they maybe weren&#8217;t that sure of. And I wanted to give grandparents the experience of participating in the bilingual life of a grandchild.<\/p>\n<p>When I was a Dutch kid growing up in Montreal, language was a game for us. When I was 7 or 8, I remember we made a tape to send &#8220;back home&#8221;. My dad made me recite Humpty Dumpty into the tape recorder (God knows what they made of this in Holland, but I was game). The sense of pride and accomplishment was enormous. And a love of language &#8211; any language &#8211; turned into a lifelong adventure. Win-win.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Craft fairs are fun to do because you risk meeting your market. A few years ago in Amsterdam, I was flogging my Betty &amp; Cat books with moderate success at a Christmas fair, when a young English woman stopped at &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bettyandcat.com\/nl\/2017\/01\/23\/my-dad-would-love-this\/\">Lees verder <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-976","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nieuws"],"translation":{"provider":"WPGlobus","version":"3.0.2","language":"nl","enabled_languages":["en","nl","fr","es"],"languages":{"en":{"title":true,"content":true,"excerpt":false},"nl":{"title":false,"content":false,"excerpt":false},"fr":{"title":false,"content":false,"excerpt":false},"es":{"title":false,"content":false,"excerpt":false}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bettyandcat.com\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/976","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bettyandcat.com\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bettyandcat.com\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bettyandcat.com\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bettyandcat.com\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=976"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.bettyandcat.com\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/976\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":978,"href":"https:\/\/www.bettyandcat.com\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/976\/revisions\/978"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bettyandcat.com\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bettyandcat.com\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bettyandcat.com\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}