Are your kids Komplicated? Mabou Loiseau, a home-schooled child in Queens, New York is. The five-year-old speaks French, Creole, English, Spanish, Mandarin, Arabic, and Russian.
Her mom didn't stop there. She removed the kitchen table to make room for a full-size drum set bringing Mabou's total instrument count to six — harp, clarinet, violin, guitar, piano.
"All the sacrifices in the world for her," said her mom, Esther Loiseau, a piano teacher who taught French at an American school before leaving Haiti for Queens 15 years ago. "Furniture is not important. Education is."
Loiseau, 47, said friends and neighbors were initially shocked that she was starting Mabou on such a regimen so early – instead of just letting her be a kid. "But I make sure I leave enough time for her to play," Loiseau said.
"All she knows is learning. What becomes fun for someone is what they know." Loiseau tells the tutors to play with Mabou, speaking in their native language, for half of the lesson. They spend the other half reading, writing and practicing vocabulary. She said a sure way to make the opinionated only child behave is to threaten to cancel one of her lessons – especially Russian.
Her Russian tutor had this to say about her: "It's a great experience for me, honestly. A lot of even adult people can't understand what she does … We like to read together … we started with the alphabet and connecting letters, and now she can read real folklore."
Mabou scored in the 99th percentile on the city test for gifted and talented schools. What a Komplicated Kid.
[Source: New York Daily News]