If you speak another language (not native speaker) do you teach your kids it?

[Pantheon]

My dh and I both speak another language (studied it at uni) but because English is our first language we haven't really taught dd it. She can sing a few songs and we have a few books. Just wondered if anyone has managed to introduce another language later? Dd is still little.

We speak 3 languages at home. Two of them
are not my native language but still I teach them to DS. He’s only 2 so I teach him very simple words, for example I point at a vegetable and tell him the word for it in all of the three languages.

Thanks @LaBellina. I should make more effort to do the same really!

I did a languages degree and have done some bits with them just for fun over the years, like foreign language DVDs, nursery rhyme DCs in the car, picture dictionaries and Duolingo. Duolingo is good. I looked into Jolie Ronde but it's expensive. Hopefully they'll be interested when they learn it at school.

Yes helped my dd with her GCSE.

No, but I help them with their homework (luckily the only two languages they have to learn at their school are the two I know!) and I've tried to get them more interested in languages by speaking them at home and getting them into Duolingo.

We're already a bilingual family as DH is Italian. I did french at uni and DH also speaks Spanish and we've always introduced them to different languages so both DC are very confident in foreign languages at school as a result.

Yep. I'm half-German. I'm not fluent, but I have more than the basics. For me, it's about getting them used to hearing the sounds of the language.

In Gaeltacht areas here families are bilingual. I was chatting with some after Mass ( that was in Gaelic) and they were making sure
the little ones spoke both equally in day to day chat.

I know the first two words of the Lord's Prayer . But my neighbours are simply bilingual .

I speak other languages but I don't actively teach them to my children. I would help them with homework or whatever but I feel there is only so much you can achieve if you are not a native speaker and they are not immersed in the language - learning songs, some phrases and isolated words don't make a fluent speaker. However like pp upthread have pointed out, they do introduce different sounds, cadences and a positive attitude towards language learning.

We are a multilingual household: we mainly communicate in DH's first language, we are all more or less fluent in my first language, and a third one is taught in school; we all speak the three languages to various degrees of proficiency. My language is the minority one and it is difficult enough to get the children to speak it without introducing a fourth language. DH and I speak two other languages and the children are aware of it but we don't teach them.

@SoloISland

In Gaeltacht areas here families are bilingual. I was chatting with some after Mass ( that was in Gaelic) and they were making sure the little ones spoke both equally in day to day chat.

I know the first two words of the Lord's Prayer . But my neighbours are simply bilingual .

@SoloISland, it's called Irish. Unless you're speaking Irish, in which case it's 'Gaeilge'.

My God Father and his wife are both EAL.

They have a set day of the week they speak a certain language.

I know Sundays are Italian because they go to Catholic Mass at the Italian Church and then Mondays and Tuesdays are Mandarin when they’re at home.

At this age it’s all consistency and routine. I think by 7 the lingual part of the brain is fully developed so under that age as long as you just consistently talk to them they will develop a good understanding! Start little - over dinner speak a few sentences and go from there!

Had and did that should say. Said children are now in their thirties so language days are long past they are both now grown adults - one is a tri-lingual electrician (a surprisingly sought after profession) and the other developed a real love of languages and is a professional interpreter with BAE and speaks something ridiculously clever like 8/9 languages near fluently. Teaching language at an early age is a real gift!

I wanted to bring my children up to be bilingual but unfortunately by the time I had them I hadn’t spoken the other language in several years and had no confidence in my ability to speak it.

Not actively no. I speak French, Spanish and German. DD studies German at school but beyond a bit of help with h/w, I don't get involved
It would be, as the OP states, "learning" rather than "acquiring" which is what a child does with exposure to a native language. So unless there's willingness on both sides to teach/learn a second language not that much benefit will be found. Obviously, if both parties actually want to do it, then great. But nobody's going to turn into a bilingual English-Spanish speaker because of my degree in Spanish.