If you use more than one language at home with DC

[user1484167681]

… what sort of resources do you use? I mean, books, flash cards, posters in the different languages? TV shows, music etc? I have the beginnings of a business idea and I’m wondering what other parents would find useful when developing their children’s second / third languages?

And subtitles and languages in Netflix!

We have lots of story books in both languages, the only thing we've recently added is some early readers in the second language, with "silent" letters greyed out to make reading a bit easier. The only thing I might look for next is something for learning to write, usually I just use native speaker resources from the country but the way they learn handwriting is very different to here! So I might look for something about learning to write/spell but in UK handwriting/orthography.

I noticed this with DC1, late-ish to talk but understood everything and when they did start said everything in both languages. Can't shut them up now

@mollyrover I know what you mean! I worried myself stupid that ds wouldn't ever talk, mostly scared by our gp who told me I was confusing him by speaking English!
Now I wish he'd be silent again sometimes

We're trilingual, they picked up 2 languages easily in both reading and writing. The third, more exotic one, has indeed been more of a challenge, as there are not that many people who speak it and they don't hear it on TV or radio randomly. Luckily the respective country offers online classes, including private classes with langauge teachers, so that has been really useful.

I think in your case the difficulty might appear later with the other language. A lot of the bilingual children I know where only English is spoken in the home experience difficulties at around age 8-10 when they're being asked to interpret rather than just read or speak at school. If you're planning to stay where you are I would ask around with other English speaking parents to see what their experience is.

Hi OP.

I have two under two and my son is only just starting to speak. We're at the beginning of our journey so I don't have much to add right now. We live in France and I speak English at home but everything else is in French. There are English classes for little ones and bilingual schooling options but nothing much until age 3.

I mostly read to him in English, more than my husband reads to him in French, but I have just ordered some bilingual books from Amazon, the idea being that he can have the same story with the same illustrations in both languages. He mostly speaks single words at the moment and I think he has started to grasp that there are two words for everything. If my husband points to a picture of a duck and asks him what it is, he'll say "canard", and if I point to the same picture and ask him what it is, he'll say "duck". So I think he is starting to get it.

I'm hoping that the bilingual books will help with this, and if they are a success we'll try to get hold of as many as we can. There don't seem to be that many on the market though. It would be really amazing if publishers produced classic children's books in bilingual format, like the Tiger Who Came to Tea, the Very Hungry Caterpillar, the Gruffalo etc. Is this a thing? If not, it should be!

Flashcards sound a bit too much like formal learning, but he does have a couple of books of the "first 100 words" type format which have the words in both English and French. He seems to like those.

We are keen to avoid exposing him to screens for as long as possible, which obviously removes one source of potential language learning which we will need to replace with more live interaction.

“It would be really amazing if publishers produced classic children's books in bilingual format, like the Tiger Who Came to Tea, the Very Hungry Caterpillar, the Gruffalo etc. Is this a thing? If not, it should be!”

Preach!

We read Polish story books and sometimes change the sound on Netflix to Polish…but my eldest and middle DCs get annoyed that the sound and the actors’ mouths aren’t in sync 😂
My eldest (she’s almost 8) has a great grasp of speaking the language, but struggles with reading it (understandable as it’s one of those languages where it looks very different written down to how it’s spoken), so when we go shopping, I’ve started writing the list in English with the Polish word next to it which has really helped her.
It was easier when exH and I were still together because we did “one parent one language” (with him speaking only English with them and me only speaking Polish) but now they are with me most of the time, that’s got a bit wishy washy 😬😬 and I find myself speaking English to them way more often than I ever did before.

@MollyRover crazy how much they absorb isn’t it?!!
My youngest DC is 3 and is a total chatterbox. She clearly understands everything exH says to her in English, and same when she’s at nursery…but sometimes when she’s having a particularly stubborn day, she will refuse to speak English 😳 A few weekends ago when it was exH’s weekend with the DCs, he kept ringing me to ask what she was saying because he was asking her questions in English and she was responding in Polish 😂😂😂

We buy a lot of books from abroad to get the langauges we need but apart from that we dont do much apart from speak and search out cartoons in the required language on youtube.

We do have the advantage of having a pool of native speakers close to where we live so there are a few childcare options and children's activities in the lanaguages we want. Its the interaction with other speakers of the language that I find more beneficial.

@MollyRover - we aren’t in a city, so I don’t really know anyone else who’s English with a child locally. We are only toddler age at the moment. I’m hoping as he will have several years nursery before starting school at 6 years he will have good practice. From 4 year he will also have speech and language tuition at school.

Try Spanish Amazon! They deliver quite cheaply to the UK.

My ds was advised with his dc that each parent should use their own language, at least until the children are fluent.

What would be super useful would be books with age appropriate content but simple language, along the lines of dyslexia readers, tailored for strong 2nd language but not 100% fluent bilingual kids.

@Ringmaster27 that's what I'm talking about, weaponisation of language later, especially in the teenage years 😅.

@Caspianberg it sounds like the education system there anticipates this already, that's fantastic. Do you speak the language of the country you're in? How are the Netflix offerings in that language?

Have you ever tried putting Polish subtitles on when you watch things in English?

We just talk! No resources needed

@MollyRover - I do speak the language, but its not my mother tongue, so I don’t want to talk to Ds in it to teach at this point. Netflix can be in local language, at the moment we use tv in English with him as apart from us both he doesn’t get any other English exposure day to day.

Anyone have any good English phonic book recommendations? I can order via Amazon.uk no problem. Level 1