To want Nanny to speak all German to kids?

[mika2]

German Nanny (fluent English) starts next month 4 days a week (8-6pm) and I think it's a great opportunity for kids to learn German. They are 3 and 1. Nanny said she was happy to do so during interview. I have very rusty conversational German and also plan to practice my German. I would like her to only speak to kids in German from day 1 and read German books, sing songs in German, watch German cartoons on iPad etc with the aim of them having a good understanding of the language this time next year, rather than just knowing colours etc. Anyway DH thinks it's crazy and kids will be very confused etc. He vetoed putting this in her contract and doesn't see having a second language as a priority whereas I feel really strongly about it... Just to be clear I didn't deliberately hire her because she is German, we liked her and it was an added bonus. Who is BU?

At 3 years of age, it's hardly "school", btw, and I'd give it a go with the German school and see how it went, then decide when more proper school (Reception or Year 1) starts.

I think putting it in the contract is unnecessary

You can ask the nanny to introduce them to German, and buy resources like books etc for her to use with them, though

Can you provide a source for that?
Other people have done so for me. My experience is working in an international school. We would generally make allowances for bilingual kids in early years if they were struggling to apply spelling/grammatical rules to the appropriate language. It doesn't apply to every bilingual child, just as delay in speaking or periods of reluctance to speak one or the other language are common but not universal. The benefits of having a second language (or more) far, far outweighs the few negatives, but I'd be sure you were committed first is all I was saying.
One person one language is the way to go. Even if you do learn German yourself, leave it to the nanny until both languages are well established.

My point is mostly relevant if your children are likely to be applying for selective schools either at age 4 or 7. If you go down that route be sure the school is aware they are bilingual. Almost all of the potential negative effects are short term ones and the benefits are huge.

Are your kids used to having a nanny?

I'm wondering if she'll stay long enough to make it worth the extra effort.

Concentrate on them bonding, worry about the language second. Your children's wellbeing comes first, not the academic of the Nanny.

Do it!
The suggested practice for parents who have different mother tongues is for each one to speak only in their mother tongue to their young children if they want them to learn the language. So mum always speaks French and dad mandarin. For example.
As such, think it makes sense that the nanny speaks German to your kids.

even if they don't become life long German speakers it is helping their brains to learn how to learn languages. And that's a good thing.

Just to clarify with the OPOL route (which I am yet to convince DH of) did posters say the DC shouldn't hear her speaking English at all? Not sure this will work as it will mean DH ignoring her everyday

mika she should only speak German when talking directly to the children - that will be enough at those ages - for practical reasons she will of course have to speak English to your DH and non family members out and about. In reality that is what the minority language speaker has to do as a parent too (otherwise they couldn't communicate with anyone outside the home in front of the children).

Your nanny just needs to speak German to the kids and reply in German even when they speak English, not to push it beyond that. If you can find a German toddlers group that would be perfect, and buy kids books, audio books, children's song CDs and DVDs from Amazon.de.

An Italian- Japanese couple I know speak their own languages to the children, English to one another (as they met and married in the UK) and the community language is German - the children are junior school age and speak, read and write Japanese and German fluently, speak and read Italian and have a passive understanding of English. Now thatis impressive :o

If it helps Mika, I work in a bilingual German-English school. Most kids are German with no English, a fee are English with no German, and we get the occasional child whow have totally different languages at home eg Russian, Turkish etc

Certainly by the end on the 1st year most kids can get by pretty well in both languages, even those who have neither G nor E at home.

The kids who do best are the ones with very involved parents who read to them and later get the kids to read to them in both languages. I don't think this is at odds with OPOL. After all, a child who doesn't have either parent as native speaker (of either language) still has to practice.

I say go for it. The gift of a second language is immeasurable.

And I would try to get your dc into the bilingual school! Our kids are amazing! There must be plenty in there who don't have German parents/heritage just as we have plenty of kids with no English parents/heritage, just ambitious parents who recognise the importance of language in the modern world and who want their kids to be able to learn it naturally and with little effort. It's a totally different experience to learning it in secondary school and in language classes.

Good luck xx

In answer to your q no, of course not. Like you said, that would be impossible.

Maybe do some research on 2nd language learning in young children to convince your dh. It's really an amazing gift.

My dc are all bilingual. My eldest is fascinated by languages. When he was younger he really wanted to learn Japanese. Now he's 16, he's spent the last few months teaching himself Spanish (to quite a high standard considering he's just done it by himself with a computer) and now wants to learn Arabic.

How does the bi lingual school work?

You have to find SpongeBob Squarepants in German!

"You sound like a crazy pushy mother tbh OP. "

And you sound ignorant.

As others have said, no she can of course speak English to your DH. Just should stick to German with kids.
I'm abroad and I barely know any monolingual children. Bilingual is common, but I also know plenty of toddlers who speak 3 or 4 languages (plus a local dialect) every day. Seem to be doing fine. But they do want to associate one language with one person, and get confused if that person suddenly starts communicating in another language with them (not a problem if that person speaks another language to someone else)

OP if you grew up speaking a second language wouldn't it make more sense to teach your kids that language. German seems to have been chosen simply because the nanny happens to be German. When she leaves and you employ an Italian/French/Polish etc nanny will that be the new language to learn. Or are you going to commit to German speaking nannies in which case you are going to make recruitment harder and likely more expensive.

Sponge Bob Square pants is Sponge Bob Sponge Head (SpongeBob Schwammkopf) in German - on that basis alone nooooooooo! He's banned in our house (OK... really only if I'm in the room :o )

You can get almost all the 3 year old "staple" viewing in German though -
Kleiner Roter Traktor, Bob der Baumeister etc.

Much less offensive :o (or is it just me? Probably :o )

I think it's a great idea. Years ago when I taught in an international school, in the nursery, we had a little boy who at 4 was fluent in his parents' languages of Dutch and German. Within 6 months of starting with us, he was also pretty fluent in English and Spanish - this was in Spain and he was taught by English and Spanish teachers all day. He played with children who probably spoke about 6-8 different languages between them and was fine.

Why not? It sounds a good idea as long as it doesn't seem like a lesson. My friend is Spanish and she had a rule where only Spanish was spoken in the kitchen where the family spent a lot of time. English was spoken in the rest of the house. So if her son spoke in English she pretended she didn't understand him. He now speaks fluent Spanish. You don't have to hope for fluency but it would be a great opportunity and fun too.

She's put in massive effort, hasn't she? The OP will have to follow it up too certainly several years of German nannies if she wants any long term benefit and find a way to keep it all ticking over through primary school (or move to SE24).

I don't think she views it that way, she would have had a nanny for the 3 years anyway so the fact she had two from the same country wasn't a big deal. They like the country and had holidayed there before they had children and before the nanny and always planned a holiday home there. I suppose it was more a case of getting the nanny from that country and learning the language because they intended to buy a holiday home there and maybe move there at some stage rather than the other way round.

If the OP has a German nanny for 3 years and then the children can go to a bilingual school it doesn't seem much of an effort really.

Lara but that is through constant reinforcement. If his parents split up and he moved back to Germany with his German-speaking parent, he would rapidly forget the other languages he acquired.

Yes the older of the op's may pick up German, however it won't just 'take' and they won't retain any knowledge of the language if only exposed for it for a comparatively short period of time. The only way that the op's children would retain their knowledge of German, would be if they had a succession of German nannies who were happy to speak solely in German to them and they attended a German-language primary school. This seems a huge commitment off the back of the happenstance that they have a German speaking nanny.

Yes the older of the op's may pick up German, however it won't just 'take' and they won't retain any knowledge of the language if only exposed for it for a comparatively short period of time.

They don't need to acquire a full language to benefit. Just being exposed to different languages trains their brains to recognise and speak different sounds and to different grammar structures.
It primes them to learn other languages more easily than children who've only learnt one language.

If the OP has a German nanny for 3 years and then the children can go to a bilingual school it doesn't seem much of an effort really.
At the point of my earleir post she hadnt said she had the bilingual school nearby!
The only issue is her husband.
I think he should go to a German class so he can at last understand a little bit and feel less left out.

I studied something language related, and one person one language is what I learnt at uni, so, yeah, I agree with that. It seems to help children be less confused.

If your family tends to be good at language, then there's no problem at all. If your children already struggle to learn English, then you should of course prioritize that, but for most children, it is not a problem.

OPOL is a very popular and well known method. That does not mean it is the best method, and NO method fits all situations. This is important! In my opinion, OPOL absolutely works best when you have two parents with different first languages. It's not right for every bilingual family's situation. And yes of course the children will witness the minority language-speaking parent (or in this case, the nanny) speaking the majority language, because otherwise they couldn't interact with the community at all. How would she take them out if she wasn't ever going to speak English in front of them? And in families where the parents do OPOL they will also need to speak to each other using a single language (in some cases the parents use a third language to converse together). So the nanny using strictly German to speak to the DC doesn't mean she could never converse with DH in front of them.

If your DH likes studies, I would get him to look into the whole bilingualism thing (not OPOL specifically) and seriously consider it before just dismissing it. On the other hand, it sounds like his reluctance is emotional rather than logical so it might be worth looking at that. Perhaps he doesn't want them to be bilingual because it wasn't part of his own childhood and he feels that it's too "different", in the same way that lots of people wouldn't want to raise children in a different country to the one they grew up in. Perhaps he wants that nostalgia for English schools and that shared experience with the DC. Or he feels worried about them having conversations with the nanny (or each other) that he doesn't understand and feeling left out. Maybe he doesn't really like languages and doesn't want the house to become full of a mixture of books, DVDs etc in two languages. Not everything is about what's objectively right - it's worth discussing this in relation to feelings as well :)

I find it fascinating to have a bilingual child but it's something I've always been interested in and so it doesn't feel like I'm losing out on anything to have that present in our lives, even though it's all brand new to me. I think it might feel quite different to me if DH had suddenly come up with an interest he wanted to involve our DC in that I hadn't really been aware was an interest of his before. (I'm struggling to think of something now!) - Perhaps if he suddenly decided that he had found religion and he wanted to educate the DC about that religion including enrolling them in a faith school and involving them in various rituals or celebrations (nothing harmful, just fun stuff). I know it's not exactly the same thing as a religion, but it's just trying to see it in terms of base emotion rather than facts. He might well feel this has come out of the blue and it's something which is almost invasive in his children's lives, especially when education comes into it. I think you need to find out where his objections actually stem from rather than just trying to dismantle his rather easily pulled-apart logic. If he's a study-following type in general, then it seems to me that logic is not in this case the issue.

It's a brilliant idea. I learnt probably one of the most useless languages as a kid (Afrikaans. It's only spoken in one country, and by a few million people). I got to a good ish level, and while I never actually use it, I've gone on to learn 3 more languages (not fluently but good enough) and I think I had the tools to do so because I was exposed to a second language from a young age.