Any bilingual parents here - advice please ??

[hahahaaaaaaa]

I started out with good intentions for my son. I was going to teach him my ' native ' language.

It started all well but now he's 3 and he only speaks English and I'm finding it very difficult to speak to him in my native language.

He does understand some of it and he does know certain words in it, but his English is much further ahead. We spend a lot of time around my parents who speak to him mostly in the native language, but they also slip into English as it's easier to converse with him. He spends a good couple of months a year in native country and he hears us talking native language a lot ( when my parents and when we go to native country ).

However since he started speaking, he always chose English words over native language words.

Can I still turn this around ? I wake up every day determined to only speak to him in the native language and end up failing. I noticed he was getting perhaps a tiny bit behind on his peers with his English when he was 2-2.5, so I stepped the English up at home. He's at nursery and speaks English there of course.

What can I do ? I know I'll really regret it if he cannot speak my native language one day.

Ps: I say ' native ' language because I now consider English to be my strongest language anyway, as I've live in the UK for so long and also did all my studies here since I was a teenager.

I still speak my native language very well, but I'm much more comfortable speaking English now.

Just think , when your boy was tiny and didn't understand English, you didn't give up on talking to him and trying to help him understand did you?

This is the same! If he doesn't understand at first, use other ways, show him, point, expressive face, gesture, use other words.... all the same tactics you used to help him develop his English.

I am massively on the lookout for Italian speaking families as well as the other language.

If you want a good place to look - we're Catholic and often hear people speaking Italian at mass. I've been too shy so far to try and make friends with random parishioners for language purposes though 😅

I was brought up with two languages. My mum spoke to me in English, my Dad in German. I spoke English first, then in a muddled mix of both, then solidly speaking the right langauge to the right person. My sibling and I speak both to each other, depending on what we are doing, or who we are with.

Now my sibling has children, he, my dad and I only speak to them in German. My neice was shocked that people other than her daddy spoke German!

What helped my German, according to my dad was all books and media at home being in German, singing songs in German, talking to my German family on the phone, and having household objects labelled in German.

I love being bilingual, and it's made it easier for me to learn other langauges, I think.

Keep going! We are a bilingual family and I spoke most of the time in French to my dd when she was very young. I still try to at least 80% of the time but she’s almost a teen now and is fluent anyway. Reading also helped hugely, and films. And a Saturday native language school if you can find one. Plus spending time as much time as poss in the other country of course. It is really challenging and I often thought to myself this is nuts! Esp when dd responded in English, so I was literally just standing there speaking French to myself. But they do listen and it does sink in eventually. Good luck!

Children are not born “English speakers” so they won’t find another language hard by default. Children can learn a second language easily with only one parent who speaks that language. My DD is perfectly bilingual and biliteral (can write equally well in both languages) despite only one parent having the minority language -me.

I guess you don’t speak other languages? Your view is typically a monoglot one.

@hahahaaaaaaa don’t worry too much, my DD only started speaking my language at 3 when she came out with perfect sentences. Prior to that I’d get replied to in Italian, although it was clear she understood everything. Community language is always the strongest.

@Melassa i am a native Cantonese speaker and picked up Mandarin Chinese from friends. I can do mandarin at tourist level and can also understand TV and radio. I learned French and Japanese at school but aren’t good at them at all.

My experience is that I don’t think I remember anyone who speak Chinese (either Cantonese or Mandarin) fluently except those with fully Chinese speaking household. My experience is from growing up foreign in a English speaking country.

I do apologise @SnowAndFrostOutside, your post was very close to something said to me about DD by older English relatives, so I had assumed you too were monolingual.

Please do persevere. Even if he doesn't speak to you at home in the language, you may find he does when he is around others when you visit. I was bilingual as a young child, but English was our home language, so when we moved back I forgot the other language very quickly. I was conscious of being different to everyone else here. It's a source of great sadness to me now I am older that I am not fluent in any other languages.

Books and songs are great. TV in the language, adding English subtitles when he is old enough to read will also help. Just keep up with the constant exposure.

I'm back on it guys. Really trying hard the last couple of days and he's repeating words a lot. Previously he wasn't repeating words in the foreign language, but now his language skills have generally improved, he repeats things all the time and it makes it easier to actually speak to him in the foreign language, because you do feel like something is actually going in and also coming back out.

I'm also only allowing him to watch TV / videos in the language and he still enjoys it and repeats the words on there. So fingers crossed we may have some improvement. It's just so hard to keep going with it when it feels like nothing is going in, yet you see their peers language improve so much..

I am also signing him up for language school on Saturdays and hopefully that will also let us meet families like us. That would be ideal !

My daughters grew up bilingual. I’m English, their father isn’t. They speak English but understand and speak Italian. They now rarely or never use it but it’s just easy for children to absorb more than one language.
They never confused nor did they mix up language or sentences.

keep speaking to your child in your mother tongue.

We are both bilingual parents but to do one person one language we picked one each.
You don’t know what’s going on in their heads. My 5 year old can switch into perfectly fluent and native L2 occasionally but you won’t know it from her typical interactions. My four year old was given adrenaline in a&e recently and started speaking/singing a third language perfectly and loudly (it’s a language spoken in our area but so far he’s had very little exposure to it).

Your son is at a big disadvantage as you are the only parent who speaks your native language to him. Typically, children in this kind of family set-up either don’t learn that language or it will be rudimentary. One parent talking in that native language is not enough exposure to the language so the children will keep communicating in the dominant language (English).
Once the children start attending nursery, English will dominate their daily life.
It also happens in families where both parents speak the same native tongue but live abroad, and despite the fact they speak to the children in that native language, the children might still struggle to achieve native fluency. A couple of things can influence this:
1 How difficult that native tongue is compared to English (and since English is pretty simple to learn, almost every language is more difficult than English)
2 How many people talk to the children in that native tongue on an almost daily basis.
3 How often the children return to their native country where they can practice the language etc..

A nanny who only speaks my native language (no English) was the solution for us

I’m bilingual and my saving Grace were my grandparents who would only speak to me in their native language. I was born and brought up in this country but until the age of 4 I spoke my native language (or their native language/my mother tongue). My parents sent me to a weekend school in their language and they would speak English and they language. English is my strongest language by far and I’m not as strong in my native language but when I do speak I speak it well/without an accent using all the correct annunciation. I think that’s because it was essentially my first language until I went to school. PS don’t worry I got an A* in English! So you must speak your native language exclusively.

I know quite a few kids who spoke only to their mother in the native tongue and the kids learnt it very well. I have cousins like this, where the father speaks language A, mother speaks language B and they live in a country with language C. The communal language is also language C. The kids are fluent in all three. But best in language C.

I always thought it's possible but down to me ( I'm not doing very well ! )

I’m the only person who speaks Urdu to my son, he has native level fluency, one parent one language has been shown to be very very successful.

So glad to hear things are improving, just wanted to offer solidarity - my kids always respond in English. But, I'm still taking that as a win as their understanding is fluent. It's really hard when they start to speak, to not use the language they speak in. However I try to catch myself and switch languages even in the middle of a sentence, I'm also more relaxed about code switching these days as sometimes context makes a word more appropriate in English than in my language (such as when referring to school tasks or activities). Best of luck and please do persevere!

The only way is to religiously speak to him in your language. He will get English everywhere else.

Oh, and don’t be surprised if he never responds in your language. If he ends up with some understanding then your job is done.