To wonder how on earth to raise a child bilingual?

[EstherE]

DH is from country X, I am English and we live in England. DH’s family only speak their language, my family only speak English. I speak X language but not perfectly fluently. We want to move back to X, but it won’t be for ten years or more.

How can we raise our child to be bilingual so they can communicate with their paternal family integrate when we move back? I don’t know anyone who’s done it successfully, and we can’t send our child to an X language school as they’re only in London, or boarding schools.

DDs friend is bilingual. They moved from Poland when she was a small child (she's now 25) and she learnt going to school in the UK while speaking Polish at home.
BIL has a French mum and English dad. He speaks French fluently but isn't bilingual, the French know he's English. He was schooled in England and English was the family language. His sister however was schooled in France and is bilingual.

Bilingual people often do have accents, as long as they can speak in an intelligible way, that doesn't matter too much. Very few people have no accent in two or three languages IMO. I have one friend who does, she was schooled in English in her minority language culture but my second cousins have very strong accents in English (brought up by English mother abroad).

I agree, it's the subtle difference between being bilingual (which can happen at any age if we learn another language) and having two or more mother tongues, which can really only happen in the first few years of life.

The child not responding in the non-school language doesn't mean 1 parent 1langhas failed. It's very normal for kids to use their school language and be resistant to speaking the other language. If they continue to be exposed to it though they will continue to learn it and will come round to using it eventually. It's only if the parents stop using the language that the child will lose it.

I'm bilingual. My mother would speak to us in her language but we would reply in English. We spent summer holidays in her home country and mixed with other kids for the duration, speaking their/her language.

The continual switching between the two languages did it for me as I ended up thinking in the other language, rather than in English. It takes me a couple of days to get back into it now, but I don't need to think about it, it just happens.

It's definitely doable. I know adults who are bilingual and my children have friends who are, and my kids are. However it's harder for us as it's DH who has the second language, and I'm with them more. But you can.

We do OPOL. It's hard and you have to stick at it. It doesn't bear fruit for years. My DC at 7 now confidently speaks DH's mother tongue with DH and DH's parents, who don't speak a word of English. We had the refusal too but you have to stick at it and not assume it hasn't worked. It's taken years to get here even though we were very strict about only speaking our mother tongues to DC, and with DH and I speaking his mother tongue together, not English (we're in the UK). Sorry if its already been asked, but can DC watch TV in DH's mother tongue? That really helps.

One parent does one language, it won’t work if parent x gives in at the first hurdle. It’s always language x never English. If there is an x language school for weekends it may be a good idea? My SIL has just done this and moved to country x with a ten and 4 year old. Both speak both languages and haven’t struggled (with language, I’m sure moving at 10 is a struggle in itself). You shouldn’t just speak x to child then you’ll have a child you can never properly speak to as you’re not fluent in x.

Both my sil children were slow to speak but once they did they had words in both languages and it just grew from there. Both early readers and very clever, don’t worry if speech seems delayed. They caught up and more!

A few of my friends have done it with the one parent one language it worked great, at 10 the kids are completely bi lingual.

I’m in Wales. My children are fluent Welsh speakers, I speak Welsh but I’m not fluent. I suppose it’s a reverse situation to what you have, whereas when mine started full time school at 3 years old they were totally immersed in the language, very little to no English at all during school hours. Then they’d come home and have a mix. They are 13 and 10 now and have had no problems. I think as others have said it would be good for your husband to only use the x language at home and you can use English with a bit of x language thrown in. Children’s brains are like sponges and it is SO much easier to learn a language as a child than an adult. Good luck!

Are they completely bilingual, though? Can they read and write at the same level in both languages?
There's a difference between speaking fluently and having a native-level proficiency in reading and writing.
It's very difficult to achieve unless the parents put time, effort and/money into ensuring the child gets an education in the minority language, whether that's bi/multi lingual school, a Saturday class, tutor etc.

We’re an OPOL family, I only speak to our children in Urdu and my husband was only speaking to them in Swedish. Now we’re living in Sweden he speaks in a mix of English and Swedish as they’ll learn both anyway just like other Swedes.

Being a bit stubborn around 4/5 is completely normal. Our son had that for a few weeks, despite the fact that I never speak to him in English, I’m more stubborn than him which helps.

He has a two year old sister, when he speaks to her he uses Urdu because he thinks its funny that Papa can’t understand Urdu so he can be sneaky and say silly things about him to her.

I've looked into this when I studied a language at university. For it to be successful, your husband has to always use his home language, and you always use English. This is the only way to make the child fluent in both languages.

We have successfully raised two bilingual kids, teenagers now. You literally just talk to them in your respective native language. We live in the UK, plan to move back to county X. Husband family only speak language X, my family and I actually do speak language X as well but the only way for my kids to communicate with their family in country X is to speak the language. So they do. We had loads of books, dvds etc in that language, and now it's even easier as obviously so much online.

I haven't had chance to RTFT so apologies if this is repetitive...

One thing I've learned you absolutely should NOT do is reject a child's early years language in favour of a new language. This immersive approach was used for immigrants once and is considered to be very damaging now. The reason being is that children, like adults, think in language so to remove this language also removes their intellectual development and halts their thought processes. The new language is at a more basic level so their intellectual development regresses. I learned this recently doing a module on multi lingual children for an early years degree. I know many multi lingual children, I don't know how they do it but they just do. It's amazing. At work I've seen children who have parents with different languages who are introduced to English as the 3rd language at age 3 and they pick it up so fast. Those with language delays struggle all round. What I have not seen is a child who has good language skills at home but struggles only with the new language. Personally I would think as long as your DCs have constant exposure to language X throughout childhood even of they are not fluent they will progress really quickly when they move.

I live in a country where the majority language is a "rare" one commonly used only in this country, and there are many families with immigrant parents. Everyone I know uses one parent one language. I'm a single parent and English is my native languge, so I speak only English at home to DS4 (I am fluent in the local language but speak it with an accent). I have friends where both parents speak different European languages so the kid speaks both at home. All the kids go to preschool/school in the local language.

I think a key thing his having a lot of input in the non-local language. As well as me speaking it with my son, he has books in English, Yoto player cards in English, TV in English and relatives who speak only English (as well as some local friends who speak English) so he has a really good saturation of vocabulary. In fact, at this stage he has a much wider English vocabulary than the local language, and I'm trying to make sure he has more opportunities to use the local language outside preschool to fill in words that kids learn from different activities, books etc.

I know that at school age it's more than just speaking - kids need tutoring/classes in order to turn spoken language into written/reading language. They also need consistency. This is super important - I have a friend whose parents speak 2 minority languages and their home uses both of those and sometimes the local language; he went to school in his father's minority language, and at school he learned the local language and English as foreign languages. Then at 18 he went to university in the local language, then abroad for a PhD in English. The result of all that is that he is fluent in speaking 4 languages but has none of them at fully "mother tongue" level (at least not the level you'd expect from someone who has a PhD), because he switched around and never really learned to write any of them in adult style with no mistakes.

I have helped my bilingual friend and her children, and they do make mistakes in their written English that wouldn't be made otherwise, especially around the placing of definite articles, 'a' and 'the'. One thing that will help so much with this in the future is running their work through AI grammar programmes, such as Grammarly and others, so that the work is just moved to mirror the majority language in written form (you can choose American or British English as well in those programmes to alter the spellings). I don't think this is going to be a disadvantage for very much longer.

My brother and his wife succeeded with theirs. He's an English speaker and they live in England. Their rule was English at school and outside the home-Spanish for everything as soon as they stepped through the door. They are adults now and completely bilingual.

I'm English and live in x country with a partner from x country. At home we speak English a lot, I read to the kids in English and we watch the kids cartoons in English...and they speak perfect English. I've not found it difficult at all, they might be a bit slower to start talking generally because they have more to assimilate but after that they're like ducks to water.

I know people who spoke X at home and Y out the house and they worked well.

Start brushing up on your X and you and DH need to speak only X at home unless the DC are fast asleep.

You just continue to speak in the native language despite the English replies. Then when you get to X country they will know the language and will start speaking it pretty quickly if that’s all everyone around them is speaking.
I know so many bilingual households. Also don’t be discouraged if they start talking slightly later, apparently this is common, and nothing to be concerned about

My children are mostly bilingual.
Their dad speaks his language only. The kids were at nursery most of the day when small so he wasn't very present at the start.
When children respond in English, they have translated in their head and come up with a reply. That's not failure. Can you do that? People always give up at this point which is a shame.
We watched TV in the other language. They visit family regularly without me so that they have no choice. They read in the other language. Sometimes just comics so that the pictures help with comprehension.
It's all about consistency, and practice.

Bilingual family here. You both speak X language at home. Nursery, school etc will be English. Kids will have no problems swapping from one to other. One thing to bear in mind - they may start speaking a bit later than usual because they need more time processing both languages. But it’s the best thing ever. Both of mine speak, read and write in another language and spend long time there is summers. It helps them with Spanish and French in school (my native language has nothing to do with with French or Spanish. ) Hubby does not speak my language either, but the fact that I speak to them ALL TGE TIME makes all the difference. Good luck x

In my experience its harder when. Its the man who is the non native speaker to get it sorted in early years as they don't do as much of the language development to make them fully bilingual by 5. They said lots of things help us. Eg if it'd fren h
Access to French nursery groups in that language is best but if not that, then an intro group ie French lessons for English toddlers .
Disney plus in French
French friends to hang out with so its normal to hang out in French-
If you cant find that then lots of interactive zooming with relatives
Both speak French at home as much as possible.
Just keep doing it through them refusing. We get a lot of stop speakiing French mummy. I just carry on.

It's not perfect he won't speak sentences but understands a lot. We start Saturday school soon age 4 so helping this helps and lots of trips to dad's family.