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.

I was just commenting generally on the posters who say you have to be really strict on only responding in your language. Just wondering how this worked emotionally if you are not responding to a 3 year old unless he changed language. So you say I can not do that or meet that need unless you ask me in English instead of the Irish you are using.
Must be hard as a parent to do this. Come crying to you in French and you say 'tell me what's wrong but only in English'
Just wondering it worked in practice.

I find the OPOL method fascinating. DH and I considered trying it with DD, although we're both English he is fluent in French having lived there for many years as a child and worked there for several more.

We didn't do it in the end, for various reasons, but I still love seeing it in action with toddlers.

If you can bear to access the platform, have a a look on TikTok for a user named shlind https://www.tiktok.com/@shlind?_t=8iGkl0zjF33&_r=1 to see their very sweet toddler speaking English and French, and how they teach her.

Speaking your native language to your child is important as it’s your language of love, all terms of endearment learned in your own childhood come to the fore. It’s not damaging your child to speak to them in your native tongue. If your child comes crying in the other language you comfort them in your language, the important thing is the act of comforting and expressing love. That is meeting their needs.

What do people think about whether to put pressure on DC to reply in the target language? To insist that they reply in the language you are speaking to them in. I don't usually do this with DD4, I just sometimes model the sentence and get her to say it after me. She almost always replies to me in her other language. I didn't want to make it a big deal or something irritating. But she can't currently speak English fluently at all.

It will come. Just keep responding in English, maybe repeat the question in English. Mine only ever responded in local language, but then it all came out one day and she now speaks flawless, accentless English. Plus she reads and writes to a high level in both languages.

you probably need someone who only speaks English to visit. That usually gets it out of them.

You speak to the child in your language and they speak in theirs and you pick which language you and he speak in and the child will learn both easily.

Oh no I think most people mean parent has to be strict (with themselves) about speaking to their child in a particular language. So my kids dad speaks to them in his language, if they reply in English that’s fine, but he tries to always remember to reply back in his native language etc (even though that’s hard for him as if someone speaks English to him his brain tends to switch 😅). But definitely my kids are free to speak whatever language and they will be responded to, needs met ect! x

It has much the same effect as when we decide to stop responding to whining & pointing, encouraging a child to use their words instead.

Annoying for all involved but not particularly traumatic.

I would say def don’t put pressure. Let them be or you risk that they will become resistant to the language . A friend did this with her kid and around the age of 12 she completely rebelled and basically refused to talk to her mother for about a year unless she spoke to her in English (daughters preferred language).
if you keep speaking English to dd and she can understand, I’m sure it will come with time x

Super interesting thread. We live in an EU country, both parents speak English as minority language at home. Kids attend local school and are picking up the second language well (I speak it fairly fluently, DH only a basic level so English always at home). My eldest who came here aged 3 has a slight but detectable English accent when speaking the local language. My youngest, who arrived as babies, speak neither language as well as my eldest spoke English at the same age BUT sound absolutely native in both. At home they mainly speak English to each other but will sometimes randomly switch to the other language, especially the younger ones. I find it fascinating. We also just took our first trip to the U.K. in 4 years, and they all completely switched to 100% English while they were there. I do think if we returned to the U.K. while still young they would lose their fluency in the EU language (another reason to stay here because I absolutely believe bilingualism is a gift).

We have a bilingual child. We don’t live in the UK so English is the second language.

One parent one language. You speak English, your DH speaks his native language.

It does take more work than people realise. The child needs further exposure to the second language and experience of speaking it in different settings. For us, that means we

• prioritise trips to the UK
• have joined and attend an English-language children’s library with craft and game sessions 50km away
• bought a LOT of audio books in English
• bought a lot of DVDs in English (if you stream kids’ stuff there often isn’t an English language option on it)
• Search out other families with English
• Role-play sharing/ dealing with teasing/ helping- anything with a 2-person interaction. We get cuddly toys playing a lot of roles.
• Prioritise kids’ group activities in the UK (he spent a lot of time at a football club’s holiday club over the Summer/ From a baby I searched out playgroups and kids’ activities when over.
• host visitors from the UK

He is bilingual. However each language is affected by the grammar of the other one. This happens subconsciously. Now my role is to listen out for non-English constructs and keep on top of those:

’But I gave myself so much effort!’
’You tried really hard? Yes, I know you tried really hard. It’s frustrating when you try really hard and it doesn’t work out, isn’t it?

‚Oh, I let my coat at school!‘
‘Let or leave?
’oops, leave. I left my coat at school’

Most families struggle once the child realises a parent speaks both languages. The key there is to be strict. Depending on what was needed I either repeated what he’d said in English and asked a further question, told him I didn’t understand or just reminded him to speak English, promoting the first couple of words of what he wanted to say. To be honest, the early work meant he was so comfortable with English this didn’t happen much.

As well as language 1 interference, at 7 I’ve also got the following jobs:

• searching out English-language media for his current interests (You can find nearly any language books on Amazon). As each interest involves new vocabulary, we need the new vocabulary in English too.
• playfully practising concepts like maths in English so he can do mental arithmetic in both languages. He can.
• same applies to days/months and clock times.
• reading. In this country, kids start school the September after their 6th birthday and do no letter work beforehand. I‘ve been slowly building awareness while helping him with his daily homework (ah look, ‚ch‘ is a ‚k‘ sound! In English it would be ‚ch‘! Same letters, different sounds.’
• Once he‘s a confident reader (I‘m hoping by the Summer) we‘ll start with English phonics, starting with the similarities.
• Correct for cultural issues. Here, we don’t say ‘yes please/ no thank you‘. Affirmation is ‘yes’ or ‘ok’ while ‘no’ is either ‘no’ or ‘thank you’, but never together. I spent a lot of time correcting that before our summer trip to the UK. During the trip he realised why I had done that and it’s now automatic.

He’s extremely proud of speaking two languages.

I didn't put pressure on them, when they spoke to me in Finnish I just repeated what they said in English and carried on talking English myself.

@ALittleDropOfRain I waited until after my DD could read in the local language before teaching her to read in English but decided to do it the other way round with DS to avoid him learning both at the same time (because there's no way he'd wait until 8 or so like his sister did, far too keen) - taught him to read in English before he starts school and as a benefit he figured out reading in the local language too.
Agree with teaching them maths concepts and things like that in the minority language too. I always did "summer school" with DD when she was little, and taught her maths in English as well as British history. Doing the same with DS.

Must be hard as a parent to do this. Come crying to you in French and you say 'tell me what's wrong but only in English' Just wondering it worked in practice.

What @Melassa said, basically. If one of ours came to DH crying in English, he'd reply in Russian, "Oh no, what's happened? You fell? (or whatever)" - he wouldn't demand a translation, but he wouldn't speak to them in English.

The six yo is fully bilingual now (reading too - writing is patchier), the toddlers are getting there. Interestingly the six yo is also very keen on other languages + music and has a lovely natural aptitude for language inference and picking up new words, which I'm sure is largely down to being bilingual already. I suspect she will be at three languages by the end of school, and she's already expressed an interest in learning my native language.

(and they're unlikely to come to DH saying anything in English - even the little ones tend to default to Russian with him)

I think it is hard for one parent to give enough language input (hours-wise) especially if the other one doesn't speak the language. The bilingual kids I know all have 2 parents speaking the language, everyone who only has one parent has stopped at the understanding stage.

As you do speak DH's language then it should be easier, even if you speak English at home he doesn't need to worry about translating for you or anything. It depends how good your grasp of it is, maybe you can speak a mixture, read books in it, watch tv etc.

What do people think about whether to put pressure on DC to reply in the target language? To insist that they reply in the language you are speaking to them in.

I find it's really the only way to keep the target language (if it's the minority language, and not the one they speak at school and/or family common language). I speak to DC in my language, but that's pretty much the only place they hear it, and it has really been a struggle to keep it up. If I let them speak to me in another language, it would be impossible to keep mine.

We raise our kids bilingual, we're lucky because we have language school where we live and kids attend every Saturday. We maintain consistency at home and when they speak to us in English we repeat question back in the target language. We don't tell them off or ignore them, that just creates negative experience with other language. We visit the country of target language once a year and celebrate traditions. We read in target language and watch films every now and again. It's not easy and feels sometimes like we're fighting a loosing battle but it will be worth it. Good luck just stay consistent and it will happen x

I’m a speech and language therapy assistant and advice for parents raising bilingual children is to speak in your native language so that any language models you give are grammatically correct. Hope this helps

My niece is bilingual. Her mum just spoke her native language to her, they read her books etc in that language. Her dad (my brother) has learnt it over the years, so he would speak it to her as well. But I don't think they were 100% one at home and one at school. Niece is now 11 and following a conversation between the three of them is brilliant, as they'll just flit between two languages. I loved abroad between 9-14 and was actually put into a specialist class for a year to learn the language, before being moved back into mainstream school. I was fluent for years, but did lose it after decades back in the UK. I was able to relearn really quickly through podcasts and Duolingo.

My cousins are bi lingual - English dad, French mum; they had a rule that dad spoke English to the kids and mum French (although both were able to speak the other language) and the kids grew up completely bi lingual. You will find that with 2 languages they may learn to talk later than the average milestones but it will benefit them academically later down the line. It will also make it easier for them to learn other languages in future if the choose to do so - good luck :)

There's no problem getting some flawed input though, as long as it's fluent. Most UK children are getting "flawed input" from their nursery teachers who probably have a variety of accents and use incorrect grammar. It doesn't prevent them from learning to speak intelligibly.

You are going to get better results from as much exposure to the language as possible, in natural settings from a variety of people, even if it isn't perfect, than restricting it as one parent's language becoming increasingly irrelevant as the child gets older

Since our ds was born I speak only English with him and my dh only his language. Ds is now 4 and speaks perfectly fluent in both, its easy for him as he's grown up with it naturally. In the future it will make it easier to learn even more languages and it increases vocabulary.

It’s not easy and can be quite frustrating; however it is possible! My daughter is 5 and we have always lived in the UK. My husband doesn’t speak my language but I have always spoken my language to my daughter. It is a constant struggle to ’activate’ the language but she can and does form complicated sentences in my language, and understands almost everything I say - if she doesn’t, she asks me.

Your husband will need to interact as much as possible in his language with your child, but it is NOT necessary to always speak that language; there are times when it is a good idea to communicate together as a family in a language that is common to all of you.

He should read books in his language to your child (I do this every evening with my daughter). I also recommend watching children’s programmes on Youtube/Disney+ etc. in his language. Can you have frequent video calls with the family members in the other country?

There are also apps available to teach children languages, for example Moka Mera Lingua.

Have you found any Saturday schools/clubs that teach the language to children nearby you?

I recommend reading this interview with Soile Pietikäinen, who is an expert in bilingualism: theelephantmum.com/soile-pietikainen-1 It can be quite eye-opening!

We are in the same position. I've got a couple friends who have raised kids bilingual kids and their advice was that as well as one parent speaking exclusively in one language that once old enough they insist on child speaking to them in that language. So my French friend basically pretends he doesn't hear his kids if they speak to him in English.