Multilingual Mums - Mother Tongue Grief?

[SparkleWanderer]

Hi, I'm specifically writing to any mums out there whose children are being schooled in a different language to their own.

I'm not looking for reassurance/advice on my life choices. I'm just genuinely curious to know if I'm the only mum who feels grief for having to reduce the place of her own 'tongue' in order to support their children's education and give them the best chance in life.

I'm lucky that I've spoken and studied the 'school' language for years. And my primary age child (7) does speak my own language (English) fluently. But he struggles at school with the language barrier. So me and my husband are embracing bedtime stories, conversations, TV and activities in the school language to help him. This is fine and I'm sure we will get a more comfortable balance as time goes on. We moved to this country 2 years ago.

But it makes me feel sad and a bit removed from my child to interact so much in a different language. Is this weird? Relatable?

FWIW my husband doesn't feel sadness about switching to the language of the school at home, he embraces it as an adventure.

Oh and he has a different language as well :-) so it's like this:

Mother: language A
Father: language B
School: language C

I've no idea if this makes sense written down but I'd be interested to know if there are people with a similar experience.

I do understand what you are saying. I have an almost mother tongue grief, in that I was born here and have an English mother and was obviously educated here etc, but I have always been able to speak my father's language and read and write. My own children can get by but I feel sad I haven't preserved it and I stopped teaching them for the same reason as you, but I regret it now, as those who continued now have bilingual children. It isn't because I 'want' bilingual children, but because it is part of our shared heritage and connects us to our culture and I feel like, frankly I have deprived them of a skill. Because my mother doesn't speak my other language I only speak it when there, maybe once a year and I have recently been really upset that I feel I am losing my connection to it and ability to speak as fluently as I once did.

Sophia Smith Galer a linguistics/cultural journalist has a book out about language death, it is more about systematic death but she winds her personal story through and it might resonate with you.

From a practical perspective, your partner is embracing it, so could they take the lead and you stick to English?

I never used the school language at home, but then school/community language was the same as her Dad’s language, so she was exposed to it from birth. It was hard enough to instil English and I found I needed to be very insistent and consistent in the early years, pulling another language in would have diluted my input, plus my “love language” at that age was in English (even though my culture is the same as the community language I was raised in English). I did consider adding a third language, one I’m also fluent in, but I desisted for the same reason.

Are you doing this because your DS has just started school in the third language, with no previous experience of speaking it? Is it the same as the community language? If it isn’t I can understand you adding some input, but it would be better to buy in the support in that language, rather than you supporting and missing out on time with your and your DH’s language. If it is the same your DS will end up with it being the majority language and it really is a case of just pushing through.

Friends of mine live in Brazil, the dad is Italian, mum German, very little Portuguese was spoken at home so the DS was not fluent when he started school. Now at 19 it’s definitely his first language, between school and friends he was quickly very much immersed in all things Brazilian in a very short time.

We were English mother tongue at home when my DC was being schooled in another language.

i have many friends who have a similar situation to you Mum one language, Dad another and child at school in another language.

I was always told not to switch to the school language and that each parent should speak their mother tongue with the child even if you speak together in English.

it will come together. I let my DC watch TV in the local language when she was small.

She is almost 30 now and quad lingual.

I think it's easier for us because we were settled before DS was born, so it's been a very conscious choice. I am jealous of his bilingualism though! It helps that we're English at home and English is very widely used here, so it's given a nearly equal standing to the local language in terms of social capital. I think I'd feel worse if we had a third language at home. Do you think it's a bit of delayed onset homesickness for you, a sudden extra culture shock?

I remember meeting someone on a train (yes random) and she had similar /but was confusing when the parents tried to talk to her in the school language. When I had my one children years later I remember this, so I some to them on my own language, but made sure they had TV etc in the school
language.

The accepted best practice where parents speak two different languages and there is a third community language is not to speak the school language at home. Keep to OPOL at home and let the community language dominate outside of home.

It must be really hard when they start school and are struggling but they will catch up so fast!

We are a trilingual family too. I speak language A, DH speaks Language B, we both speak language C (English) as a second language.

Our DCs were born in English speaking countries but we have been talking to them in our own languages only since their birth. They used to speak our lanuages really well and switch between mums language and dads language without any problems, but eventually English took over after they started school.

We continue to talk to them in our own languages but they reply in English. I know this is a bit unusual but we do not want to force them to reply in language A and B because in reality English has become their first language. We also dont want to switch to English ourselves because it is important to us that they dont lose those languages and the only way to keep it alive is to give them that environment.

They understand our languages and when we go back to our home countries for holiday they learn to speak very fast and dont have communication problems for basic conversations.

I have also been teaching DCs to read in my language every day after school. I must say it is hard work but slowly they have learnt to read. I do feel a bit sad that they wont have the deep understanding of the language and culture like kids of the same age in my home country. My DH isnt bothered by this at all. The good side is that they do have 3 languages in their brains and 3 different nationalities, which will give them more options for their future.