Bilingual Child.

[Shankairen]

What are you tips for raising a child to speak two languages? My partner is not from England and speaks Lithuanian and we want the baby to speak both. Thank you!

I've heard the best way is for one parent to exclusively speak one language and the other parent to speak the other language.

I agree. One parent one language.
They do mix them up a little bit at first, but they soon sort it out.
It is so, so important to make sure they have both languages and much easier for the child to learn from birth.

My DH only speaks his language to the children and has done since birth. Up until the age of 3 or so they only responded to him in that language. However they both suddenly realised they didn't have to and started responding to him in English. Their English was much stronger as they spent more time with me, at nursery etc. Now we have a situation where he (and his family) speak to them in their language. The kids understand 99% of it but only respond in English. I still think it's worth it as they have such a good understanding. They can watch films in this language and understand everything too. One day they might actually start speaking it again!

Understanding comes before speech. By the time they get older and start travelling they will be so happy to have another language. In my limited experience children raised with 2 languages find it easier to learn more. My DC have 5 languages between them.

My friend lives in another country and her husband is from a different country too - he spoke his language, she spoke hers, and the kids went to school where there is the local language. So kids are tri lingual. Only issue is the kids now speak a language the mother doesn't know! The father speaks all three too.

Definitely one parent one language (OPOL). I only speak my language to my 3 year old son, and my husband speaks English. He’s never ever spoken English to me, but I was quite firm from the start and asking him to speak in my language. He’s now perfectly bilingual and I would say the other language is his stronger language. Good luck!

English is not my mother tongue. Until my parents moved to England when I was a toddler, we all spoke my dad's language. After we moved to England my parents switched to one-parent-one-language until I was about half-way through junior school, at which point the school told my parents to stop. Thank goodness attitudes have changed since then! My siblings and I all did well academically and have degrees etc, but the older ones are bilingual and easily picked up MFLs at secondary, whereas the younger ones speak only English, understand a bit of our dad's mother tongue, and found MFLs much harder at secondary.

TBH I don't remember any of this. My parents have told me about it, and that they regret following the school's instructions. But school were supposed to be the experts, and my parents respect teachers and educators. Until a friend commented on it, I didn't even realise that to this day I usually speak to my dad in his language.

My children all speak Korean, Japanese and English (parents are both Korean).
What I am doing with my 2 year old is speaking in Korean to her and we also teach her Japanese words from books etc as both languages are quite similar in structure. When she goes to nursery (well before coronavirus) she would speak English there.

Hi OP, thank you for raising this topic. I hope our kid will be bilingual too and planning to use my mother tongue (Russian) with him, DH is English. @CrumpetsAndPuzzles can I ask you, how do you find it having a conversation with DC and DH? My DH doesn't speak my language and I'm afraid he'll feel excluded or we'll fall into speaking English when talking between the 3 of us or with DH's family. How do you tackle this?