Bilingual families: how do you ensure your kids speak both languages?

[Marghe87]

I am interested to hear what other bilingual families are doing to ensure their DCs grow up speaking both lamguages fluently.
I am thinking we should adopt the OPOL approach but am open to other options too, except DH is not really fluent in my language (yet...).
I’s like to raise DD with lots of books and cartoons in the minority language but I fear she might at some point refuse them as different from what she will be learning/play with at nursery and with her friends... any tips to ensure this won’t happen?
She is only 5months but I want to start working on it early on!

Hi OP, I'm not in this situation myself, but my friend is bringing up her DD bilingual (French mum, English dad). At one point when she was about 4 or 5 the little girl did go through a phase of refusing to speak French (as you say, probably because of the influence of her friends at school), so don't panic if this happens. It lasted for a few months and my friend didn't make a big deal out of it. The DD is totally bilingual now (in her teens).

It's not easy. If you live where the minority language is spoken,that will help.

The DC will probably lose interest unless they see advantages to speaking the minority language.

Yes one parent one language is a good starting point with shared baseline language(s) but in some cases to be more polyglot can be achievable but needs starting at a very early preferably pre school age hence mother or father tongue etc. Being immersive spoken, reading and writing multilingual by birth as default heritage is relatively achievable (even with very different written forms) but being truly polyglot is a challenge to acquire new additional languages with no family nor geographical connections. What are helpful are the immersive early years and primary schools found throughout major international trading cities including London. Some of these tax payer funded state bilingual immersive primary schools tend to be very over subscribed not just among local families with the relevant international heritage connection but also children from initially single English language only families. I believe they offer, as with fluency in multiple languages, an obvious tangible benefit. Even if the quality of each language is individually possibly lower than that for a single language regular school.

A major factor to ensure deeper true multilingualism or polyglot is immersive culture. Be it literature, culture, arts, media, cuisine or beliefs etc. This is a major element of being truly immersive and fluently multilingual and multicultural.

opol
holidays/holiday camps in a country where that language is spoken.
saturday language school

I speak to my kids only in the minority language (unless someone who doesn't understand it is present and it would be rude). I think this really is key, and there will be battles sometimes when they don't see the point. Also do the following: books, TV, audiobooks, songs in the minority language, Saturday School (if there is one near you), visits to your home country, befriending other bilingual families. 10 years down the line my kids can speak the minority language accent-free as well as read it confidently (still working on the spelling and grammar, but they're young). Overall it's a great opportunity for your child, and means they learn something very useful without much effort.

OPOL

DH absolutely refuses to speak in English to them (unless the situation means he has to). He explains to English people that this is the way it will be and they have to lump it (other nationalities seem to take it less personally and don’t mind).

We're one of the only ones of our set of friends who have been successful.

OPOL worked for us also although I think this method works best when both parents understand each others’s language.
Husband is French and we live in England. First child it was pretty straightforward using OPOL. Plenty of French DVD’s and books and frequent visits to family in France. Husband has always spoken only French to the children regardless of the company or if we had guests. As I can understand French, I would join in the conversation and by default it would be easy for others to understand what was going on. There is a 4 year gap between our children. By the time our daughter was born our son was bilingual in French/English. However it was a bit more tricky with our daughter. She would often answer my husband in English when he spoke to her. I think this was partly due to the fact that the minority language had been further diluted as she spoke English to her brother and quickly realised that ‘Papa’ understood English too. We persevered and she is bilingual now too. Holidays with family in France really helped as both children quickly became aware of the bigger picture and the benefits of speaking French.

I’s like to raise DD with lots of books and cartoons in the minority language but I fear she might at some point refuse them as different from what she will be learning/play with at nursery and with her friends... any tips to ensure this won’t happen?

One thing I would stress from my experience of raising two, now adult, bilingual children is that your job is not to ensure that your dc never rejects either language. Preferring one language over the other, even refusing to speak one language altogether are normal stages in bilingual development. Your job is just to plough on regardless and making sure that speaking or being addressed in the minority language is not presented as a guilt trip but as something fun and normal.

My ds went through a stage, at the age of 4, where he absolutely refused to speak the majority language (English), He had come back from holiday in my country and clearly wasn't happy about it, so he claimed he had forgotten English. This was awkward as he went to a monolingual English-speaking childminder, all his friends were monolingual English speakers and he was due to start at the local school where there were no other speakers of his minority language. He persisted for quite some time and yes, it was a bit worrying. But it passed. It was a temporary wobble about having two identities, he got over it.

Should mention for balance that we were successful without using OPOL. But we were able to spend the summer and Christmas holidays in my country and my family there were happy to stick to OPOL, not least because there were always young cousins who didn't understand English.

In the UK, it just wasn't practical to pretend I didn't speak English: dc and I spent too much time in the company of English-speaking friends. I ran the toddler groups and coffee mornings that provided dc with a social life, we often had playdates and I couldn't refuse to speak to children whom I was looking after. When dc started school, I helped with their homework and when dd got older and became interested in the theatre I was the one who helped with her acting (dh doesn't have those skills).

I found exposure to my language by visits and by lots of reading, singing etc compensated for not doing OPOL. And I just talk lots.

I’m too tired to write the same thing again, but this is my post from a year ago:
“OPOL, absolutely. And be prepared to take on a teacher role for reading and writing skills. You are their model and their corrector.

I read aloud every night to both mine until they were 12/13. It’s a lovely way to spend quality time in English. Any film got watched in English first to imprint the “real” version. At least one holiday a year with family and then doing activities. DC1 did Chetham’s piano summer school but only after passing ABRSM grade 8. So knowledge is spread across both languages. DC2 has just been on a drama course in Wales.

They’re 21 and 13 now. Both languages are uninflected although I consider them 40% English and 60% other language. And they still talk to each other in English when DC1 is back from university!“

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/multicultural_families/3656126-Multilingual-families

OPOL is great, but it’s hard
We’ve sent them to a bilingual school which is mostly the minority language for the first few years and ours are bilingual
We visit the minority language country a lot and make sure we’re (somewhat) involved in the community.
We also send them to their grandparents over the school holidays which is a truly immersive experience- which they don’t get when we’re there.
I don’t speak the minority language which doesn’t help.

This is a list of ideas
Read books in that specific language at bed time. Speak as often as possible in that language as well. See if you can find music that is written in that language too, it will also help massively. In order to develop reading and writing abilities, teach spelling and reading skills early on. Find French speaking friends etc in addition. You can order resources from Amazon or borrow some useful stuff from the library in order to get started. And formal lessons in the language help a lot on top of that, you can search online or ask around for suggestions.

Similar to others, we have a OPOL rule here in terms of what language we speak to DS(6) in, but we haven't been strict about ensuring he only speaks that language in reply. My husband's is the minority language (German) and he only speaks it. Until recently, DS would reply in English, but he's now starting to reply to DH in German, and have noticed that when DS is playing make-believe games with his toys, the dialogue is often in German too.

DS has a story in English and a story in German at bedtime and has done since birth which I think has helped.

What I think has really helped recently have been the German story cassettes (other, more up-to-date formats are available) that seem to have been on permanent loop since his birthday (they used to be his dad's and my ILs sent them over). There are songs as well as the stories, and he will sing along in German too.

We visit ILs a few times a year (when COVID doesn't prevent it) and that helps as well.

There is a Saturday language school here where we live but we've not yet engaged with it, as we've kept it very informal to date.

OPOL here too.

It’s complicated now that we live in a third country so DD is a third culture kid. She mixes the languages and mostly speaks Franglais. DH is fluent in French where as I’m not so I speak to her in English and DH a mix of French and Italian.