Successful stories of raising bilingual children

[Marghe87]

DD is 19 months old and is starting to say a few words. We live in the UK and she goes to nursery. DH is British, I am from abroad and speak a different language. We have so far adopted the OPOL approach as it works quite well for us and, for me, speaking to her in my native language, is the most natural approach. She understands everything we say in both languages but I noticed she tries to say words in English only. Of course I appreciate this is natural as it’s the language she hears the most around her, however, I am starting to wonder if I will manage to raise her bilingual. I am just curious to hear different approaches and what has worked well for other families.
I also make sure we travel back to my home country fairly often (work and Covid permitting) and I buy her a lot of books in my language.
It’s really, really important to me that she grows up being bilingual (or as close to that as possible) and also it would be such a great gift for her in life.
What did you do?

Just keep speaking to her/exposure to the 2nd language and she’ll pick it up. My daughter is 21 months and has started switching words in two languages depending on who she is speaking to (I’m bilingual myself).

I'm also bilingual but I'm starting panic as dc isn't using my native language at all at 3 yo. Dc has been a late speaker and has only started stringing words together in the past few months only in English and I'm panicking that dc would never speak my native language as it's much more difficult compared to English.

My daughter is 2 years and 3 months.

We use English only in the house, and Japanese at nursery since we live in Japan. We are both fluent Japanese and English speakers ourselves. Right now, she understands instructions in English and Japanese. Her vocabulary is probably a little better in English but her nursery teachers say she has absolutely not problems communicating with her friends. We think she's just about figuring out where to use what language. She's doing great and we're not worried at all.

I had two English speaking parents but went to nursery, and then primary school in France. As did my siblings. Although English was spoken at home, we were completely bilingual and the school definitely helped. We loved being able to talk at home without our parents understanding, a bit like a secret code! Still bilingual now, 50 years later. The trick is to immerse them early in the non maternal language. Of course by maternal I mean native although that's not always the case iyswim.

I speak to the kids in English, DH speaks French. Been that way since they were born.
Schooling is all in French.

Both my kids understood both languages, began to speak French first, then separated the language around age 3, speaking English to me, French with dh. When the kids spoke to me in French I'd reply in English.

Just never switch and always reply in your mother tongue.

Kids are 5 and 8 and honestly it's magic the way they switch between languages.

We do OPOL. I am British and live in the Netherlands. Husband is dutch. He speaks to kids in dutch, me in English. Works very well. One thing I was insisting on was kids replying to me in English. There was a phase when my daughter was 3 that she would reply in dutch so I would say ‘what s that in English’ it took a few weeks but now she never speaks to me in dutch. I have friends whose kids understand the mums language, but reply in dutch, which the mothers find a real shame. My son never spoke to me in anything other than English, as he would see his older sister doing that. Persistence and consistency will pay off!

I tried OPOL with my eldest for 5-6 years but ended up giving up. It became beyond stressful that she wasn't understanding what I was saying and made bonding extremely difficult.

I have a three year old who is fully bilingual. However she doesn’t like speaking the lever language, often refuses and if I’m honest, has severely affected her relationship with her dad as she generally refuses to spend time with him as she doesn’t want to cope with the language.

Persistence is key. It is very common for dc to reply in their dominant language once they get to a certain age but insistence that they must reply in the language they were spoken to is very important. I know a lot of children who lost the ability to speak their other language because of this.

We did pretty much what you are doing OP.
DC have 3 and 5 languages respectively now.
Once they have 2, they pick up others quite easily.

My best friend growing up. Lived in one country, dad a native speaker. Mum spoke her own language. She now lives in a third country and speaks four languages, and her children speak four too. Her two, their dad's and English.

Stick with it. It opens up worlds.

Thanks all. I found the comments about difficulties bonding a bit scary as it would hurt me so much to think me speaking my own language with her could mean we have issues having a solid relationship - I truly hope that won’t happen.
I will not give up!