Need to rant re people reaction to OPOL

[StoneBaby]

We are an OPOL family with my language (French) being the minority one. I am started to get fed up with the comments I or DH get from people who don't understand that a child don't automaticly come with English!
DS is 20 months old and so far I got:

• Do you think he understand you when you speak French to him? (from a friend who knows we're OPOL!)
• Do you translate into English everything you tell him?
• So you're teaching him French too?
• How can he understnad what you're telling him?

If I was to get those comments once in a while I could cope but I hear them so often that I just want to tell people to think for just 1 second before they make those comments.

Sorry just needed to rant before I explode!!!

I get asked 'what are you saying?' in an offended way quite a lot but then I'm of the bugger linguistic politeness school of thought and if they ask I'll translate. Usually only needs doing once and then they accept that I just do talk to DS in English. And pretty much every other baby!

As I say, I have never yet had the "you're being rude" remarks - probably because I'm a man and also look like I won't give a monkey's anyway - but I have heard of it and it annoys me.

I wonder if, when these people go on holiday to, let's say, Turkey, they scrupulously conduct all their conversations in Turkish to avoid offending the thousands of Turkish speakers surrounding them on all sides?

Or does politeness only matter when English is the wounded party?

Nobody ever said to me that it was 'rude' to speak another language to my children, but I sometimes sense that people may feel uncomfortable not understanding everything that is being said and distance themselves a bit. But there you go - there are enough others who don't mind.

Bonsoir - I taught secondary German and Spanish, and have seen a couple of bright bilingual children in secondary language lessons up to GCSE. They were differentiated for as much as possible and used to demonstrate ... but I have to say that I feel they are in the wrong place and would be better off doing a qualification geared towards native speakers, or learn a different language from scratch.

My DS (fully German/English bilingual) will not be sitting in a German language class studying for a GCSE in German!