Bilingual parenting and signing - share experience please?

[MissBrighton]

We are raising our DS (13 months) bilingual while living in the UK. I am Dutch and DH is English. We speak English to each other and our mother tongue when speaking directly to DS. Coincidentally my partner's mum is also Dutch and she speaks Dutch to him when she looks after him (one day a week). I read stories to him in both languages. He now says mama, dada, hiya and oh-oh. Fairly normal for his age I suppose.

Lately I have started to introduce signs to accompany words as I thought it might help that the sign is the same even if the words are different. However DS looks at me as if I have gone slightly mad and makes no attempt at any signing whatsoever. Does anyone have experience / tips that you could share please?

I think you are doing great. My Parents spoke English as their second language. I was brought up in England and I am bi- lingual. My DM And DF were the only ones of their family in England, so I went back a lot to my GM for holidays and was steeped in their language, but never learned to write it. My parents were too lazy and thought we were going to stay in England.

I think being surrounded by all the Dutch people will ensure that your DC is Bi-lingual. Under the age of five is apparently the best time to learn. I don't think I would bother with the signs. We went from one language to another as kids, quite easily.
I love being Bi-lingual. I married a English man so my DC's only speak English.

Ah thank you Holeinmyheart. It's really nice to hear the perspective of a person who was raised bi-lingual. I think the signing might possibly be more for me than for him as I am really keen to start communicating! DS is more interested in fiddling with the remote control instead

But you know it is strange being the child of immigrants. I never know which country I owe allegiance to. I definately don't feel English but I don't belong long to my Parent's country either.

I feel torn when the two countries are playing Rugby as I always support my Parents country. If England is playing other countries then I support them.
However, I think speaking two languages is great.