grandparents won't encourage urdu

[layla100]

hi - was wondering if anyone can give me some ideas on encouraging my sons to speak urdu at home. my own parents speak it fluently but actively disagree to me and my husband teaching our kids. as a result my elder son is heavily influenced by his grandparents a lot and is refusing to speak urdu more and more. plus, he has started to go to playgroup a couple of times a week which has made him fluent in english. now he only utters the odd urdu word here and there. my eldest son is only 3 and even though my husband and i are persevering with urdu in which we are relatively fluent, it is to no avail as our son succumbs to his grandparents, playgroup and television.

It is only in the children's best interest to learn Urdu.

I have taught my children to speak Danish. It has been really hard going but well worth it. The number of times I have said to my children "sorry but I don't understand you (in Danish)" is horrifying.

DD is 4 1/2 and DS is 3. They now automatically speak Danish when they wake up, switch to English when they set foot in nursery, and change back to Danish when I collect them from nursery. Daddy is Scottish so the 3 of them speak what we call Danglish. They speak English when I am not there.

I must admit in the beginning when they said they could not speak Danish, I "forced" them to repeat what they had just said in English one word at a time in Danish. Mighty slow going I tell you. Read them goodnight stories in Urdu, even if you only have English night stories, get them to look at the picture and you translate the story as well as you can.

Do they not have cousins they can speak Urdu with?

You also have to remember that it is you that decides what language they speak at home,not the grandparents. They got to choose how you were brought up, they only get to enjoy/spoil their grandchildren.

I hope you decide to keep up with teaching your children a second language.

Oh, and as my DH says, you are not teaching your children Urdu INSTEAD of English you are teaching it AS WELL AS English.

Layla - do your parents speak to each other in Urdu? Just wondering...
Tell them that learning more than one language makes kids more intelligent. Perservere, there might be an Urdu playgroup or something in your area, or you could start one with other parents facing the same problem. Good luck.

If you live anywhere near Leicester, you need to have fluent Urdu for a lot of jobs. It's not just desirable, it's vital!

I think Urdu is an advantage - sure I've seen something recently about how schools should start teaching Urdu, a Chinese language (can't recall if Mandarin or Cantonese) and Spanish instead of French and German. From a purely economic point of view let alone cultural links.

I can understand your parents - my grandparents felt much the same about speaking Welsh at home. My grandfather had been beaten at school for speaking Welsh - it was a social handicap in those days as the English were trying to stamp it out. My father learnt a bit of Welsh from his Granny and the rest at university. But he never really taught us as we were growing up in England. Which makes me feel quite sad, really - I wish I had a bit more than the basics of hello, thank you, cheers and a few swear words!

My situation is even worse, despite my begging and shouting etc my dh only speaks English to dc. He finds it "too difficult" to speak in Urdu. "the children don't understand Urdu". Yes sure, dd, who is 9 mo understands English but not Urdu....
His nephews stayed with us for a few months last year, and did they speak in Urdu (as I'd asked them) NO

It sounds to me that Urdu is simply a language the children will grow up knowing as mummy's language. It means that when they are older and you alone have taught them their second language, you alone can take the credit for your children being smarter than mono-language children . You just need to be consistent and only speak in Urdu with them.

I've not read all the posts so apologies for any repetitions. We are a bilinugual family (Maltese/English) and whilst I speak to the children in English dh speaks to them exclusively in Maltese. Basically the kids don't get any conversation from us if they don't speak the correct language. It's awkward to begin with, but well worth it in the end. DS is 5, DD's are 3 and all equally fluent in both languages. Grandparents disagreeing do not help but what goes on at home is completely up to you. Good luck

thanks everyone for your words of encouragement and advice. i really appreciate it. the situation is getting worse but I just hope that my kids reach an age where they start listening to their parents and not their grandparents! i will carry on perservering!