Raising a bilingual child

[Confusion101]

Just looking for some advice if anybody has raised their child with 2 languages? I am fluent in a language that I would like to incorporate into my child's every day life, aswell as English being the main language. But I'm unsure how to approach it as I wasn't raised in a bilingual household. All help / book suggestions / resources greatly appreciated.

Do you have a partner whose first Language is English ? If so, both of you can just speak to baby in your own language.

Yes both mine and my partner's first language is English, and I learned a second language in school. I would like to introduce them to both languages from the beginning! That's a good idea, thanks.

So it’s not your first language, you say you learned it in school but you are fluent? How did you gain fluency ?

The most important thing for children learning any language is input - the more of a language they hear, the more of it they will learn. So as long as you are committed to using a great deal of the language with them, reading books in that language, TV, YouTube etc, there's no reason why you couldn't pass it on.

But your situation is quite rare in bilingual childrearing - usually the languages being learned are either regularly spoken at home by one or both parents or are a community language/language of education. If you can't guarantee that you'd be able to use the language enough with them, then you might be better off concentrating on one particular area of usage of the language - maybe bedtime stories and songs specifically in that language (I have done this with my son for a language not native to me, and at 2 he can now sing the songs and pronounce words in the language without really knowing what they mean) - and plant the seed for them to learn it for themselves later on. What's the language, how well do you know it, and how often could you use it?

Probably the most effective way, if you have the means and opportunity, is a childminder who speaks this language. But that's not open to everyone.

@R0BYN I'm Irish, but Irish is not spoken in the area we live in at all. All children learn it at school but I would like my child to have a basis for the language before starting school, considering they will have to study it until they are 18. My partner had zero interest in it in school so has no Irish. (it is very common for people in Ireland to not be fluent by the end of school, I am fluent because I continued to study it myself).

@YRGAM thanks for the advice! I have started sourcing bedtime books and nursery rhymes in Irish. Seems a good place to start. There are Irish children's TV programmes here and things like that our childminder will be able to incorporate! Thank you

I think the best thing is just to speak to your child as much as possible in the second language. Just normal stuff, can you put your shoes on please, what would you like for dinner, look there’s a dog. Etc.

Don’t worry about confusing your DC. I speak to my DS in English but my DM speaks to him another language when she looks after him. He has no issues with understanding both.

Ive always spoken English to my kids as they speak French every where else. But we also had English tv, books, audiobooks etc. It was very much total immersion at home. Plus H1 also bilingual.

Yes, Urdu is my first language, so I almost exclusively talk to my son in Urdu, it does mean in the very early years they are a little behind in English, but they soon catch up. We also speak BSL, so even with Urdu I would use the BSL sign where appropriate (and if I actually know it).

My husband is Swedish, so now we have our daughter I speak Urdu, he speaks Swedish, this has only been since January and I’m amazed at how much my son has actually learned already. Where as mine is still extremely basic, he however is getting pretty good at Urdu.

A lot of children do drop the minority language when they become older, or start answering in English. So be wary that they may decide that they don’t want to use the minority language.

Ah, that probably changes things (for the better) - you can ignore a lot of my post then! I'm not in Ireland but I imagine you'll be able to access a lot of resources, kid's books etc to help you there. And of course if there are Irish medium schools near you then you're laughing. Good luck!

Thanks so much for all your help everyone! 😀

Most modern advice is that you should speak to your child in your mother tongue so that they have a confident intuitive understanding of how language works and can express complex thoughts and emotions. They used to advise immigrant parents to speak the local language to improve integration, but now that's been shown to disadvantage children (on average, maybe not on a case by case basis). You're not fully bilingual so will never be able to teach your child that intuitive use of the language. Singing songs and taking them to activities in Irish is a great idea though, but as a distinct activity.

There's a book called 'The Bilingual Family' which I found pretty useful because it doesn't make the mistake of assuming that a bilingual family automatically means OPOL (one parent one language). There are lots of different models, including what you're hoping to achieve.

What I would point out right away is that kids are brutally efficient about language learning - they will learn a language passively or actively if they see a need for it to get them what they want, and they will use the easiest means possible to achieve that. So if you randomly use Irish and then English, and their English is stronger, they will insist on talking top you in English because they know you will understand, so why should they go to the bother of using Irish. You need to create a situation where it is absolutely natural to use the target language, and then you make sure that Irish is the only language used in that particular situation. The ideal thing is if you have grandparents who literally don't speak the majority language, so when you go to stay the DC are forced to use the minority language in order to communicate.

But it could also be a Saturday morning parent and toddler class where everyone sings Irish children's songs together and then goes for a coffee afterwards, talking Irish to communicate all the time. Or the two of you watch an Irish programme together and talk about it in Irish. In our family we had the rule that we only talk English at home, and the community language is for outside the home: it worked so well that the kids are now unable to talk to me in the other language, although they're completely fluent, because only English feels right within the family.

The thing you obviously DON'T do is send your child to an only Irish-speaking boarding school off the coast of Cork for a year in the hope that forced immersion will do the trick, so that child forever associates Irish with unheated bedrooms and being whacked around the head for accidentally speaking English (poor BIL never got over the experience and hated Irish for the rest of his life). That was the 1970s though.

I’m bilingual, my dad is English and my mum is Spanish. Growing up my mum and that side of the family spoke to me in Spanish and my Dad and that side in English. As a kid it didn’t confuse me at all, was just the way it was. Got me thinking now what even is my mother tongue?! I use English more purely as I live in England. 🤔