Raising a Bilingual Child

[AverageDad8]

As Italians living in London, we are excited to welcome our first child and raise them to be bilingual. We are familiar with the "one parent, one language" (OPOL) method but would like to explore a more flexible approach that allows us to speak both Italian and English to our baby (maybe the Time and Place (T&P) approach or similar strategies?). In fact, I wouldn’t want one of us to be constantly speaking English to our baby.

Additionally, my wife is also fluent in French and Spanish. We are wondering if it would be feasible to gradually introduce these languages as well, but we are concerned about potential confusion for our child.

If you have experience with the Time and Place approach or insights on raising a multilingual child, we would greatly appreciate your guidance and recommendations.

Thanks in advance

Can you speak Italian with them and then they will learn English at nursery/outside of the house?

We are doing OPOL

I know some families speak one language at home and one language when out of the home?

There's the other option of you speaking Italian to the baby, your wife speaks French or Spanish and then English could be spoken outside of the home or picked up in nursery etc.

Babies are clever, they recognise the different patterns in languages very early on so I don't think you'd have any confusion, however bilingual children tend to speak full sentences later than thier peers and seem to speak with more nouns. But they soon catch up and have knowledge of more than one language!

I would do this. I’m bilingual English Italian but prioritised English at home, then my DC went to nido in Italian. My DP is Italian but I was the main carer in the early years so English was my child’s primary language.

as for French and Spanish, I’m fluent in French with very little accent, worked entirely in French for several years and I did toy with introducing French as my DD when she heard French spoken as a newborn would turn her head as used to hearing it when in the womb. BUT it’s not my mother tongue, I didn’t have any of the typical terms of endearment (the language of love) as I didn’t grow up with it.

I did teach her French at primary school stage, with songs and games and holidays in France, then she chose French at secondary and speaks it really well now. You might want to do this as English schools are not very good with MFL and it appears that some don’t offer any at all!

stick to your mother tongue, you’ll have the correct accent and the automatic language of love. The community language will take over completely once they’re in school so make the most of double Italian at home to really get the foundations in. My mother did the time and place thing and Italian was by far my weakest language until I moved to Italy.