OPOL - is it the right way?

[flyingcloud]

DD is four months and is very chatty, lots of coos, gurgles and in the last two weeks, squeals. I speak English and DH speaks French to her and she is with a French childminder.

I am reading Growing Up In Two Languages at the moment but haven't got very far.

I am starting to have doubts: ALL my personal, anecdotal evidence from friends has shown that children brought up OPOL speak later, a LOT later. I have a friend with a 2.5 old who does not speak at all but does have about ten, fifteen words. Another couple who were both brought up bilingually have made the decision to bring up their child monolingually as they both spoke very late and were quite traumatised by their inability to communicate. Another friend has a 14 month old being brought up OPOL who has yet to articulate a single word.

I may be naive and impatient - and frankly ignorant of language and development but DH and I both speak fluent English and French and we are considering to reverting to English only at home.

Any thoughts on this would be much appreciated.

My personal experience with OPOL is that it works fabulously. Dd was brought up with me speaking English and Dh speaking German. She maybe spoke a tiny bit later, but hardly enough to be noticed. Now at age 6 she speaks English, High German and Swiss-German all as well as any native speaker.

The advantages of being brought up bilingual far outway the slightly later development. It has been utterly amazing for me to watch my dd grow up bi-/trilingual.

DD is 16 mo and has three languages at home and while she has so far only a few words she seems to understand Polish, English and French.

I wouldn't worry about her starting to speak later and when she will she'll be bilingual.

OPOL has worked really well for us too - DH speaks German to the DC and I speak English. They are now 8, 5 and 3 and speak both languages very well. They do use German words in English sentences and vice versa (less often) if they don't know the equivalent word in the other language, but I make sure I repeat the sentence using the correct English word or ask them if they know what it's called in English, although I try not to "correct" them.

As far as speaking later is concerned, DD1 was a little slower to start speaking than some of the other children we know but I'm not convinced that it had anything to do with her being brought up bilingually. DD2 OTOH was very early starting to speak, and by 2.5 was speaking in full sentences in both languages (and knew which language to speak to which person). DS was probably about average in terms of when he started speaking but then made a lot of progress very quickly; his German is, I think, quite advanced for his age, although he's the one out of the three who will use the most German in his English sentences.

I think it's also very important to be consistent in your language use. We haven't yet had any problems with the DC refusing to speak English to me, but I've heard this can happen with the minority language and once the minority language parent reverts to speaking the majority language with the DC, it can be quite a difficult process to reverse.

Thank you so much for your replies. DH is very hung up on the idea that she might start speaking later. My lovely (tongue in cheek emoticon) FIL can't stop making comments about DD's 14 month old cousin who is being brought up bilingually and who doesn't have any words yet.

DD will obviously pick up French when she goes to school, hopefully relatively quickly, so we wondered if it just wouldn't be better ensuring that she learns one language to start with. I personally need to overcome the awkwardness of shutting other people out of my conversations with her, such as the childminder, PIL etc, even though she is only four months!

I would love for her to be able to watch Sesame Street when she's a bit older, obviously, as I personally found it a great learning tool growing up.

We do OPOL, mostly, and both DS1 and DS2 started talking early and haven't shut up yet. I wonder if other problems (if any, even) might be causing late talking and being exposed to more languages is being blamed for it. If there is no more serious problem then what does it matter if a child talks a few months later or not. Is that going to be on his/her CV in later life!?

As for "shutting other people out", there are many threads on this ...

But does it really matter if she does start speaking slightly later? I would have thought all the advantages that bilingualism offers would far outweigh a few months' delay in speaking. OTOH I can see that there's an argument in favour of you all speaking English at home if your DH is fluent and your DD is going to be growing up in a French environment.

I know how you feel about excluding other people from your conversations, although this is only really a "problem" (and only a minor one) with my ILs. They don't speak any English and my MIL is convinced that the DC are asking for food (a whole new topic entirely!) when they're speaking to me so is always asking what they're saying. It can get a bit tiring at times having to translate the most banal comments (usually not food related!) but I can see MIL might feel left out so am happy to go along with it.

Otherwise, I rarely feel like I'm excluding anyone from the conversation when I'm speaking English to the DC - although it definitely helps that most of my friends speak English so understand what I'm saying to the DC (or at least get the gist of it). The only time I occasionally speak German to the DC is if they have friends over and I'm addressing all the children - or occasionally I'll say something to them in English and then repeat it in German so that the other children know what I've said.

Oh yes, I do agree - the benefits of bilingualism far outweigh when they get around to speaking. I was just slightly shocked that a couple I spoke to today both said they were traumatised by their OPOL upbringing and not being able to communicate when they wanted to.

I promised myself I wouldn't be a competitive milestone-marker either. I keep repeating to DH and to FIL that it doesn't matter when they do things as they usually all catch up with each other by a certain age and really this period of their lives should be completely pressure free.

But I am still thinking over whether DH and I should both speak English at home.

We speak English (the community language) at home.

I can understand the frustration of not being able to communicate. My instinct would be to teach them makaton - that was the plan I had, in case they didn't talk! But it turned out they did talk early and were never too interested in signing when they were little. However DS2 has now picked up makaton (and French) in nursery and enjoys it immensely and has infected DS1 with his enthusiasm.

our 3dc (8, 5 and 3) are being brought up bilingually and i think it made no difference as to when they first spoke. we worried about it lots before dd could speak but she was about average, ds1 was a wee bit late and ds2 was shockingly early. He could count to 10 in both languages by about 18 - 20 months! obviously thats only a small sample but it hasnt affected our children.

OTOH - i know of another bilingual family who's twin boys were very late to speak and they themselves blamed it on the 2 languages.

i know thats not much help to you but i storngly believe that exposing children to 2 languages at a young age is an amazing gift to give them.

Ours were brought up bilingually with both languages in the home (though we weren't 100% consistent with who spoke what) and neither of them was late. In fact, dd was unusually mature in her language use from a very early age: remember some very interesting discussions we had when she was 2. And she knew about her two languages from an early age: just after she turned 2, her party trick was for us to give her a word, or point to something and ask "what is that in English"; she would get it right every time regardless of what language you asked her in. She is now 13 and appears totally untraumatised.

As far as I know the research shows that, if anything, bilingual children speak slightly earlier, though don't know if this is specific to OPOL.

My daughter spoke between 12 and 14 months, which seems perfectly normal to me (not early, admittedly, but normal.)

apparently I didn't speak till nearly 2 (I am monolingual!)

I work with bilingual children (aged between 2.5 and 4).

Yes, often bilingual children (OPOL) start speaking slightly later. Of my own children one started speaking later than average, but the other two were earlier than average. But they have usually caught up/evenned out by the time they are about 3, and definitely by the time they start school. Plus remember that they have the wonderful advantage of being able to speak two languages!

My daughter is being brought up bilingually in English and French. We started off trying to both speak French to her (we live in England) but are now doing something closer to OPOL to make sure she is completely fluent in English before she starts school. She started to speak later than some of her friends but earlier than others.

My DD1 is trilingual, I was speacking french to her, and my DH either swedish or english and the familly language was english. She did reasonably well with the first word around one, a lot of vocabulary around 2 (slightly delayed on grammar compared to her english peers, but still average) a real chatter box from 3 on.

My DH was in a bilingual familly raised till 8 yo in sweden (mainly in swedish). He was traumatised when they moved back to england, and he couldn't speack a word and put in remedial class.

All children can speack at different ages, wether or not they are billingual or not.
14 months doesn't seem that late for not speacking, some children don't do words anyway, they just start by sentences so obviously much later. If he seems to understand when talked to, your nefew is just buying is time.

Real bilinguism is from birth, a language learn later won't be he same (still good though). Apparently, learning 2 language from the start, helps developped the hearing (musical ear that not everybody is born with), increase the child ability to think logically, and helps later on to speack differents languages.

You are right, in you speack only english at home, she will pick up french at school anyway.

I think the main advantage of OPOL is that you and your DH both get to communicate with your DD in your respective mother tongues which means you have on a linguistic and cultural link. The 2 are inextricable IMO.
I couldn't countenance not speaking English to my DCs (if I had any) as there are so many sayings, nursery rhymes etc that I would want to pass on. That said it's your DH who would be speaking his second language. How does he feel?

Bilingualism from birth is supposed to fire all sorts of connections in the brain which don't necessarily come from acquiring another language later but still in early childhood.

Remember that bilingual children might only have 10 words in each langauge but that's 20 words overall....IME bilingual children do seem to verbalise their first words slightly later but when they speak it's like their language explodes. I think the verbalisation issue is to do with having to go through babbling in 2 languages, but that's entirely my theory and I have no research to back that up with!

Of course it is possible to have a cultural or emotional link to a language that doesn't happen to be your mother tongue. Think Joseph Conrad. It's about what makes you and your family tick really.

message for heading4home !!!

i appologize for interrupting this thread, but i am very curious how you heading4home got your daughter to speak english,german and swiss german.
i am swiss myself and i really want my son to be able to speak swiss german, i will be speaking high german to him and my husband english, i live in an english speaking enviroment.
thanks for your input.

We are bringing up our DS wkith OPOL, and he seems to be very chatty for his age. I think this is because his mother tongue (English) is (obviously) the one I speak to him, and the one he hears all around, whereas his "father tongue" is only from his father and grandparents (and unfortunately my MIL tries to use English and mixes up the two languages with DS, rather than keeping it consistent). We think he will always speak English better, but this is the most natural way for us to do it. I don't speak DH's language well enough for it to be good for DS, and we also have the warning example of some friends of ours, who speak Serbo-Croat (father) and a mixture of S-C and English at home to their son; that boy understands S-C, but doesn't really speak it, and he won't be able to speak to his cousins until they learn English at school, which is sad.