- Pregnancy
- Baby & Toddler
- Parents
- Getting Pregnant
- Baby Names
- Product Reviews
-
Registry
- Community
-
More
Want a personalized experience?
Download the free app
Babies: 0 - 3 Months
mayra2105
member
If you plan on LO being Bilingual... ?
mayra2105
member
If you plan on having you LO speak two languages how are you going to do this?will you speak/ teach both while they are learning to speak and understand. DH wants us to speak to Nick in Spanish first then wants to teach him English a lil later. I have some likes and dislikes with this. My 2 yr old niece is spoken to in Spanish and English. She started speaking a lil later then most children and seems to be confused when told to do something. This is one of DH main arguements. I was taught Spanish first and then learned English in pre school. My grandma took care of me a lot and she and my older family were really the only ones I spoke Spanish to. Now my Spanish isn't all that great. I can get by but I have an English accent (which I hate being reminded of) and it's kind of broken. So DH is swearing that nicks Spanish is gonna be doomed and turn out like mine. What are you planning on doing? Are u gonna do the one language first or both? 1ht
Warning
No formatter is installed for the format bbhtml
This discussion has been closed.
Re: If you plan on LO being Bilingual... ?
Spanish is technically my first language. I came to the US a month after turning 4 years old and we lived in Lousiana and Mississippi for a few years. No one spoke Spanish besides us in the towns we lived in. I picked up English quickly and lost a lot of my Spanish. I didn't start speaking Spanish again fluently until I was 16 when my parents shipped me off to Nicaragua for a summer. I have a hard time with Spanish at times because I think in English
I want Matthew to speak both languages fluently. When I am playing with him I will say the same thing in both languages. I do that with the name of things, colors, and textures. My husband is American and speaks to Matthew in English. My parents speak to him mostly in Spanish. However, when we are together it is more of a combo deal. Spanglish. Half the sentence in one language and half in the other lanugage
Check out this blog my friend has on raising a billingual child. She has great suggestions on books, cd's and other ways to introduce both langauges
https://www.spanglishbaby.com/
We will be teaching our LO spanish and english. My husband is hispanic and he and his family will talk to LO in spanish and I will only talk to her in english. Our nephew is almost 4 and that's what his mom and dad did and now he is fluent in both languages. I think it's wonderful that they can be bilingual at such a young age.
1ht
My pedi and OB as well, told my husband (1st language spanish) and myself (1st language english) to only speak in our respective 1st languages to baby so he learns both languages in their purity (i.e. doesn't pick up my poor spanish or accent when speaking spanish and the same with Dad and his english). Made sense to me.
We're going to start DS on english first, and teach him cantonese later.
I am a bilingual teacher at a bilingual school and would love for my child to be bilingual. However, Spanish is my second language (learned it through years of hard work in school, and not nearly fluent) and my husband and family only speak English. I originally intended on speaking Spanish to DS, but it is too difficult at this point in time to get my head around my own first language, let alone a second.
I have seen a couple of models work for my own students. Some of them learn both languages simultaneously. In this instance, they are usually delayed in speech...they are doing double the work. They generally catch up by the age of 2 with no negative long term effects and often do very well in school. In some of these families, they speak to one parent in one language and the other in the other language. It gives equal respect to both languages and I see less children reject the language later on in life. Children are capable of learning two languages at once and are able to distinguish who gets spoken to in each language, so you don't need to worry about confusion. You will see code switching (language switching), but it is part of the process and isn't really confusion, just figuring out when to use each language appropriately. Many bilingual adults who are equally comfortable in both languages do this in regular conversation with other bilinguals. You should hear our staff meetings, people are switching all over the place...sometimes mid-sentence. I have even seen some children become trilingual this way when another caretaker speaks a third language.
If you don't want to have one parent in a single language, I had another parent who alternated days or said everything in both languages. I think that would probably be difficult and not as effective.
The final option is to speak only in Spanish to your child in your home. Like the pp mentioned, they can learn one language well before learning the other. If you are going to do this, start with Spanish and maintain it for years. They will learn English from their outside world, but will have less opportunity to learn Spanish. That is why I would suggest starting with Spanish. They may struggle slightly with literacy in school at first, but if you read in Spanish to your child, the skills will transfer to English. Again, there are no negative long term effects, only positive. Many schools now have bilingual programs, too. Some children, for some reason, only speak Spanish at home and slip easily into the English classroom without any problems. Other children struggle, but they would probably struggle even without the language factor. In my 2nd grade English Language Arts classroom, the students who are from a language rich Spanish environment at home actually read and write significantly better than many of their English-only peers. The only thing I caution with this method is children learn very quickly the dominant language in their outside world, most likely English. They tend to reject the Spanish around 8 or 9 years old. They kind of get a sense of a false reality being imposed upon them. Just make sure to continue with the Spanish at home and speak to them honestly about the benefits of bilingualism.
Finally, whatever you decide to do, make sure you read, read, read with your child. Read to him/her in both languages. Some schools will tell bilingual parents to read to their child only in English since that is their academic environment. I cannot tell you how many bilingual people I know who are not biliterate. There are four modes to bilingualism speaking, listening, reading, and writing. Make sure to hit on all of them.
English is the first language for both DH and I. I can speak Japanese pretty well, and DH can speak passable Mandarin and Taiwanese. Both of us grew up speaking primarily English and being exposed to these other languages at home.
The problem with DD, however, is that our nanny does not speak English - only Mandarin (this was not something I wanted - long story). After I go back to work, she will be taking care of DD and by default, DD will be exposed to Mandarin all day. DH and I plan to speak only English to her after we get home from work. I would like DD to be bilingual, but in order for that to happen, I will have to learn Mandarin. I would also like to teach her some Japanese at some point, but that probably won't happen until later on. I don't want her to get confused.
I have a friend who speaks Russian and English. So does her husband. They speak only Russian at home. Their nanny is Bulgarian, but can speak Russian fairly well. Their DD had to go to a speech therapist because she was speaking a combination of English, Russian, and Bulgarian - she basically made up her own language. She is 3 years old and only now after a year of therapy can she differentiate between the three languages.
I am multilingual and hope to teach DD Portuguese and French on top of English. English will be LOs primary language. I have always felt that a child should learn the language of the country they live in first and then whatever languages you wish to add after the child turns 2 or 3.
My father spoke Portuguese as his first language but as I was born here in America he insisted that I learn English first.
My first language is Mandarin and DH's is English, so we speak to DD in two languages. I sing to her in both languages and will occasionally speak to her in English when we're out with friends who are English speaking only. Sometimes when I'm describing or teaching something to her, I'll repeat the vocabulary in both languages.
My parents Skype with her in Mandarin only, but the ILs speak to her in English.
My parents speak both Chinese and English fluently, and when they were trying to raise my sister and I bilingual, their plan was to have my mom speak to me in English only, and my father to speak in Chinese only. For those PPs who responded above that this is their plan, my only caution is to make sure the working parent sticks with this or it'll backfire. My mom was a SAHM and my father worked. When I was old enough to start understanding language, the problem was I picked up on English a lot faster (since my mom was with me 24/7!) and my dad, after a long day of work, would be so disappointed to come home and try to interact with me and I'd stare at him, poker faced or nonresponsive to his words. But then he'd switch to English and say "give papa a kiss?" and I'd happily make smoochie noises. So he started cheating and talking to me in English.
My sister and I are now only fluent in English. Our Chinese is horridly passable (i.e. we'd survive in China, but we sound completely like foreigners!)
My 18 cousins, on the other hand, were all raised with both parents speaking both languages (English and Chinese) at the same time. Kind of like what a PP said with sometimes signing in English and sometimes in Chinese, and then sometimes repeating the phrase twice in both languages? THat's what all my younger cousins were taught, and they are all fluently bilingual. No speech therapist needed.
TTC #1 since 2007. Dx: Unexplained infertility. 4 IUIs in 2008 = BFN. IVF #1 07/09. DD #1 born April 2010 (40w5d).
TTC #2 since 2011. Dx: Endometriosis and hypothyroidism. 2 FETs in 2012, BFP 6/12 but m/c @ 7 weeks. IVF #2 06/13. DD #2 born March 2014 (40w1d).
I speak English and French. At night, I read DD her french books and speak to her in French. During the day it is all English. N speaks to DD in Spanish and his mom and grandma speak to her in Greek. All of the cousins can pick out pieces of Greek and speak conversational Spanish.