anyone else raising their kids multilingual?

perry7285 · December 2011

curious if any other SAIFers are doing this--we are raising DS trilingual (french/spanish/english) and it is kind of lonely, very few moms that i know are doing the same thing so i don't have a lot of people to share ideas and experiences with. any multilingual families out there? TIA!

DavezWife · December 2011

I love foreign languages, and envious of kids who HAVE all those languages in their lives. So we "expose" Ava to spanish, chinese, italian and french (I speak french, the rest is "conversational" on my best day) so RAISING her with other languages by no means. But I like what it does to their brains, and we have every intention on sending Ava to a local district's chinese (mandarin) immersion circulum starting in Kindergarten.

Curious, why those 3 for your DS, and what kinds of things do you do to expose him to it? We just get books in another language, ask things like "how do you say 'butterfly' in talian, etc." and of course, good ol' Kai Lan and Ho Ho, lol.

jenick · December 2011

My husband is a German teacher so we are raising B bilingual. Most every direction he knows in English he knows in German. And of course his first German word a few days ago was "nein" (no). It has been so much fun seeing him learn both at the same time. I'm learning right along with him! My husband knows where to find some tv programs in German and they watch online together. We also are able to order books from German Amazon. We are considering sending the kids to our German Immersion school here. Still undecided.....

Yellow_Daisy · December 2011

We will be starting Mandarin classes as a family when Max is around 12-18 mos. We don't speak any other languages ourselves, but we would really like Max to be able to speak at least two languages.

perry7285 · December 2011

DavezWife:
I love foreign languages, and envious of kids who HAVE all those languages in their lives. So we "expose" Ava to spanish, chinese, italian and french (I speak french, the rest is "conversational" on my best day) so RAISING her with other languages by no means. But I like what it does to their brains, and we have every intention on sending Ava to a local district's chinese (mandarin) immersion circulum starting in Kindergarten.
Curious, why those 3 for your DS, and what kinds of things do you do to expose him to it? We just get books in another language, ask things like "how do you say 'butterfly' in talian, etc." and of course, good ol' Kai Lan and Ho Ho, lol.

i am SO jealous of you guys that can send the kids to immersion schools! we would love to do that, but will never be able to afford it, i don't think. sigh.

we do at home immersion (except it's just me--DH only speaks english, so he speaks english to DS). but i never speak english to DS. i speak spanish to him monday-wednesday, and then french thursday-sunday. and then at his home-based daycare, they speak to him mostly in spanish. (i've asked them to speak only spanish to him, but since i'm not there all day i don't know if they actually do it 100% of the time. i think it's mostly spanish, though, and they are all native speakers, so that's great.)

beyond just me talking to him at home, i have started a french playgroup for him, and he will start toddler classes in french in a few months. and at home we watch lots of movies in french and i sit with him and talk to him in french about what's going on in the movie. last but not least, TONS of french and spanish music from amazon. since music is supposed to be great for their little brains too, i hope that he gets a lot out of that.

i'm not actually a native speaker of either language--spanish i learned in school and french i taught myself from books. my french is not perfect so i am working very very hard to improve it. our second kid will get a much better situation with early language exposure than DS did--there's been a lot of trial and error this first year. =(

laura1 · December 2011

We are not - I don't know any language well enough to speak it beyond English. However, both kids go to Spanish Immersion pre-school. They start at 15 months, and both go 2 days a week for 5 hours each day (we are using it as our daycare). Already they understand a lot in Spanish (they just started in Sept), and apparently speak some if it in school. I would love for them to keep it up - I have often wished that I could speak Spanish!

I have a friend who spoke Mandarin to her DS, her MIL spoke Cantonese, and they spoke English at daycare. He was a late talker, but when he did start speaking, he could speak 3 languages!

gringa78 · December 2011

M's being raised bilingual Spanish/English. I'd love her to learn more though!

Smudges*Mom · December 2011

We speak English only, but we are moving to Germ.any next year. I hope that during our three years there that LO and I learn as much German as possible.

hall_ky · December 2011

My DS will be bilingual Spanish/ English. My DH is Mexican so he speaks to him in Spanish a lot. He also stays with my MIL during the week while I work and she only speaks Spanish. I can understand it very well but have some trouble speaking it. I hope to learn more when he starts talking. I think it's awesome that you are raising yours trilingual. I wish I knew a third language that we could teach our DS.

lovemymonkey · December 2011

Our nanny (and both sets of grandparents) speak to DD in Korean. She's only 11 months old so she doesn't know a ton of words, but the handful of words she does understand and say are all Korean. DH and I are hoping our Korean (we both speak on a Kindergarten level) will get better too! lol

jhleap · December 2011

DS is being raised English/Spanish and I throw a few french words in when I can.

DH is from Colombia and our Nanny is from Peru, so he hears a lot of Spanish, I can understand it, but my speaking is rather poor. I spoke french as a small child, and I can remember a few words here and there, plus we watch baby einstein videos in all three languages.

So far, there are lots of words going in, but nothing coming out!!!!

Want a personalized experience?

anyone else raising their kids multilingual?

Re: anyone else raising their kids multilingual?

Choose Another Board

Search Boards