Q for moms who are in a bilingual household

Re: Q for moms who are in a bilingual household

• Alex26 member

  January 2012

  We are a bilingual household.  My 1st language was Spanish.  My parents are monolingual Spanish speakers for the most part.

  We are not using any progrma and havent really read up on anything either.  We just speak to DS in Spanish.  My mom is my daycare provider and she speaks to DS in Spanish most of the time.  DS understands and can speak Spanish, but sadly, he doesnt speak as much Spanish as I would like him to.  But we are trying to speak more Spanish aorund him so he can learn more.

  Honestly, the best way (in my opinion) to teach little kids another language is to just immerse them in it.  Have your DH speak to him as much in Spanish as possible.   Its amazing how much they can learn.

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• cecee36

  January 2012

  Our household is primarily English but my husband is also fluent in French.  He's always spoken to her in French here and there since she was born and we decided to continue her growth in foreign language by sending her to an international school. I don't speak another language however, so the one parent one language concept works just fine here.  Between my husband and her teachers at school, there's no need for me to supplement her foreign language development.  I can spend the time with her doing things that I'm good at that I know she will enjoy.  

  

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• sju

  January 2012

  Spanish is my first language. DH uses words or phrases here and there but English is his main language. I have been more successful with DD by only speaking Spanish to her. I was more relaxed with DS and he can't understand me sometimes. He often gets frustrated and i end up speaking English. Therefore, my recommendation is to be very consistent. We went to visit my family for the holidays and my kids began using their Spanish a lot. I could tell they where very relaxed and interested in communicating with the rest of the family. If you can have your LO spend lots of time with Spanish speakers that will help.

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• Wally3 member

  January 2012

  Our neighbors have a trilingual household.  Mom speaks spanish and speaks german (they both speak english).  They both only spoke to their ds in their native tongue.  Elmo spoke to him in English. He is now 4 and fluent in all 3 languages.  He did have some troubles mixing up languages when he was 2ish like talking to me in whatever language parent was outside but by about 3ish that pretty much cleared up and he switches back and forth no problem.  Parents still mostly speak to him in their native language.  He switches seemlessly when playing with my ds and talking to his dad.

  
  

  
  

  
  

  

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• k8elee03

  January 2012

  I only speak English, and my DH speaks English and Lao.  Obviously, English is the primary language in the house because of  me, but it was really important to both of us that we do as much as we could to give DD a second language. Also, DH's parents don't speak a lot of English, so we wanted to give her as much opportunity to communicate with them as possible.

  He only speaks Lao to her. The exception is if he's reading a book, then he speaks English. English is definitely her primary language, and she doesn't speak a lot of Lao, but she understands everything. She tends to respond in English, though if you ask her how do you say this or that, she'll tell you. I wish we could give her more, but because English is the language we speak to each other, she doesn't get a lot of exposure to natural communication. But we do as much as we can.

  DH's sister and her husband are hearing impaired, and so we teach her as much sign as we can, thought that's even more limited. When we started with learning the alphabet, I signed along with the letters just because I thought it might help her get the concept, but I didn't really expect her to sign letters, but she really likes to learn the signs, and she's pretty good at it. 

   The awesome thing about this age is that they can pick up just about anything you throw at them. Pretty amazing, really. 
  

  
  My silly Lily is almost 4.

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• lilles member

  January 2012

  We are a bilingual household. We use the OPOL approach. I speak to the LO's in Spanish (my 1st language) and DH speaks to them in English. We each use our language exclusively when speaking to them. DH and I speak in English to each other.

  Our LO's are 3.5 and almost 2 and they are both fluent in both languages. When we visit my family they speak to them in Spanish.

  I would recommend your read 

  Raising a Bilingual Child by Barbara Zurer Pearson.

  Let me know if  you have any other questions.
  

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• dutchgrl678

  January 2012

  I am Dutch and try as much as possible to speak Dutch to them. But I've been slacking off and it's so hard to keep up with a preschooler. She goes to a daycare/preschool that is English so she speaks mostly English. But she understands a lot of what I say and if I specifically ask her to say something in Dutch she'll usually be able to recall what to say. But I need to be more consistent with her and not revert back to English .

  

  

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• Jen&Len

  January 2012

  DH and I speak 4 different dialects of Chinese (mandarin, Taiwanese, Cantonese and Hakka) between the 2 of us (none of them in common).  So we speak English to each other, obviously, and we've been trying to speak our own dialects of Chinese to the kids.  Admittedly, we do forget to slip back into Chinese with them, but they've still managed to pick some of it up.  We each chose one of the dialects to teach them, so they're getting mandarin and cantonese because we felt that would be the most useful to them in the long run.  We haven't done anything special other than talking to them.  They usually respond in English, but understand most of what we say.
  

  

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