Bilingual Babes?

RedMar · February 2014

I know we've talked about multiracial babies, but how many of you will be raising (or already raise) your babe in a bilingual setting? English is the main language of our household, but since I'm fluent in Spanish, I plan to use it around the LO.

stephpaez · February 2014

¡Būenos dias! I'm fluent in both English and Spanish and also plan on teaching LO both too.

bebemac · February 2014

We will be! H's native language is Spanish, so he will be speaking to LO strictly in Spanish and I get the no fun job of speaking strictly in English to keep a balance. It will be tough for me because Spanish rules. It will be hard to make the transition as we currently speak only Spanish in the home.

Back in December I opened a thread titled "Bilingual Babies?" There are quite a few people who will be raising them on here!

k318 · February 2014

I am! I speak to my son in English and h primary speaks to him in Vietnamese. He is picking up on both very well and we will be doing the same thing with dd when she arrives.

abastian00 · February 2014

I would love to! My mom is Mexican (born and raised) but didn't raise us speaking Spanish (which is a major thorn in my side as an adult). My husband and I have begged her to speak only in Spanish to our kids - and she lives in the same city as us so hopefully it'll keep! (And hopefully we'll pick up more than our rudimentary Spanglish as well!)

becomingmommyagain · February 2014

My DH is French and we are hoping that he will be able to speak only French to LO. My older kids know a little French and quite a few French songs so hopefully that will help them to play with him in French as well. But the majority in the household only speak English.

DH has downloaded a ton of French language lullabye's and kids songs and TV programs that we can use. And my MIL has been collecting children's books and stuff. DH is also looking into the Alliance Francaise to see if we can find other Franco-American couples with children that we can connect with.

Mia081081 · February 2014

I try very hard to speak only Spanish to DD. I succeed about 50% of the time because my DH speaks English, though he is trying to learn Spanish too. DD is about 50/50 at 2.5, but it helps that her school is also about 50/50. She can count to 5 in both languages, but usually picks the easier word - ie. "hat" over "sombrero"

It's fun and cute to have a little one who speaks Spanglish. She baffles my English-only MIL who is a speech pathologist and cannot understand her. Makes me LOL

ELC252011 · February 2014

Yes! well at least I plan on it, Spanish would be her secondary language. My DH doesn't speak it very well, but I hope my family and I will be able to teach her.

tbmadeamistake · February 2014

We are in the process of trying to learn French, and are mostly learning right now through the picture books we got for C last time we were in Montreal! She's picking it up faster than we are, and mil pretty much only speaks French to her, which is awesome. When I start staying home once charlie is born, I hope to get better at it.

bebemac · February 2014

abastian00 said:
I would love to! My mom is Mexican (born and raised) but didn't raise us speaking Spanish (which is a major thorn in my side as an adult). My husband and I have begged her to speak only in Spanish to our kids - and she lives in the same city as us so hopefully it'll keep! (And hopefully we'll pick up more than our rudimentary Spanglish as well!)

It makes me so sad to hear of lost languages. H's parents spoke Mixtec and Spanish but only spoke Spanish to him, and Mixtec was only used when they didn't want the kids to understand! He knows a few words, but not enough to string a sentence together. So unfortunate!

allrightmeow · February 2014

I plan on learning French and I want the kids to also. DD is excited to speak it when we visit next year.

Shineoncrazy · February 2014

I plan to speak to her in French and English; DH is in the process of learning Spanish and hopes to teach her as she gets older (living in Texas, it will likely be more useful to her than French). We also plan to teach her the most common Latin roots, prefixes and suffixes; my Mom did this for me, and it gave me a much better understanding of English.

tnd1218 · February 2014

I would love to buy unfortunately H and I only speak English. We were never taught any other language. I did take two years of Spanish in high school but didn't really help. I wish my great grandparents were still around to speak to my LOs in Spanish. My son does sign and now that he is talking more we are trying to not let him forget how to sign but at the same time use his words and sign.

Belinda80 · February 2014

I am teaching my daughter Spanish first. Once she turns 3, I'll begin teaching her English. I don't want to mix it so she won't get confused.

tbmadeamistake · February 2014

Belinda80 said:
I am teaching my daughter Spanish first. Once she turns 3, I'll begin teaching her English. I don't want to mix it so she won't get confused.

Kids don't mix it up for long! Its actually supposed to be better to teach them both from the get go. As they get older they distinguish on their own and are fine. I have known a bunch of bilingual kids and none of them ever had any long term trouble with confusion

bebemac · February 2014

Lilygrace48 said:

Belinda80 said:
I am teaching my daughter Spanish first. Once she turns 3, I'll begin teaching her English. I don't want to mix it so she won't get confused.
Kids don't mix it up for long! Its actually supposed to be better to teach them both from the get go. As they get older they distinguish on their own and are fine. I have known a bunch of bilingual kids and none of them ever had any long term trouble with confusion

Indeed! Check out this link from CAL (Center for Applied Linguistics) - https://www.cal.org/resources/digest/earlychild.html

coffee89 · February 2014

With my inlaws, their youngest speaks English and understands some Japanese. Their oldest (I believe she is 8, maybe 9) speaks fluent English, Japanese, and is learning Spanish in school. I'm pretty jealous.

I plan to use some sign language and my husband keeps talking about teaching our baby German. My husband's job also involves a lot of Latin so I'm sure he'll try to teach some to our child eventually. He keeps trying to teach me, but I'm just not interested.

lucreciac · February 2014

We are! Currently I try to speak to Charlie mostly in Spanish (I'm successful 60% of the time) and my parents speak only Spanish to him. DH speaks English. C is almost 16 months and he's slow on speaking, but the pedi isn't concerned and said this is very common for bilingual homes. However, he insisted we not stop -that by age 2/3 they even out in speaking and do great with both languages!

temursgirl · February 2014

We're hoping for trilingual. I'll speak English to LO, DH will speak Bangla, and we'll try to speak Hindi to each other. I don't know how well this will work for us. I don't speak Bangla, and no one else in our area does, so now DH only uses it on the phone with his parents. My Hindi is not very good, so there are some things we kind of have to talk about in English. At least we spend a lot of time with Hindi speakers and Indian films are in Hindi.

Brittnic531 · February 2014

I plan on teaching my LO Sign Language. I am fluent in ASL and work with the Deaf and Hard of Hearing. My DH doesn't know much so I'm hoping he'll pick it up quickly to help reinforce it.

MrsNunes · February 2014

Our kids will be bilingual - English and Portuguese. My 2yo has been hearing both languages since birth, English from me and Portuguese from the inlaws. She understands both languages perfectly and is starting to speak the Portuguese more. She is more fluent in English.

owlcup · February 2014

Ugh, DH and I are both english only speakers. We do live right by a spanish immersion school that I hope to send the kids.

Ashes92813 · February 2014

I speak French and English but DH speaks only English. I'd love to incorporate some Spanish and French but I can't really raise her bilingual without DH knowing French.

I am happy to hear so many people are bilingual! It's so good to have a second language! Or more.

@Brittnic513, that's awesome! I actually work with a few moms who are teaching their autistic children ASL. Love it!

cMichelle0423 · February 2014

I speak English and Spanish, while DH only speaks English. I talk to DS in both English and Spanish so he'll probably grow up knowing both like I did. Same with DS2 and all our other kids we plan to have.

kimbercash79 · February 2014

My friend is an English as a 2nd language teacher and the kids don't confuse the two languages. Particularly if one parent can speak to them in one language and the other in the 2nd language. I imagine that would be a challenge. My husband has very bad mandarin but my MIL plans to speak to the baby in mandarin. Maybe baby will pick some up.

emfoxc · February 2014

Ashes92813 said:

I speak French and English but DH speaks only English. I'd love to incorporate some Spanish and French but I can't really raise her bilingual without DH knowing French.

We are planning to do this even though H speaks English and French fluently and I only speak English. From what I've learned so far, it sounds like each parent just has to pick their primary communication method with the baby and stick to it. So he'll speak French and I'll speak English.

Mariela418 · February 2014

Both my SO and i are fluent in Spanisg and English so we will be teaching our little guy both.

MollySm · February 2014

I speak French to Lucia, but not as often as I should or as I had planned to. H speaks to her in English. We hope that at least a little exposure to French is better than none, but I am trying to get better at forcing myself to do it more often.

abastian00 · February 2014

bebemac said:

I would love to! My mom is Mexican (born and raised) but didn't raise us speaking Spanish (which is a major thorn in my side as an adult). My husband and I have begged her to speak only in Spanish to our kids - and she lives in the same city as us so hopefully it'll keep! (And hopefully we'll pick up more than our rudimentary Spanglish as well!)
It makes me so sad to hear of lost languages. H's parents spoke Mixtec and Spanish but only spoke Spanish to him, and Mixtec was only used when they didn't want the kids to understand! He knows a few words, but not enough to string a sentence together. So unfortunate!

Couldn't agree more. You lose part of your culture when you don't have the language to express it!

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Bilingual Babes?

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Married DH 7/30/11

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Married DH 7/30/11

CSC arrived 5/7/12

CHC arrived 6/2/14

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