1 – It doesn’t happen by magic

Children do not become bilingual “by magic”. There is a persistent myth claiming that “children are like sponges when it comes to language” and that they will learn all languages they hear regularly – this is simply not true. Yes, in the right circumstances children will naturally grow up to acquire the family languages, but this cannot be taken for granted.

2 – You need a plan

To be in with the best chance of succeeding in bringing up bilingual children, you need to plan ahead. How fluent do you want your children to be? What about reading and writing? Who speaks what and when? Discuss this in the family and agree on the goals.

3 – Consistency is crucial

Once you have your plan, you need to commit to it as a family and stay consistent in your language use. Yes, children can certainly become bilingual if parents mix their languages with them, but the risk that they will at some point prefer to stick to the majority language is far greater if they have become used to the minority language parent easily switching to the majority language.

4 – You will have to pay attention to exposure times

Once you have your plan, you need to look into how much exposure your children get to each language. There is a general recommendation (there is, however, no scientific proof for this) that children should be exposed to a language at least thirty percent of their waking time to naturally become bilingual. This should however only be taken as a guidance – depending on the type of exposure, children might need more or less time to acquire a language.

5 – You will have to invest some extra time (and sometimes maybe a bit of money)

You will need to find the time talk a lot, to do the reading and to find resources to help your children learn the language. You might find that you need to use your holidays to make a trip to boost your children’s motivation to speak the language.

6 – There will be doubters

Not everyone will agree with you that it is a good idea to raise your children to speak all family languages. There will be those who tell you that there is no point, that it is not going to work. Others will think that you are expecting too much of your children, and some will say that you are confusing your children with all these languages. Ignore these doubters, but also, forgive them, as they do not know what they are talking about.

7 – Don’t listen to bad advice

There might be times when a professional tells you to stop speaking a certain language to your children. If in doubt with regards to your child’s language development – speak to a specialist who is experienced in dealing with bilingual children.

8 – It is not always easy

There will be all sorts of challenges along your family’s multilingual journey – apart from the doubters and the ill-informed “experts” there will be more mundane obstacles: will you be able to stick to your plan when “life happens” and offers its surprises in form of changed family circumstances, moves, career progressions, influence from others and so on? When it feels difficult, ask for advice and help.

9 – Your child might answer you in the “wrong” language

This one usually hits the minority language parent. You feel that you have done everything right and stayed consistent, and still your darling comes home from school one day and no longer answers you in your language. You will feel disappointed and disheartened if it this happens, but it is crucial that you don’t give up at this point, and that you continue to stay consistent and if possible, also increase the exposure time.

10 – Your children will gain an array of benefits by becoming bilingual

If you are still in doubt about whether to bring up your children to become bilinguals or not, read about all the great benefits your children will gain if you do decide to do it. We all want what is best for our children, so why wouldn’t you support yours to have the wonderful gift of speaking more than one language?

11 – You will never regret it

I can assure you, you will not regret your decision to stick with it and make sure that your children grow up to speak all the family languages. On the other hand, I have heard several parents who are sad that they gave up on passing on their languages – not to mention the many adults expressing their disappointment that they were not taught a language their mother or father knew when they were small.

12 – You will be proud

You will be immensely proud when your children for the first time speak to their grandparents or other relatives in “their” language. I can assure you that the feeling is absolutely wonderful. Not only will you be proud, so will your children and the rest of your family. You will also be a great role model to other families.

May the peace and power be with you.

So your child has started talking and you find yourself saying ‘What’s that?’ A lot. Sometimes you get an answer, sometimes you don’t. Sometimes you child looks at you with a puzzled expression on their face. To find out why this isn’t the best way to build your child’s language or have a conversation with them, try this quick experiment.

What’s that?

What’s that?

What’s that?

Last one! What’s that?

So I’m hoping you had some trouble naming the things in the pictures precisely using one word! That’s what it’s like for children when we say ‘What’s that?‘ It tests their knowledge. It can feel confusing and uncomfortable. Like we know an answer is required but we can’t answer. And we’re not sure which bit of the picture are we supposed to have a name for.

That’s the problem with that innocent-sounding question ‘What’s that?‘ It’s not a genuine question because for a question to be really authentic, we’re not supposed to know the answer! Otherwise, what’s the point in asking? It doesn’t help language development either because it’s testing not teaching. And it kills conversation. When you ask this question, it’s probably not clear to your child what exactly you’re talking about. Think of the last picture- was it the honeycomb or that wooden thing that you tried to name? You knew it had something to do with honey but what exactly is it called?

So, what’s a more helpful thing to say? Let’s look at those pictures again but this time, I’m saying what the thing in the picture is and not asking you ‘What’s that?’

It’s a gong from a Buddhist temple.

It’s a partial solar eclipse.

It’s the roof of a Buddhist monastery.

It’s a honey dipper.

So instead of a question that tests your child’s knowledge and stops conversation, try a comment where you name what your child is looking at.

Instead of ‘What’s that?’ Try ‘Hello birdie’. or ‘ It’s a cloud.‘

For learning nouns or the names of things, this is the best way to build your child’s noun vocabulary. You need what’s called joint attention where your saying the name of the object follows your child’s focus on the object. Like in this photo where the father and little girl are both looking in the same direction and pointing together:

He might be saying something like: big cloud or fluffy cloud. They’re also at the same level physically.

It doesn’t work when we draw their attention to something that we’re looking at and they aren’t. See in the next photo how she’s pointing and looking at something while the boy’s attention and focus is elsewhere? That’s how not to do it.

So there you have it! To build noun vocabulary, you need to be looking at the same thing together. Then you say the name of the thing- that’s your turn. One way children develop language is through imitating what they hear around them so instead of testing them, you can ‘teach’ them the words instead. Turn your questions into comments!

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Let’s get talking!

For the last four weeks I have written articles on different family language strategies: one parent/person, one language (OPOL), minority language at home (mL@H), time and place (T&P) and two parents, two languages (2P2L) and today’s question is: Do you HAVE to have a family language strategy to successfully bring up bilingual children?

The answer is of course ‘no!’ – kids grow up learning more than one language all over the world without their parents having given the slightest thought to how it will happen. I am one of these children – I know my mother and father never sat down to discuss what language strategy they should use for my brother and myself. In spite of that, we both became fluent in two languages and a dialect while growing up. Why am I then spending so much time writing and talking about the importance of having a plan?

If the circumstances are right, children will naturally grow up learning two, three or even more languages.

So what are these “right circumstances”?

1. Enough and varied exposure to all the languages

There are no hard and fast rules as how much exposure is “enough”. It depends on several factors: quality of exposure (interactive vs. one-way), fluency expectation (basic to academic) and personality (how talkative a person is), to mention a few. If the exposure time to a certain language is less than twenty percent of a child’s waking time, the child may become a receptive bilingual, i.e. can understand but cannot or is unwilling to speak the language.

2. Wanting and needing to speak the languages

If a child does not feel the need to speak a language or of some reason does not want to use it (see this post for reasons why your child might be reluctant to speak), then even a high amount of exposure may not be enough to make the child an active speaker of the language.

3. Opportunities to speak the languages

If the family lives in a multilingual community, where both (or all) family languages are common, this will give the child many more opportunities to speak all the languages on a daily, or at least weekly, basis. Of course, these chances to use the language can also be arranged with the help of extended family and friends, but in any case, “use it or lose it” is very much the case for maintaining a language skill. Children who have had a nanny who spoke a different (minority) language than the parents, may have learnt to speak it, but if later on they do not have any other people to use it with, they will most likely struggle to keep the language going. Should they want to “relearn” it, they will however pick it up much quicker than those who start from scratch.

4. Positive attitude to different languages and cultures

A favourable sentiment towards multilingualism and multiculturalism both within the family itself and the surrounding community has a significant positive influence on a child’s willingness and motivation to learn a language. Parents should act as role models for championing the use of the family languages.

5. Parental confidence and belief in language learning

For a child to grow up learning the family languages, it is important that the parents feel confident about passing on their languages, and that they think it is possible to do. “Whether you think you can or you can’t, you are right!”

If all the above main components of the “right language environment” for growing up bilingual are present, the odds of a child successfully acquiring the family languages are good, and choosing a family language strategy may not be essential.

However, if there is less exposure to a certain language, and one or more of the other criteria are not met, I would recommend setting up a Family Language Plan. You may have to make some bigger changes to how languages are used in the family, or just a few tweaks might be enough to give your little one a better chance of growing up bilingual, and improve the odds for you giving your child a gift that keeps on giving!

Yes, I am stating the obvious – of course, all parents need patience! As a mother or father of a bilingual child, there will however be times when you need an extra helping of this specific virtue. By applying lots of patience, you will succeed in keeping the family languages alive!

Good character is not formed in a week or a month. It is created little by little, day by day. Protracted and patient effort is needed to develop good character.
– Heraclitus

When your family starts on the journey of raising a bilingual child, be prepared to be in it for the long haul. To start with, you may have to wait longer than you thought before your little one utters the first word in your language. Keep on talking – a lot and about anything. Keep on reading those books until you know them all by heart, and beyond. Keep on having fun together in your language. Don’t despair, the words will follow and they will be music to your ears when they do!

Patience is necessary, and one cannot reap immediately where one has sown.
– Søren Kierkegaard

You may even feel that it is taking far too long for your child to start to say anything – and you worry that all those comments about delayed language development for bilingual children are true after all. They are not. Bilingualism does not cause language delay. The age at which children start to speak are very different, independent of whether they learn one or more languages. The learning process of a bilingual child is not identical with that of a monolingual and thus should not be compared, nor tested using criteria for those who speak only one language. On average, by the age of five, bilingual children are at the same level as monolinguals in all their languages – providing, of course, that they have had enough exposure to all of them. If you are concerned and feel that your child does not understand what is said in any language, speak to a specialist with experience of bilingual children. Also check that there are no issues with your child’s hearing.

Patience is not simply the ability to wait – it’s how we behave while we’re waiting.
– Joyce Meyer

Initially you may have to patiently wait for the first words. Next, you will be waiting for the two-word sentence and then a full long sentence … and then come all the questions! Soon enough your child will be testing your patience by a never-ending array of inquiries about anything and everything. Please do answer them – if you do not know the answer, say so, and then look up the answer together. Especially for a minority language, it is so important that you build up an extensive vocabulary by talking about different topics together.

Our patience will achieve more than our force.
– Edmund Burke

One of the greatest test to your patience is the situation where your child – who may have been happily speaking your language for some years – decides to answer you in the “wrong” language. Now your patience and persistence is needed more than ever. Keep on speaking your language even if you child does not. It is crucially important that you do not change your language at this point. It may feel a bit strange to be speaking in different languages, but ignore those feelings and carry on as normal. The quote above is spot on: you may try to force your child to speak your language, and you may even be successful for a while, but by being patient, increasing the motivation to speak and creating situations where the language is needed you will achieve a much more positive and lasting outcome.