1. Make your children guardians of the language

If you have a hard time remembering to speak your language, then put your children in charge of it. Children LOVE to keep track of their parents. It will be even more effective if they get a treat of some kind if you slip up. Be careful what you promise, though, you don’t want them to have a sugar rush, watch TV for three hours or go to sleep one hour later on the first day of your challenge!

2. Place reminders in strategic places

Place notes for yourself in the prominent places which you will inevitably see them. This could be on the door to your child’s room, on the fridge or on your bedside table. Use simple post-it notes or get a blank fridge magnet to personalise the message for yourself. What I have noticed though, is that you have to change these at regular intervals as you very soon don’t see something that is there all the time!

3. Change your phone and computer operating language

By setting your devices to operate in your language, it will be “in your face” every time you use them. It will be on the top of your mind and easier to pick up when you want to say something to your little one.

4. Start your day by reading a paragraph in the minority language

Read something, whatever, in your language in the morning. Keep a book or a magazine on your bedside table and use one minute for this (come on, surely you have ONE minute!)

5. Tune your radio to a channel in your language

Radio is a great language reminder – use a clock radio as an alarm in the morning if you can find a station in your language. Alternatively use your computer to locate a station in your language through Radio Garden and leave it to play in the background.

6. Dedicate a popular toy to the language

Choose a specific toy that your child loves and make it monolingual in your language. If this meets resistance from your kid – buy a new toy that you know your little one will like to play with and introduce it as a speaker of your language. Make this “your” favourite toy to play with.

7. Make your pets monolingual in the minority language

Make it clear to your children that your gold fish, tortoise or little kitten only understands your language. This might not work well with dogs, horses, parrots and some other animals, but don’t miss the chance with any new pet you introduce to the family.

Some of this tips do require you to have a healthy dose of humour, but your kids will like you even more for it – I hope this keeps you going for a while!

As parents of bilingual children, many of us have been there: finding ourselves in a situation where others give us advise on what is best for our children when it comes to their languages, and how we should behave as a family. Sometimes we get brilliant ideas on how to succeed, but this is unfortunately not always the case, as I have seen from the many questions coming in and reading parent’s thoughts online. Below are some of the most frequent comments I have come across and suggestions on how to reply to them.

1. “Your child will get confused”

You would think that this myth would have been eradicated by now, but it isn’t, so it needs to be reiterated. Children are extremely adept at separating languages they speak with different people and will not get confused in a family with more than one language.

2. “Her speech will be delayed”

Bilingualism does not cause language delay. Older research that seemed to find a delay has been based on incorrect research methods: bilingual children were assessed based on monolingual standards and not all of their languages were taken into account. Just like with their monolingual peers, there are great differences in the pace of their language development.

3. “He will lag behind in school”

Knowing another language does not take away from your ability to learn. On the contrary, there is research that indicates that since bilinguals constantly have to suppress one (or more) of their languages, they get better at focusing and at avoiding distractions. These are abilities which are likely to contribute to a greater success in education.

4. “Two languages are too much for a small child”

The majority of the world’s population speaks more than one language. There are millions of children that are living proof of children’s ability to pick up two or more languages while they are growing up.

5. “Developmental differences? Only speak one language with your kid!”

Whether your child is on the autistic spectrum or is developmentally different in any other way, this is no reason for not raising him or her bilingual. On the contrary, it may be harmful for the child if a parent stops speaking a language the child is used to talking with them.

6. “Your language will be of no use to them!”

Any additional language is useful and a family language is particularly beneficial for a child. A language is not only a means of communication, but a route to embracing another culture. Knowing the family language gives a bilingual child confidence and helps them explore their background and understand their identity.

7. “You should concentrate on supporting them with the community language!”

While I do think it is important to learn the language of the country you live in, this does not mean that you should sacrifice a home language, both can be maintained and learned. Children will always learn the language of the surrounding community, but a home language can easily be forgotten if it is not used in everyday life.

8. “A bilingual child will not learn the majority language properly!”

Knowing a minority language does not have a negative effect on the learning of the majority language. On the contrary, having a strong foundation in any language is beneficial for learning further languages.

9. “Wait with your language until they are fluent in the language of the school!”

Children have the capacity to learn several languages at the same time. Simultaneous bilingualism is a common way to learn languages, so there is no need to wait for a child to be fluent in one language before introducing another, especially not a language which the child will have plenty of exposure to. If you start with the majority language, it can actually be quite difficult to start with the minority language later on – it can be done, but as a parent you will have to put more effort in.

10. “You should speak the language of the country you live in!”

If someone tells you to only speak the language of the country you are living in, they most likely have an underlying agenda, based on a narrow-minded view of the world. More often than not, there is no way you can convince this person to change their mind, so my recommendation is to smile, move on and forget about the comment.

11. “You don’t want your kids to be different!”

If your children are growing up with more than one language, it is highly likely that they already are in one way or another not exactly the same as all other kids in their class. Don’t deprive your child of a language because you are worried they could be bullied for it – teach them to be proud of it and of the culture it represents.

12. “We will not understand what they speak!”

Some of your relatives, maybe your child’s grandparents, may we worried that they will not understand if you kid learns the minority language first. Remind them that your children will learn their language as well and that their grandchildren will have many more benefits from becoming bilingual.

Always keep in mind that you decide how you want to raise your child!

Parents who want to bring up their kids to speak the family languages can learn a lot from those families who have been successful at bringing up bilingual children. However, I also think that a great deal can be learnt from parents whose children grew up not becoming fluent in the family’s minority language. It is equally important to hear the views of monolingual adults who grew up in a multilingual family.

These are the most common reasons I have been given for a child of a multilingual family becoming either monolingual or a receptive bilingual:

1. “We didn’t really think about the languages”

This is perhaps the comment that I have heard the most often. Bilingualism does not happen by magic – unless the circumstances are ideal. In the perfect scenario, a child is consistently exposed to both (or all) family languages and interacts with several people in them. Parents who are bilingual often admit that they thought their children would just naturally grow up to speak the family languages, in the same way they did themselves, so they didn’t pay much attention to how much their children were exposed to the different languages.

Read this article about planning ahead for the bilingual upbringing of your child.

2. “We started too late”

Following from the above, when parents have noticed that their child was not learning a family language, they have decided to introduce their children to the lesser spoken language at a later stage. Other families may well have planned to raise their children to become bilingual, but of some reason or other decided to wait with the introduction of the second family language. In both cases, a change in the family language pattern is necessary – an easy thing to say, but a whole different matter to do in real life. Several parents have said that they did not have the energy to insist that their children spoke a different language with them, or that they gave up because their children were not interested.

Read this article for ways to (re)introduce your child to a family language.

3. “Our children did not want to speak our language”

Some parents state that their children did not want to speak their language at all, that the kids completely rejected the language. I find it a bit hard to believe that the resistance would have been there from day one. A child will learn the language a parent consistently speaks with him or her. The question to ask is what happened before the child started to refuse to speak the language. Was there enough interaction with the child in the language? Was speaking the language a habit in the family? Was there a positive attitude to the language and the culture it represents? Was passing on the language a real priority for the parents?

Read this article for ways of motivating your child to speak a family language and this with 40 ideas depending on the age of your child.

4. “I spoke the language when I was small, but then I forgot it”

Quite a few adult monolinguals have told me that they remember being fluent in a family language when they were small, speaking it easily with their grandparents and other relatives, but then something changed and they stopped speaking it. The thing that happened is usually that they started nursery or school. Being immersed in the majority language all day, getting more friends who only speak the majority language, wanting to be like everyone else: the nursery or school start is a crucial time for a bilingual child. At this point it is more important than ever for parents not to switch to the majority language when they speak with their child. Many of these adults also state they wished their parents had insisted on them speaking the family language.

Read this article for things to take into consideration when a bilingual child goes to nursery or school.

5. “My parents spoke the family language with each other, but not with me”

In some families maintaining the family language has been considered less important than learning the community language as soon as possible. As a result, parents have avoided speaking the minority language with their children. While understandable, especially if a family has just moved to a country, the fact is that the children will learn the community language in any case. However, if they are never spoken to in the family language they will not learn to interact in it. Be proud of your family language and culture!

Read this article about minority language at home (mL@H) and why it has proven to be effective.

6. “We were told to stick to only one language”

Despite many researches showing the opposite, many families are still given the wrong advice of dropping a family language as a solution to various speech and language related issues, or been told that bilingualism causes confusion. Unfortunately, many parents have also followed this advice and their child has missed out on the chance of becoming bilingual early on in life.

Read this article about what to do if you are advised to drop a family language.

7. “We were too busy as a family”

Lack of time is probably the most frequently used reason for not doing something, we can all admit that.  Then again, we may ask whether it is the true reason – normally we do find the time and a way to do something that is a high priority for us.

Read this article about all the benefits bilingualism brings with it.

Living in a bilingual family brings with it a lot of joy – but also some particular dilemmas, some of them funny, but quite challenging nonetheless!

How to address everyone in the family at the same time

You would think asking everyone to come and eat would be straight-forward. In a bilingual family you end up repeating yourself in all the family languages so that everyone feels personally invited!

What language to talk

We may have it all figured out within the family, but what to do when someone else joins the discussion. If the person is monolingual, then we switch accordingly – but which language to talk when the person is also bilingual? If the person is someone you don’t know, you may end up choosing the “wrong” or less preferred language – and find it extremely difficult to swap after you have started talking.

Where to spend your holiday

Should you choose the interesting city break, a sunny beach or the language immersion for your kids – it mostly it ends up being the one that will benefit your children’s minority language.

How to write a card

You are on a rare holiday on your own and want to surprise your family with a nice postcard – but which language do you write in, so that everyone feels it is for them? You end up using different languages or several cards! The same applies for holiday greeting cards that go to bilingual families. I usually end up buying a card in one language, then writing it in another.

In which language to buy a book

You find an interesting-looking book and you notice that it is a translation. You usually want to read books in the original language, if possible, but other family members who would also like to read it prefer the translation. Which one do you choose?

Translating on the fly

Your little one wants to hear a specific story, but the book you have is not in your language, so you do your best to translate it on the fly. Problem is that you do not remember exactly how you did it last time and your kid complains that you are reading it wrong, as it is not the same!

Picking the traditions to keep alive

In a family with several languages you usually also have several cultures represented, each with their own traditions. You can try to keep them all alive, but it is often a struggle so you have to compromise. We keep the ones we enjoy… and create new ones.

When to teach your kids to read and write in the home language

Should you start at the same time as your children start learning at school, should you wait or what to do? Take a cue from your kids – if they show interest, go ahead! There is no set time which is right or wrong as long as your child is keen to learn.

Choosing the name for your baby

As if selecting a name for a baby wasn’t difficult enough, add to that an array of cultural references, pronunciation issues and vastly different extended family preferences!

What about your family – which special dilemmas have you encountered?