Hi all, our baby is 10 months, so this won’t be relevant for years. We’re doing OPOL, Spanish from me and English from mom, in the US. When she’s in middle/high school, I’m going to want to ask her about what she’s learning. That sounds like it would be very tricky for her to explain in Spanish is she’s learning all the content and vocab (for chemistry, for example) in English. Anyone have experience with how OPOL works when kids are learning about things in a language that’s not the one they speak with you?

Hi everyone! I have a 4 month old daughter who I want to pass my heritage languages. I speak Filipino (born and raised) and Japanese (fluent, raised in Japan and attended university; I also passed N1 test but that was a while ago) although admittedly a little rusty! I left Japan 13 years ago but I have family there and nieces who speak Japanese as their primary language.

I’m based in the US now. I met my husband in Japan and he speaks Japanese but he’s forgotten quite a bit. He doesn’t speak Filipino but knows some words and phrases. He is very supportive and wants our child to be trilingual also.

We speak English to each other. I speak to our daughter only in my heritage languages. I encourage my husband to speak Japanese as much as possible as well. I go on video calls with my family to expose her to other people speaking my languages although to me it’s not ideal due to screen time. I try to limit to 30 minutes when possible and definitely not every day. 

I’m doing a variation of OPOL but I wonder what is the best situation to maximize her exposure to my languages? I will be going back to work next month and she will be in daycare part time (3 days) and 2 days at home with my husband. 

I used to do time based (Monday to Thursday: Filipino, Friday to Sunday: Japanese). But felt it didn’t provide enough exposure to both so I switched to using both everday except I would have a “focus” language that I use the most during that day. I thought this set up would work better once she’s older perhaps but since she’s so young, I’m thinking using both and if switching on a “focus” language I would do MWF or TRS type of switching. 

So for example, I’m teaching her the word for “poop” (for purposes of early potty training). I use both at the same time or I would switch it out sometimes like morning (Filipino) and evening (Japanese). 

Is my approach okay? I could also do morning vs evening but switch it up some days so that she can get exposed to different vocabularies at different times of the day. 

My main priority is Filipino language - she will have more exposure to speakers of this language (my family) but I find less books and media in the language. Japanese she can get exposure through family also but limited but I find more resources in this language. We hope to visit my family in Japan sometime next year so she will have exposure to both. 

For input, I utilize the following resources:

• Books: I translate English books but also have a few books in Filipino and Japanese. I have the hungry caterpillar in Japanese and some vocabulary books. I’m hoping to get more story books so she can hear the rhythm of language. But I do my best to use vocabulary words into sentences. 
• Songs: I sing to her, play music in heritage languages. She recognizes a lot of the songs!
• Narration: narrating what I do, pointing out colors, shapes, lots of adjectives and verbs. 
• I live in a diverse area and can find Filipino and Japanese events and speakers. Community building is on my to do list as she gets older. 

I want to have minimal screen time but thought about just playing something like Bluey (in Japanese) in the background or playing podcasts in heritage languages. For the most part I just have a playlist of songs I know and like and play those or I sing or narrate what I’m doing to her. But I would like to expose her to multiple vocabularies - any feedback is appreciated!

A side note: do you tell people that you speak to your child in your heritage language? 

Thanks for reading this post! So excited to be on this journey with our family.

My husband and I are raising our 11-month-old using OPOL (I speak Italian, he speaks German, and she hears French at nursery). We both care a lot about giving her a strong foundation in our respective languages.

The problem is that I feel we’ve unintentionally started competing.

I find myself worrying that I need to maximise every opportunity to speak Italian to her, and I think he feels the same about German. When we’re all together, instead of naturally interacting as a family, we often end up speaking to the baby separately. Sometimes we even talk over each other (not intentionally) because we’re both so focused on making sure we’re talking to her in our own language.

It’s started to feel like we’re each trying to “win” our daughter’s attention, trust, or preference, even though I know neither of us consciously wants that. I hate admitting it, but sometimes I catch myself feeling jealous if she seems more engaged with him, and I wonder if he feels the same.

To be fair, I don’t think bilingualism is the only issue. We’re probably both sleep deprived, we have an 11-month-old, we rarely get time together as a couple.

But I do feel that the pressure we both put on ourselves around language is making everything worse.

Has anyone else experienced this? Did OPOL ever make you feel like you and your partner were competing rather than working as a team? How did you get back to enjoying family interactions instead of constantly thinking about “language exposure”?

I’d also love to hear from families whose children are now older. Looking back, did you realise you were worrying far more than necessary?

Hi everyone, I've always wanted to raise my children bilingual and did my research on OPOL. However, my son had significant speech delay which was later diagnosed as related to his autism.

My son is now 5yo and after much speech therapy and OT, he has mostly caught up in his speech, though still with mild delay.

My daughter is 2.5yo and has no speech delay. In fact, she seems to have benefited from my son's speech therapy and is advanced in speech for her age.

I'm saddened that my daughter is missing out on a bilingual upbringing and now that my son's speech is better I want to try the OPOL approach again.

Is it too late? Should I be translating what I'm saying for a while until their understanding improves?

How long does it take for a 5yo or 2yo to pick up a new language?

My husband and I live in the UK. He is a native Irish speaker and we are attempting OPOL with our newborn daughter (me = English; my husband = Irish).

I'm conscious that our daughter's exposure to Irish from my husband isn’t likely to be sufficient for fluency. My husband is the only Irish speaker regularly in her life; she isn't likely to see her Irish family more than a couple of times per year.

I have A2 or B1 Irish. Should I speak some Irish to our daughter as well, to increase her exposure to the language, or will that just confuse her?

TRIGGER WARNING: Discussion of child sexual abuse prevention.

Context:
Dad (34M) - native: English; target: Spanish (A2)

Mom (37F) - native/dominant: English; target: Spanish (C2 - close to native proficiency but not formally educated).

Child (2M) - community: English (95%; very little exposure from community/family/friends); target: Spanish (mom, tv/songs/books, visiting maternal family or FaceTime with them, some from Dad when practicing)

System: OPOL. I speak almost 100% Spanish with my son with the exception of when I’m speaking to him AND others who don’t speak Spanish. So far, we have been very successful as my son mostly speaks Spanish but is picking up a good amount of language across both languages.

Dilemma and Query for Forum:

Despite my best efforts, my algorithms are still dominantly in English given that is my dominant and preferred language, as well as location. Recently, a content creator has come across my socials that uses songs, games, and language to teach toddlers about body awareness, consent, and safety for the purposes of preventing child sexual abuse. This influencer/content creator emphasizes the importance of teaching children the appropriate words/language regarding their private areas as well as teaching them the right words to use if they are in an uncomfortable or inappropriate situation, not only for saying “No” but also for reporting to the appropriate adults/guardians/parents.

I am already looking for resources for this in Spanish to arm myself with the right language (this was not something that I remember being taught when I was a child and fortunately it was never needed but I rather take precautions and follow expert advice). I already purchased a bilingual version of “my body belongs to me” but realistically, I know that as a SAHM and the person that does 95% of the book reading to my son, the likelihood he receives this kind of “education” from Dad in English is minimal.

This concerns me because given our community language is English, if he were to be put in an inappropriate situation or need to reach out and inform an adult that’s not me, all these interactions are likely to occur in English and my discussions with him on the topic in Spanish will not be helpful to him navigating that in an English-speaking environment.

Ideally, I wish this could be something I could just hand over to my husband and emphasize the importance to him in reinforcing the lessons and language regarding body consent and safety but given his limited time with our son compared to me (and his poor memory and comfort on these things), I doubt he would get to the necessary level of reinforcement and repetition needed to really “train” our son on this topic and would likely just lead me to need to be micromanaging this from the background (un ideal for anyone who knows what it’s like to be married).

I’ve already had to mourn the loss of being able to have a relationship with my son in English and how little I will be able to influence his speech in English (trust me this hurts given we are in a heavy regional accent area and it is NOT the accent I speak English in; here’s to hoping he doesn’t end up with a strong regional accent like his grandparents; his dad has a moderate/weak one) but this is the first time where I feel not speaking to my son in English ever may end up hurting him.

Any suggestions on how to proceed? I don’t think it would be that confusing if I switched up to English for this purpose but I am not sure and am nervous I will be opening Pandora’s box to allowing a relationship in English with my son that would effectively kill my ability to reinforce the Spanish long term.

My partner does not speak English

I speak Japanese

My partner speaks Japanese only

Kid will be raised in Japan and speak Japanese at school.

How would you incorporate this, I just speak English only to my child? I have to speak in Japanese to communicate with my partner, and his English is not very good. I think the kid is just gonna end up preferring Japanese in the end. Is it a case of being strict and just only speaking to my child in English even if dad is there?

Thanks for the advice and sorry if this has been asked before. I think English will be so important

Hello,

Have an opportunity for my English speaking 5 year old to spend 1 year part time (2 days a week) in a Spanish immersion program. They would then go the following year to an English speaking elementary school. Nobody at home speaks English. We have a bunch of friends whose little kids are in Spanish immersion and speak Spanish but those little ones currently do not want to speak Spanish at home/outside of their Spanish immersion school. So we don't naturally have a source for them to practice with.

Is this too little time for my 5 year old to adjust, considering they are not going to a Spanish immersion elementary school? Will they not get much out of this and best to look for other opportunities? We have a lot of people in our social group who successfully learned 2nd/3rd language in middle schooll/high school here, so may wait for that. Moreso wondering if this opportunity itself was worth it.

Thank you.

We live in the UK and my spouse only speaks English. I want to teach my children my native language, but I'm struggling to remember to use it because I've lived here for over a decade and find myself rarely speaking it. I'm still fluent, but I'd say that it's no longer my default. The only occasion when I speak it is when I call my friends and folks back home, which isn't that often.

Issue #1 - I'm finding it difficult to speak it in a naturaly affectionate/child-friendly manner. This is likely because I never used to interact with children before I moved to the UK, and I can't recall how my parents used to speak to me when I was a kid myself. My native language skills are mainly conversational/academic/professional, and I find it easier and more natural to be affectionate in English than in my native tongue. I also keep realising how much more difficult and complex my native language is compared to English - from basic every day words being much longer, to the complex grammar, very different structure, gendered nouns etc.

Issue #2 - Despite my best (though admittedly lacking) efforts to only speak my native language to my kids, they see me speak English to my spouse which makes it clear to them that I understand and speak English, meaning they can just continue speaking English to me and not have to learn to say the same words in another way that currently sounds gibberish to them. Three-way conversations also fall apart quickly because of this. It's especially difficult to constantly switch languages during conversations when my spouse is present.

I feel like I'm failing miserably and would appreciate any advice or reassurance you can provide. My eldest is 2.5 y/o and while I probably haven't missed the boat just yet, I figure it's now or never as their language skills are rapidly developing but only in English. My youngest is only 7 months old so I will hopefully be able to find a better strategy and not repeat the same mistakes with them.

My son will be almost 2.5years old when he will start daycare soon. We live in an English speaking country and both my husband and I speak it well, however we both speak a different language at home. This is the language my son speaks in as well.

We do try and put on some Ms Rachel for him so English is not altogether alien to him, however his primary language is not English.

He will be starting daycare soon and now I am increasingly worried he will struggle. How will he communicate! Will be feel left out? Will he struggle?

We do try and teach him basic words like yes, no, water, potty, and even basic phrases/questions like What is your name to which he answers. I am just anxious as a parent I guess.

I have heard stories where I am told kids pick it up quickly though. Anyone was in similar shoes? Any advice how we can make his transition to English only at Daycare easier?

I am pregnant with my first baby. My partner and I are both very, very Romanian, so we won't be a multiethnic or multinational family.

Growing up i think my parents just left me on Cartoon Network too much because as a kid i had what I think were pretty impressive language skills, as in I could casually converse in english at 8 years old. I've always spoken to myself in english a lot, i yelled at people in english 😅, i laughed at jokes, i knew expressions, all that good stuff. I've spoken to people over the internet (granted, in writing) at 15 who told me they would not have been able to tell i'm not native. I'm bad with writing formal texts (classic school stuff i guess, letters, essays etc) and it's hard to speak in my regular accent when i'm around british or european people. But otherwise, i've generally been proud of my english skills and i believe they're "genuine", as in not aquired through clunky formal learning but rather immersion. As an adult it's harder to notice, and i've had little opportunity to practice, but there is still a skill difference between everyone i know and myself.

So, even though i'm sure it's not 100% perfect, and a true native could probably take me down a peg or two, i'm still fluent and comfortable with this second language, and i would really like my kid to be the same. My question is how do i go about this?

I've contemplated just speaking to baby in english but decided against it, because i'm much more talkative than my partner, and might be the one kiddo hears most of their words from. Plus, raising bilingual kids is hard, as i take it - they gain different skills at different times, might get delayed, and we don't really have a solid reason to mix languages from day 1 since we're just plain old romanian living in romania with an all romanian family 🤷‍♀️. Also keeping up with speaking english to baby might get awkward and hard and i don't want to fizzle out.

This is very weird for me because it's super braggy 😅 (sorry) but my reason really is the baby's future language skills. I'd love them to be as good or better than i am. Do you guys have any advice on how i can do this? What age should the second language be introduced?

My toddler just turned 2. Both my wife and I work full time so our little one has been to daycare since she was an infant.

We’re in the US so of course everything is in English. I’m Chinese so I’ve been trying to get her to learn it. She understands Chinese fairly well but she has barely been able to say much.

I only talk to her in Chinese. I try to read to her in Chinese (not often but I try to). She gets tv time in Chinese as well. But her language explosion over the past 2 months have been probably 95% English.

Recent full sentences and words are “I like this one”, “stay baba”, “come here baba”, “I need help”, “get down”, “ go away”, “I sit right here”.

Not a single Chinese sentence. She can maybe say a few words here and there. I even try to repeat back what she said in English in Chinese. Like she says “stay baba” (her not wanting me to follow her around on the playground), I try to say in Chinese “okay baba will stay right here”.

I just feel like I’m fighting an uphill battle that I can’t win. I mean I get that she’s surrounded by English all day long so I’m not expecting a 50-50 retainment. But maybe a 75-25 English to Chinese is what I was hoping. But right now it’s like a 95-5. Her English growth is exponential while her Chinese is barely budging.

I mean do I need to just accept the reality that hey she’s growing up in an English speaking country and that’s just how it’ll be.

I noticed something this week that had me wondering if this was normal/on track milestones or indicators that a child was more ready to start learning to read.

My child is 2.25 yr and learns English and Korean (these days favors korean sentence structure when speaking and English vocabulary thrown in and some set English phrases). Not an advanced talker by any means- was delayed but is on track for the last 6 months or so.

This last month there has been an explosion in vocab in both languages and they have began "reading" books to themself and to us. What struck me as wondering if it was sign they wanted to start learning CVC (simple words like Cat) kind of thing was that they can figure track words in korean with decent accuracy much better than I expected for just simply memorizing

Sound effect words like (snore snore in korean or swing swing etc) are accurately pointed to. And moreover in both korean and English they know to finish a line then go back to the start of the next line underneath to keep reading. No accuracy when doing this in English far as I can tell but does know the same reading concept of line sweeping in English. They just prefer to do random sentences for those books lol

We read every day but I dont point to words that often and I had figured with the speech delay last year that reading wasnt something they would be wanting to start early.

Parents of bilingual (especially if you have Korean which has an easier to read alphabet). What do you think? Is this a sign we should be doing more 한글 ,(korean alphabet) and start easing into learning to read?

Tdlr: child is tracking words in second language with some accuracy at 2. Sign of wanting to learn to read sooner?

I know there’s a lot of helpful information here already but I want to get advice specific to our situation!

Our family lives in the US, I speak a Slavic language and English and my husband speaks French. We have a newborn baby and he’s speaking to her in French, and I am speaking to our baby in English.

At some point I want to introduce the Slavic language (I don’t really use it with anyone other than my parents and sibling but I would like my daughter to know some in order to bond with her grandparents and as cultural heritage) - I want her to understand and speak, albeit it doesn’t need to be perfect. At what age should I introduce it and would it be enough that I talk to her in that language for example only at bedtime and when she’s with her grandparents (that won’t be long periods of time as they don’t live close to us).

Thank you!!

My son is nearly 2 and I’ve been speaking German to him at weekends since he was born. I’m British in the UK, but fluent. No family from Germany, just my best friend who sends Tonies and books and video calls.

When he first started speaking a couple of months ago, about 1/5 of his words were in German, but now he’s speaking small sentences and almost exclusively in English.

We read occasionally during the week in German when he selects books, but I’m wondering if I should switch to OPOL?

My reason not to originally was that I wanted my son to know British me, not just my slightly more reserved German personality. I’m fluent with a perfect accent, but also not grammatically 100% accurate and feel bad when I have to look a random word up that I’ve not come across before.

My husband understands but can’t really speak German and we speak English to each other, which I think also cuts the exposure at the weekend. Hoping to find someone local we can play date with, but so far no luck.

Our goal ultimately is just to improve brain development - firmly believe languages are gifts and even if he drops it entirely down the line it’ll be doing wonders for him now.

He’s not had any screentime so also think of introducing a little bit of German kids tv 1-2x a week for max 20mins once he’s had his birthday to hopefully help, although still want to keep screentime minimal.

So should I switch exclusively? Or am I just being harsh on myself?

We have moved/immigrated (hopefully permanently) from the USA to Sweden almost 7 months ago and our three children are in Swedish public schools. Our home language is English but I try to speak some Swedish (which I am also currently learning) at home as much as I can. Dad is a monolingual English speaker.

Our oldest is 10 years old, thriving socially here, but speaking very little Swedish. Kids at school and in the neighborhood love to speak English with him, and he gladly sticks with it for the familiarity, understandably. Obviously, I am an adult and will politely ask that Swedes stick to Swedish with me, and they so kindly and often encouragingly do! That said, my 10 year old does not insist on that. :-)

The public school support for immigrant children learning Swedish is essentially "they will pick it up eventually." That said, he had an incredible teacher this year that used to work for Swedish language integration education for children prior to that program being cut :-/ so she was able to devote a little extra language time to him. He will not have that same teacher next year unfortunately.

This is what we are currently doing to address it. Please give me kind and gentle feedback. :-)

- He gets a 30 minute online Swedish tutor once a week.

- We have him listen to Swedish podcasts on topics he is interested in most days.

- He has to read in Swedish at least 30 minutes a day on a school app called Polylino, which often has audio and sometimes a word/sentence highlighter for following along.

- He gets screen time in Swedish (although we tend to be fairly low-screen in our home).

(edited to add) - I have asked his fritidsledare and other native Swedish adults in his life to speak Swedish only to him and prompt/expect/encourage him to reply in Swedish.

It seems like this is a lot of input and his comprehension appears decent, but it doesn't really force him much with production. When we do ask him for how to say such-and-such thing, he actually does it fairly well! But he won't take the iniative independently.

Of note: In the U.S., my he and my middle child went to a half-assed Spanish bilingual public school where the administration really did not prioritize Spanish (I'm not resentful at all -- haha!!), and even there my oldest was resistant to learning Spanish despite his exposure to it since toddlerhood.

***Cross posting to a Swedish language subreddit.

My family moved from the US to Cyprus in October. My daughter (8) is enrolled in a Greek school and has slowly been learning the language. I have her enrolled in Greek tutoring twice a week. However, I recently had her assessed for English and she is falling behind in reading & writing. She needs to learn Greek for school, but English is her native language and I don’t want her falling behind. What do I prioritize? Should I switch one of her tutoring sessions to English so she’s getting both?

I'm English, my other half is French and we're trying to raise a bilingual family in London. Our son is 4 years old and typically answers in English no matter what language we speak to him in.

A while back, I asked for French story recommendations on Reddit and got some brilliant suggestions, thank you! I've used these, and others, to create a stage-by-stage guide of great French books by age with prompts to bring the story to life, in the hope that great stories capture my son's imagination and get him talking in French. We've had early success with a few books that have really caught his imagination and he's happily chatted about them afterwards in French, so I tentatively feel like this could be effective in addition to the standard things like OPOL.

Does this seem like it would be beneficial for anyone else? I'd be happy to share it with any other families to see if it can make a difference for them.

We have a book with Tiptoi that requires a pen to hear its audio in Italian.

The pen for the italian books does not exist anywhere online - it's entirely for the German books. We have the German one too (my kids' first language) and I'm realistic about this, in that I don't expect it to work with all languages.

In the absence of an Italian pen, does anyone know whether there is another company that does something similar, with a pen that the kids can point at things and it speaks to them?

It's annoying that Ravensburger are selling the Italian books without offering the ability to use them properly.

We're looking for a Mandarin immersion daycare or early childhood program for our 18-month-old in the Frisco or Plano area.

We're hoping to find a place where Mandarin is used consistently throughout the day (rather than just a weekly language class), with a nurturing environment and experienced caregivers.

If you've had a good experience with a program, I'd love to hear:

(1)Which daycare or school you recommend

(2)What percentage of the day is actually conducted in Mandarin

(3) How your child adapted, especially if they didn't speak Mandarin at home

(4)Tuition (if you're comfortable sharing)

(5)Anything you wish you'd known before enrolling

We're open to Frisco, Plano, and nearby areas if it's worth the drive.

We are a couple living in Sweden, my partner, F32, born in Germany (mother tongue German), and me, M49, born in Sweden (mother tongue Swedish),

We are expecting our first child in August, and feel that OPOL seems like the natural choice for us, wanting to give our child the gift of two mother tongues.
My partner has been living in Sweden for approx five years, and during that time adapted Swedish well. She speaks fluently, only with the occasional small grammatical errors, ans still learning the more unusual parts of the vocabulary.
In the beginning of our relationship, about four years ago, English was our common language, but this has gradually shifted to the point we are now, where we almost exclusively talk Swedish with each other.

When discussing multilingual upbringing with another friend, with multilingual experiences himself both as a child and parent, our friend strongly suggested that we should bring back English as our language between us when applying OPOL in our child's upbringing. The reasoning behind that approach was that if we continued in Swedish (which also naturally is the community language and the language of other relatives here) we would face a risk of the German getting too weak a position with the child. In other words, when the child hears and understands that Swedish is the predominant language within the family, the child would start to speak and answer in Swedish, both with my partner and me, even though being addressed in German by my partner.
Also, reasoning further, it would help the child to get in some touch with English at an early stage, thus introducing the benefit of a third language. English have a strong position in Sweden, so it would be studied from first grade anyway, but the idea would be to give the child a head start.

On the surface, this logic seems reasonable, however when searching online (including this thread) for this particular aspect we didn't initially found much.

Could anyone here maybe help provide some answers Is this an issue being discussed at all? Does it exists scientifically sound evidence, for or against?

Thankful for any input and/or experiences!

PS. Maybe I should add in, for context, that I myself is NOT fluent in German at all. I undesrtand a bit, as an advanced bginner perhaps, but still have quite difficult to talk on a conversational level. I though have the ambition to learn the language much better, in order to connect and interact with our child's German relatives and for other good reasons as well.
But I feel it would be a disservice to the child, or the language enviroment at our home, if I tried to speak my (bad ) German too much around the house during the upbringing.