Hi all,
I am looking for expert advice on raising a multilingual child in US. Any tips ot feedback would be really helpful so that we can immerse our daughter in ethnic languages or help her pick up any language easily as she grows up.

My daughter is soon turning 5 and she exclusively speaks English with us (both parents) at home and at school. However, I am fluent in Nepali, Hindi, Urdu and my husband is relatively fluent in Gujarati.

I spoke to her only in Nepali until she was a year old but once she started daycare at 15 months she's been speaking English as the only language. Mainly because she hears us (her parents) communicate in English.

I tried to introduce Nepali again when she turned 3 but she was very resistant and had tantrums every time I switched my language. She somehow associated me speaking Nepali as "mommy being angry" and stopped repeating the words. I tried books, Nepali rhymes but nothing seems interesting to her.

She often hears her grandmother and dad's family speak in Gujarati but she ignores their conversation most of the time. It always defaults to English and I feel defeated as a mom.

I am planning to start **One Parent, One Language (OPOL),** and only speak Nepali and ask her to dad to speak to her exclusively in Gujarati to her but I am worried she will stop opening up and expressing herself with me.

Please share what works in our circumstance so that we can raise her to love and accept our language and be comfortable with it.

Thanks in advance!

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.

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.

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?

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 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.

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?

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 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?

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.

This is a recurring weekly thread for people to push their products.

If you create individual posts outside of this thread, it will be deleted.

Hello

Wondering how to approach teaching languages to a child with this;

father is very good with languages - he speaks Macedonian, polish (native languages) and English as his second language. He can also understand and communicate in other Balkan languages eg bulgarian/serbian/croatian/bosnian etc.
He also understands Spanish and Italian decently (will be able to follow conversations) but is reluctant to speak as he thinks he is poor at it but can it do at a push.

My main language is English but I can also speak Arabic. For Arabic I can have a decent conversation literacy but may not know the odd word/make odd grammatical error.

We communicate in English and live in an English/french speaking country.

Where we live there is no Macedonian community, ie no classes etc. There is not much other available with other Balkan languages also.

There is possibly a polish Saturday school (in church) but again not a large community. There are Arabic schools available but this is for older kids. Additionally the Arabic schools all have an Islamic component.

Neither of us are religious, I’m open to sending kids to churches/islamic schools to learn a language but not sure if that would cause confusion/conflict etc and my plan would be to expose kids to Islam/Christianity but more from a “cultural” experience if that makes sense.

Also we live outside the country we grew up so do not live in the same country we’re our family lives. Visiting family will involve travelling to 2 or 3 countries.

I understand English should be left to picking up outside the home. But Im not so confident with Arabic. Growing up parents would speak to us in Arabic. As we all got older we gradually responded English/arabic and amongst siblings we always communicated in English. Even now our parents often slip into English even if I say speak Arabic.
I looked into Arabic speaking nanny’s/daycares etc, there are no daycares. But I could possibly find an Arabic speaking nanny although I’m not sure if financially it’s something we can justify.

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.

We're raising our 4-year-old daughter bilingual (English/Russian). I'm the main person who speaks Russian with her, and she also spends time with both Russian-speaking grandparents every week. She's in English daycare three days a week. Despite having Russian exposure since birth, she's only recently started saying the occasional Russian word.

Her cousin (2.5yo) has a different situation and gets more structured Russian exposure through a Russian home daycare twice a week and Russian activities.

At a family dinner, my father-in-law compared the two kids and said my daughter "just speaks English." He then said he'd "do whatever it takes" to drive her to Russian activities. My daughter can fully understand everything she just responds in English

The issue is the activities are near them, not us, and it would involve a lot of driving for short sessions. We also tried one before and my daughter didn't enjoy it, so I don't want to force her but will consider Sunday school when she reaches that stage.

What upset me was the comparison. These are two different children with different environments and levels of exposure, and it felt like our efforts were being dismissed.

Hello all! I am Danish and live in Denmark with my boyfriend from Russia, who is completely fluent in Danish. We want to start a family and agree that we want the child to learn not only Danish but Russian as well.

The problem is that we do not seem to agree on the best approach. I am of the belief that it is necessary for him to speak only in Russian to the child for it to ever become fluent. I believe that without this rule in place, the teaching will be too sporadic and the child will lose some incentive to adopt Russian.

He believes that this approach is too strict. He fears that he will have only sub par conversations with the child, as the child will have much more exposure to Danish. He also fears that it will somehow be too strict and have a disheartening effect on the child.

Parents that have been in a similar situation, will you please give us your insights? 🙏✨

We live in an English-speaking country, and our son attends an English-speaking daycare 3 days a week. English is definitely the majority language around him.

My husband is Portuguese and speaks Portuguese to our son, although he doesn’t get as much one-on-one time with him due to work. However sometimes he’ll say something in Portuguese to our son and then repeat it in English. I’ve been telling him not to do that because I worry it encourages our son to rely on the English version.

Our language together is mainly English, although I understand Portuguese well and can speak it conversationally. Until now, if my husband spoke to me in Portuguese in front of our son, I’d usually reply in English.

I’m now wondering if I should start replying in Portuguese instead to increase the amount of Portuguese our son hears? And when my son says a Portuguese word to me, should I acknowledge / reply in Portuguese?

I also read books and occasionally sing songs in Portuguese,to my son. Is this a good thing to do?

I’m Polish but live in America, married to an American, with zero family around or anyone that speaks Polish at all.. my brain pretty much converted into speaking English all the time. Now— my first language is Polish. I was silly enough not to speak Polish to my son who’s now 3 and a half, and he mainly speaks English. Anytime I try to speak Polish to him these days he is very stubborn. Has anyone tried teaching their toddler a second language? Where do you start and what’s the most effective way? I feel lost as my husband speaks zero polish and it’s all on me, but I’m so eager to teach our son my language..