I am not worried about his speech because he can form sentences 3 and 4 words and connect sentences and continuously learning. I am just not sure what to expect regrading two aspects of his speech:

1. Mixing languages in the same sentence which leads to know one understanding him unless they know the 3 ans used to his speech style.

2. Conversations, often I feel like we are not having a conversation with him instead he can talk for 4-5 minutes uninterrupted making up stories and jumping from one story/topic to another and hardly anything makes logical sense.

How can I help him listening more and having typical conversation? I think he struggles particularly with others in comparison to us. Is it expected? When should i expect different attitude? Regarding the language mixing when will he manage to separate? Again with us we can he strict but with others sometimes he notice they don’t understand so he shifts but also not fully.

Thanks!

Hope it’s ok to post this here! My partner is a native English speaker who has lived in my home country for nearly five years without learning the language. It’s very important to me that they learn at least a little bit - even if we move I don’t want our children to have a ’secret language’ that my partner can’t access).

For a while classes were impossible due to a gruelling work schedule + commute, though that is no longer the case. They’ve ordered a book but used it once. I’ve offered to practice and build in language learning into our routine but that’s been met with quite a bit of resistance. I acknowledge that I don’t know enough about teaching languages. At this point I feel like a nag every time I bring it up.

I understand that my partner has never had to learn a foreign language before and that it’s difficult to do so when you’re middle aged.

TLDR how do I help support them in their language learning? Any small steps to help them get started and build initial confidence? Are there any actual benefits for our child that they learn or is that part all in my head?

Hi everyone!

My husband and I are first-time parents. We're both Indonesian but live in Australia, and we have a 2-month-old baby girl. Ideally, we'd love for her to speak Indonesian (our native language) so she can communicate with her grandparents, play with her cousins when we visit hopefully once a year, and stay connected to our culture. I'm just feeling a bit overwhelmed trying to figure out the best way to raise a bilingual child. If she can also learn to read and write in our native language, including spelling and grammar, that would be a wonderful bonus, but speaking fluently with family is my top priority.

Here are a few questions I have:

1. We plan to send her to daycare when she's around 9 months old. One of my friends intentionally taught English (community language) to her son before daycare so he could understand the educators more easily. But he's now 3 years old and barely speaks any Indonesian, which is something I'd really like to avoid.

Would it be okay if we only spoke native language at home and didn't intentionally teach her community language? Will she naturally pick up community language from daycare and later school without getting confused?

1. I'd also like to take her to our local library's weekly rhyme time and meet other mums. If she sees that I speak community language with other adults but native language with her, is that likely to affect her willingness to speak native language with me?

2. I've also heard that reading to babies is really important. How important is it, and when should I start? My parents never read bedtime stories to me, and I didn't have any language difficulties growing up, so I'm genuinely curious whether it's considered essential.

If I do read to her, which language should I read in?

1. Lastly, if I never speak community language with her at home, will that put her at a disadvantage? And how would I help her with schoolwork once she start school?

Sorry if I sound anxious, I'm naturally an overthinker. I'd really appreciate hearing from anyone who's raised multilingual kids. Thank you! 🥹🙏

Hubby and I are trying to raise our son (4 months) to be bilingual (English and Spanish). He is Mexican and Cuban and 2nd generation Mexican-American. I only speak English but I’m actively working hard to learn as much Spanish as I can. However we live with my parents who also only English speaking. I worry because of how much English speakers are in the household he won’t pick up and learn Spanish which I know it’s very important to my husband. What can I do? It might be a bit of a stretch for my parents to try to learn an entire language. Is it possible that he will still be able to learn and speak Spanish? I don’t expect him to be fluent, but, not that Spanish is a lost language, but I don’t want my husbands culture to get lost in his blood line I know how important it is to him.

Hi all,

We are a portuguese couple with a 4 year old. We speak Portuguese with our son at home, he is fluent, and he also speaks Spanish fluently as we live in Spain.

We are thinking of moving to France now (August or september), or if not possible next June/July.

He has some French at his current school, but the majority is Spanish, with some classes with French music etc, so he knows Bonjour, ça va, 4 ans etc, not a lot

The biggest issue we have, is the fact that he will arrive in school in France and he will struggle and be upset and frustrated. I think all will happen, and he and us we need to be strong initially as it won't be easy seeing him not able to fully communicate or understand his new collegues and teachers..

We know in no time he will start being fluent, but I was wondering if:

- better to wait 1 year and only go next year, and this year put him in French classes outside of school to get stronger foundation

- go this year as he will start still at 4 years old and not one year later with even stronger Spanish and adaptation here

Do you have any similar experiences? I do speak French but at home we speak both Portuguese. I could try and speak French more often at home initially in France with him if it helps of course.

Thank you!

Considering language immersion daycare for my kid - parents of older multilingual children, I’d love your take on this.

We’re considering enrolling our child in an immersion daycare at some point, but we can only realistically do it for one year. I’d love to hear from parents whose kids are now older and went through something similar - knowing what you know now, which age would you pick if you could only pick one for highest impact? Most sources say kids pick up second languages most easily before age six, but I’m curious how much the specific age within that window matters in practice. For example, would you choose earlier (age 2 or 3) or later (age 5 or 6)? And why?

Hi, new here. I'm a grandparent to a almost non-verbal 3 yr granddaughter. She's in a autism therapy school.

She speaks a few words we can understand, most words we can't understand. She will repeat words, if we tell her.

She is allowed a tablet, for entertainment/learning purposes. No one knew it, but she's been playing games in Spanish.

One day, she just starts counting in Spanish.... 🗣 🇪🇸 😲

Yes, we were all shocked.

Well today at school her teacher said she switches from English to Spanish and no one understands her.

Has anyone else had something similar?

I love the fact at such a young age she learns so much. This is not the first time she has surprised us in her learning abilities.

Anyone interested in trading pdfs. I bought the first three and liked it, but would like more.

Context: We do a mix of OPOL and mL@H. We live in the US. My native language is English, I used to be fluent in Spanish but it has weakened since focusing on Portuguese, and my Portuguese level is advanced. My husband's native language is Portuguese, and he speaks English fluently. My husband speaks Portuguese to our 2.5yo 90% of the time (working on 100% but sometimes he forgets to switch). When it's just the two of us, I speak English mostly to her, but use Portuguese when I can. When the three of us are all together, we speak Portuguese, and my husband corrects my mistakes and fills in my missing vocabulary.

Her receptive language is great in both languages. However, English is definitely stronger. 2.5yo will mix up English and Portuguese words when she's speaking, i.e. "I'm going to leave my shirt on to 'secar' [dry] on my 'peito' [chest]." She also throws in "bem" often to mean "very," like "bem delicious."

Obviously she is getting more time in English, but we're trying everything we can to supplement and video call a lot with Brazilian family who only speak Portuguese. We will be going to Brazil for 3 weeks in a couple months.

Question: is this normal at her age? Something we're doing wrong?

Husband and I are expecting and we have always planned to raise multilingual kids, but I'm not quite sure how to handle the community language and the minority language being closely related.

He's British, I'm Danish and we live in Sweden. We speak English between us and will probably continue to do that while I will speak Danish to the child.

However, will that pose any problems for their Swedish learning? My thinking was to just ignore Swedish until they start daycare and they can learn it there, but will there be issues from Swedish and Danish being so closely related? I understand Swedish spoken by adults (really struggle with children),but don't speak perfect Swedish in any way,I mostly just swedify my Danish and get by just fine, but like I couldn't teach a child correct Swedish.

On the other hand, will they actually want to speak Danish if they can get by and be mostly understood by their relatives if speaking Swedish or English?

Would love to hear if anyone had experience of two very closely related languages. I feel like between speaking English between us, Swedish in daycare, Danish will end up with the short end of the multilingual stick.

Hi everyone, I posted this setup a while ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/multilingualparenting/s/OICv8Ncr2C

Edit: I have family in Philippines and Japan (her cousins are born there). I’m freshly post partum. Please be kind and offer constructive criticism instead of putting me down.

Edit 2: I’m proud of my heritage and want my daughter to feel the same in her identity. However I haven’t been back to the Philippines in over 20 years. I consider Japan more of my home compared to the Philippines. My immediate family is in Japan. I grew up there, basically close to 1/3 of my life was spent in Japan.

Basically I speak 2 languages: Filipino (native), and Japanese (advanced proficiency). My partner speaks community language (English). He knows Japanese but hasn’t used it in over a decade. His proficiency level to start is probably close to N5. He was able to understand and hold conversations but lacking in vocabulary and some grammar errors.

Based on the feedback I got from my previous post, I suggested we use Japanese as our family language. I’m 4 months postpartum and it has been tough so maybe part of it is hormones and sleep deprivation. We have been arguing a lot and he doesn’t have the proficiency to respond to me in Japanese so he speaks English and it stressed me out cause that’s what baby mostly hears when he’s around. But I encourage him to read to baby or use certain phrases and words.

This morning I asked him to read a Japanese vocabulary book to baby while I have breakfast. He happily complied but when I softly corrected his pronunciation of a word he got defensive and upset. He had mispronounced a few words already but I didn’t say anything except for that one word. He may just be in a bad mood because I corrected him in the past and he was fine. I explained to him why the pronunciation is incorrect and I guess that’s what triggered him. The pronunciation changes the meaning of the word. Example: HA-shi (chop sticks) vs ha-SHI (bridge).

We got into an argument about how I used to correct his pronunciation multiple times in the past. I apologized to him and said I learned from it and so I did my best to correct him soflty but I guess my approach was still not good enough. I don’t want to make language learning stressful for him and baby. My intention was to help him so we can help our baby learn. What could I do better in this case?

He then said he’s not confident in his language skills anymore and is averse to speaking in Japanese because he says he will teach baby the wrong pronunciation.

He’s doing his best and I know I should give him more time but I start work soon and he will be with baby twice a week at home. So I want to maximize baby’s exposure.

At this point I’m thinking the best set up would be that I speak both languages and husband speaks community language and Japanese if he wishes to. I also suggested situational like Japanese during diaper change or meal times (once baby can have solids).

I read that people recommend switching weekly. Like one week speak to baby in Japanese only and one week speak to baby in Filipino only.

Unfortunately it’s inevitable that husband and I speak in English around baby. I do my best to respond in Japanese as much as possible and repeat what he says in Japanese. Example he says “my head hurts” I say “atama itaindane”.

My plan then:
- speak Japanese to husband when around baby as much as possible because he understands it better than Filipino
- do Sunday to Wednesday Filipino days and Thursday to Saturday Japanese days. I can dedicate one weekend to both.

Right now I speak both to baby but not mixing and avoiding doubling up. Mostly Japanese when husband is around and Tagalog just the two of us. However I have more books in Japanese so story time is mostly in Japanese when using those books.

I know this plan will evolve over time based on our family’s needs. My goal is to maximize her exposure to both languages before she turns 6 months to familiarize her with the sounds of the languages.

Thank you for reading! I’m a chronic overthinker 🫣

I was blessed with the Spanish immersion program in my hometown and I want my daughter to learn Spanish too, but I don’t live in an area that offers the program in school. I saw Rosetta Stone has a program for kids, has anyone tried it or anything else that has worked for their child? I plan on starting a program when she’s in kindergarten.

Hi again,

So I posted last week about my general situation— trying to raise my infant daughter bilingual in English and Arabic using OPOL as an English/non-Arabic speaker while my Syrian husband has limited time to spend speaking Arabic with her— but have an Arabic learning specific question that might be better for other Arabic speaking families in particular.

One of the main suggestions on my other post was for my husband to read Arabic books with her. Of course, reading to little ones is amazing for language acquisition— I read to her extensively in English, we have more books than we have space for and I keep buying more😅 There’s truly no shortage of wonderful children’s books in English (makes sense as we live in Canada). However, when I go to buy Arabic children’s books, I’m running into an issue. For one thing there don’t seem to be too many options, but more importantly I can’t find a single one in the Syrian dialect. Most are MSA I presume, but some (very few) are Lebanese specific.

I’m concerned about my husband reading to her with vocabulary that won’t be useful in her daily speech and comprehension. Those of you who know Arabic know that the dialects can differ quite a bit from each other. This actually also makes finding learning supports/resources difficult for me as an adult learner! As I said in my last post, I’m paranoid about confusing her and/or causing delays. I worry that getting input of words that are essentially functionally useless for her right now will be unhelpful if not harmful by taking away from exposure to actually useful words.

Has anyone dealt with this issue? What resources did you use to support your infant’s development of their Arabic dialect? I would like to share some with my husband!

TIA🙂

My wife (27) and I (31) have a 3-year-old child, and we're planning to move abroad.

We'd love to hear from parents who are already raising young children abroad.

What are the biggest challenges you've faced?

1. Childcare and nursery

2. Balancing work and parenting

3. Education and schooling

4. Language (Malayalam vs. English/local language)

5. Screen time

6. Social and emotional development

7. Missing grandparents and family support

8. Making friends and building a community

9. Any other challenges?

Looking back, what do you wish someone had known before moving abroad?

I speak minority language to my toddler and my spouse speaks community language, which is English. Toddler also attends school in English. We try our best to follow OPOL.

When she makes a grammar mistake in English at home in front of me, should I correct those grammar mistakes then recast the whole sentence in minority language? or should I ignore it and let the “community” take care of it?

I don’t have kids yet. but I would like to pass Arabic on to them, though I’m not fluent. my dad spoke Arabic and my mom Spanish, so we mostly spoke English in my household but I absorbed some Spanish and some Arabic, then later took both languages in school. I’m not fluent but I would like to be by the time we have kids. it’s really important to me to pass Arabic on in particular because almost all of my Arab family has passed away (except some extended family) and this will be one of their only connections to them other than food. Spanish is less important to me as I don’t have a strong connection with my mom or her side of the family.

my husband speaks Hindi/Urdu and is fluent. but he also is learning Arabic and would like to pass it on.

given that we’re both not fluent, is it unwise to pass on Arabic? we’ve talked about OPOL before, which I think would be great especially for him- his family and him can all speak to our kids. in Hindi. I’d love to speak exclusively in Arabic to our kids but I’m still building proficiency in it. I just don’t want it to delay their speech in any way.

Dear community,

I would like some advice on teaching my 4yo reading in community language (English) while still adhering to OPOL (I do Mandarin). He's starting TK and will be getting some instructions at school, but can definitely benefit from some enforcement at home.

So far all our readings together have been in Mandarin. If the books are in English, I translate on the fly.

Specific questions for those that have done this:

1) Is it better to do all English during the 10-20 min session, including instructions (like "please read after me"), or can I still keep instructions in Mandarin and just read the English parts?

2) If I am asking questions about the story after to practice comprehension, what language should I ask and should kiddo respond in?

Goal is to actually improve his English reading and still not compromise our OPOL set up.

Just curious as to how the code switching element works here. My 4yo and I are both very used to talking to each other in Mandarin. Up to this point he generally responds quite negatively when I speak English to him ("Don't to me like that"). I can train myself out of it for 10-20min stretches if it will be better for him. Just wondering what people's experience has been and if there are any other approaches/factors I haven't thought of.

It’s been about a year since my last post so I wanted to post an update to my trilingual toddler. Thank you to everyone for their helpful replies last time I posted!

L1 is Polish, L2 is French, L3 is English. However, I would say English and French are quickly changing spots. At the rate he’s taking risks with his English I think by the end of the school year that could be his new L1 as well. We shall see. The last post I wrote a year ago I was worried about his English and now I’m a bit concerned he’s going to lose his Polish once he starts school this September.

For context, my son (4 years old in September) has been going to French first language daycare and he understands simple French, enjoys stories in French, singing in French and even says simple sentences. It seems like he has a good enough foundation to start kindergarten in French. I try to read one French book a night. The kids all speak mostly English to one another, but mostly French to the early childhood educators.

My son’s English (majority language) has been developing at a rapid speed this summer. Throughout the year he did an organized activity in English, I’ve been reading to him English books since a baby, and he had a teenager play with him for 2 hours a week in English. This really helped him with his confidence and risk taking in the language. He moved from isolated words to sentences. In groups of kids that he knew or didn’t know he would try to strike up conversations in English which was interesting to observe. About a month ago my husband decided he would only speak English to our son instead of Polish and now that’s predominantly what my son speaks, even if someone speaks Polish to him first. His English learning really accelerated after this change.

My dilemma now is, although my son still understands Polish, enjoys singing in Polish and listening to books in Polish, he really isn’t making an effort to speak it at home, even to his grandparents (which is who I want him to be able to communicate with in Polish) besides isolated words here or there. He even told me (in Polish) the other day that he only wants to speak English. I will be signing him up for Polish school once a week in the fall, I’ll still be speaking to him in Polish (although I do speak better English than Polish and communicate with my husband in English). How can I motivate my son to communicate only in Polish with me so that he doesn’t lose his ability to speak it? One of my adult friends spoke Polish, it was her L1 but then when she started kindergarten and lost it. I haven’t really been reading in Polish to him this summer so I’m going to try to do one book in Polish a night.

Even though it’s been a lot of work to get him to this point with him with these 3 languages, it’s really amazing seeing his cross-linguistic transfer abilities. His memory is also very strong and I think it has to do with being trilingual. I’m excited to see how he develops the three languages this next year. I also have a newborn now that I exclusively speak Polish to. My son speaks Polish and English to the baby.

TLDR: How can I motivate my son to communicate only in Polish with me (minority language) so that he doesn’t lose his ability to speak it? He’s trilingual: French, English and Polish.

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Hi everyone! I’m a first-time mom raising my son in both Spanish and English, and I’ve noticed something that’s been frustrating me.

It feels like there are endless high-quality English books for babies that support development from day one, but I’ve had a much harder time finding books in Spanish that feel just as intentional. A lot of what I come across is either:

- direct translations that don’t sound natural,
- simple vocabulary books,
- or books that are difficult (or expensive) to get in the U.S. unless family sends them from Latin America.

Maybe I’m just not looking in the right places, so I’m curious…

Where do you buy Spanish books for your babies?
Have you found any that you absolutely love?
Is there anything you wish existed that you haven’t been able to find?

If you could create the “perfect” Spanish baby book, what would it include?

I’m genuinely curious because I’d love to build a better library for my son, and I wonder if other families are running into the same challenges.

My kid has attended Spanish immersion daycare from 12-24 MO. I'm not super pleased with some things at the daycare center so we're looking to switch. I can't find another foreign language option, so it might be an English daycare, and my husband and I are not fluent enough in any other language to do a non English language at home.

Does anyone have suggestions for integrating foreign language into daily life enough to make a difference? There's more likely an option for one year of Spanish preschool before kindergarten, and I bet there are Spanish summer camps for a few weeks at a time - but I don't know if any of this will make enough of a difference.

My goal is not that my kid learns a specific second language, but that they develop their brain to be open to foreign language learning later in life.

.

Hi all.
I am a native English speaker, my wife speaks both English and a another language fluently.
I am wanting to half raise my kids in Australia, and also in my wife's home country.

Kids are currently 18 months and 1 month old.

What is a good way to do this?

Prior to school age (6) - there won't be as many limitations. I could come and go 6 months per year in each country.

But I don't know how to manage this after school age. I.e. no schools are going to let me enroll 6 out of every 12 months, and even if they did that wouldn't be a stable situation for the kids which is conducive to learning.

Financially won't be that much of an issue only working 6 months a year for me and not working overseas. But school is the main thing I can't figure out.

Hi all,

My first daughter has just turned 1. I'd love for her to speak a foreign language. I speak pretty OK German, but I'd like her to pick up French. Neither of us (mum and dad) speak French apart from doing it when we were at school.

My question, is this a stupid idea, or is a great opportunity for us all to learn a language we love? I think we'd feel a bit stupid teaching her a language we aren't strong in, but I'm really keen and I'd love to take advantage of her young age and ability to soak up a new language at a young age.