Bilingual parenting – what I wish I had known

My children are now 15 and 13 years old. After a move to a different country five years ago, they now speak three languages in their daily life. It hasn’t been easy for any of us but especially for them; the first day of school in our new country where neither of them spoke a word of the local language was particularly traumatic. There are many things that I wish I had known about bilingual parenting and many things that I would approach differently if I was starting this journey now. Hopefully, this will reassure you and give you some ideas if you are at this point.

Becoming bilingual is not automatic

When my first child was born, I assumed from what I had heard that the process of bringing him up to be bilingual would be pretty much automatic. I would speak to him in my language and my husband would speak his and, in a jiffy, he would become fluent in both. No! It needs an incredible amount of hard work and commitment. It’s not easy to be always changing from one language to another especially if you are the parent with the minority language. You also need to be constantly backing up the minority language with books, games, videos and contact with other speakers. This is especially important once school starts and you have a lot less time to use that language. It’s important not to feel disillusioned though about bilingual parenting. Even if the process is more difficult than you thought it would be, it is worth it in the long run, I promise.

Your child may or may not have a delay in speech development

It really does depend on the child. My first child was still not speaking properly in either language when he went to nursery school at 4 years old. The teachers felt concerned about this and sent us to a speech therapist. Eventually, however, he worked it out on his own. Now, at 15, he communicates at the same level as his peers. My daughter, on the other hand, could speak fluently in both languages way before she went to nursery school. She had a lot less trouble picking up a third language too. Different characters, different skills, it can all change from one child to another. So, please don’t worry too much if you are feel that your child cannot speak as well as other children of their age. It doesn’t necessarily mean there is a problem. Obviously if you have real concerns about bilingual parenting and the effect on your child’s speech development, please seek help from a professional; this is just my personal experience.

Contact with native speakers is really important

Your child may not often have the opportunity to socialize and speak with speakers of your family’s minority language. Any chance you can find to do this should be snapped up. It shows them that they are not the only ones who speak that language but that it is a “real” language and is used by children like them. When my kids were small, we were living in a tiny Italian village where no one spoke English. It was very hard to find contact with other English speakers and I really missed this. So get active and try and find other people who speak your language, especially if they have children. This is so much easier now with the internet, you could even have skype meetups and face time chats. And obviously, whenever you have the possibility, a trip to a country where they speak your language is so important.

Not everyone will understand why you are doing this

Growing up in quite a multicultural family in a city like London, bilingualism was a pretty normal thing for me. I had bilingual friends and family, went to school with children of lots of different nationalities and spent time with different parts of our family in different countries. I didn’t realize until I had my own children in a radically different setting that this is not normal for many people. A lot of people, often including teachers, doctors, your friends and even family members, will not understand why you want to teach your child two languages and why this is important for your family. They might see bilingual parenting as an unnecessary complication causing difficulty for your child at school or as something that makes him or her stand out from the crowd in a negative way. I have learned to ignore these people and not to let it worry me or give me doubts. In the long run, this has paid off but at the time, it was not easy at all. You don’t have to justify what you are doing, it’s just the way your family works.

Culture is just as important as language

We teach our children our language so that they can be part of our community and our culture. If we are living in a different country, this feeling of belonging can be hard to achieve so it needs to be supported by other things. Books are especially good for this as they show our children what it is like growing up in our culture. TV shows also do this. We used to watch Charlie and Lola and other Cbeebies series. These showed my children what it was like to be a kid in the UK and gave them more interest in speaking English. It also helped them fit in more when we went back to the UK in the holidays.

It’s worth all the effort!

I am so proud of myself and of my kids. When I see them reading English books with real pleasure or when they pick up the phone for a chat with their cousins in the UK, it’s great. Although bilingual parenting hasn’t been the easiest of things to do, their bilingualism is a real advantage for them. It will hopefully continue to help them throughout their lives too. I think it makes them more open to different cultures and different types of people. This can only be a positive thing in the world of today.

I would love to know what you have found most difficult about bilingual parenting. What have been the best and worst bits for you? One high point for me – my five year old arguing with his English teacher about the pronunciation of fruit, or frooit as she insisted. Low point – being told by a speech therapist that his speech delay was due to immigrants like me not integrating properly and teaching their children the language of the country we’re living in. We didn’t go back.

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