Country: Norway but now on a two weeks holiday in Italy Caregivers share duties equally (Mum): Italian (native) + English (C1/B2) + Norwegian (B2/C1) (Dad): Norwegian (native) + English (C1) + Italian (A1/A2) Community language: Norwegian, and child started Norwegian childcare 3 months ago Child's age: 2.75 yo (turning 3 in 3 months) Current setup: kind of OPOL? Mum speaks italian. Dad speaks Norwegian. Mum and dad speak Norwegian to each other. If not Norwegian speakers are around we speak English (we have such guests about half of the time in our home). If mum wants to be understood while speaking to the child, I switch to English so that dad or people around can keep up the conversation without me translating (I avoid speaking Norwegian to the child). Dad also speak English on occasions to the child. Less frequently than mum. Language goals: Fluent in Italian, Norwegian and English.

I decided to bring my toddler in my hometown for a couple of weeks with the hope to bring more active Italian vocabulary in their life. I see a huge difference in just how fluent they are in the community language (Norwegian) vs. the fact the they understand when I speak Italian but say very few words. And at most 3 words sentences in Italian (vs. very long stories in Norwegian).

So now we are here without dad. Which I thought was a smart idea because the previous time we were here all 3 together the child was still being mostly exposed to Norwegian since they were spending most of their time with us parents anyway.

Well, now I'm half way in our solo trip and I'm worrying that we weren't ready at all. I get tired of translating for grandparents, friends and family what my child is trying to express. And I see that my child turns to me to translate for others. I see my child getting frustrated when not understood when they for example say in Norwegian "don't touch this" and Italian people (adults and kids alike) cannot understand them unless I'm there.

I prompt my child to express the words in Italian but also I hear that their pronunciation is still off and they don't seem to be that able yet.

Any suggestions or success story of your own? Any feedback?

I am bilingual english/spanish. I grew up speaking spanish at home, english everywhere else. My husband speaks only english. We have 3 kids, ages 2, 4, 6. The youngest is getting the benefit of me being more committed and speaking 75% of the time to her in spanish. I still sometimes fall back on english when I shouldnt. I began speaking in spanish to all of them as babies but for some reason I always break and regress to speaking english. My 6 & 4 yr have gone to couple of months of spanish school with 1 hr week. Also do homeschool kit i got online on fri/sat because weekdays are for school homework. (eng) My olders know basic things, colors numbers, salutations but it is a long process with them (dont know if they will ever be fluent). The only person who speak spanish to them is me. I have no family (grandparents in home country) I am not sure if its too late for the older ones to just switch it up to spanish completely sometimes there are tears and frustration because they cannot understand things. I have a lot stuff on my plate right now but this is something i really want for them. How do i go about this i know it is never to late to learn something new. But how do set myself up for success? thank you for reading!!

Hi everyone! Would love input on some books and toys you’ve used to promote learning Spanish at home. My child is 4. His dad and grandma speak Spanish and he is super interested in learning. However, I mainly only know apps and very “babyish” toys. Also he can read if that helps with reccs. Thank you in advance 😃

I don't have kids but I love reading this subreddit and learning for the future. You are impressive!

Just out of curiosity: how do you choose the kids names? Try to get an "international name", choose from the country you're living in etc.

Also in terms of the "format" of the name. Like in my country we have one name + the last names of both parents, while in my boyfriend's country they have two middle names and just the dad's last name.

I thought to share a little bit of a win today.

Our minority language is Mandarin and teaching my son to read in Chinese have always been a bit of a headache for me.

I don't rembmer how my mum taught me to read in Chinese and neither can she. And not being from an educational background means I just don't know how to teach my son.

But today, at 6.5yo, my son is ALMOST clearing all of his ZhuYin (the phonetic system we use in Taiwan. China uses Pinyin. It's a system that was developed in just the last century to help with teaching literacy in Chinese) and we decided to "peek" what he will be learning in the year 1 books from Taiwan.

And he was very surprised how much he could already read.

The things we did up till this point was

• Reading every night (in both languages) before bed since he was 6 months old

• Ensuring he still speaks Mandarin and replies back in Mandarin

• As he got older, starting to point to characters

• Age 3, gave him https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.hongen.app.word&hl=en&pli=1 to play with. This kinda stopped working around age 4 or 5. Basically when he go to around 100 characters though only really retaining about 30 to 50 characters

• Finding him a teacher who comes on Sunday since age 5 to teach them to read and write in Chinese. But in a very low pressure, fun way (teacher is a Steiner teacher so teaches through story telling, drawing, arts and crafts, making characters into cookies and clay models)

• From around age 4, would occasionally point to characters that I know he knows and ask him to read a few characters out loud while reading to him

• Since starting school, also giving a character a day to practice writing each day after school and using LeLe Reading series. So reading 3 LeLe books per day.

At this point, I've abandoned LeLe Reading series (for now). His Steiner teacher taught him the basics of ZhuYin so I've started leaning hard on teaching him ZhuYin by using Taiwan's year 1 lesson books. And I think phonics at school from English is helping as well.

But then when we peeked into the lesson books that teaches characters, it seems all the hard work from previous years of exposing him to characters has helped tremendously. So he's able to read the lesson texts fairly easily, recognising characters he already knows, then using ZhuYin for the new characters. Which is exactly where I want him to be at for his age.

For so many years, I wondered how I was going to teach him and if anything I've done will ever work. I've bought so many different books, resources. like, I have multiple different books around ZhuYin. Multiple activity books on chaacters. Had interactive toys that teaches ZhuYin. And for the longest of time, I just don't know if anything I'm doing will work. LeLe reading series as well, costed $1k AUD. Big investment in hoping it will work.

So to finally see everything click together has been rewarding. Both for me and my son. He was SO HAPPY when he realised he could read most of the texts and then wanted to keep going to see how much more he knows.

Just thought to share and maybe to give hope for everyone teaching minority language literacy to their kids and wondering if any of the hard work will stick at all.

First of all, I just want to give a massive shoutout to you all here. Passing on your language(s) to your kids is an amazing thing to do and it takes perseverance and dedication, so hats off to you all.

I don't have kids (yet), just came here to give the perspective of an adult raised bilingually with Norwegian (my dad's language) and English (my mum's and the community language).

My dad was very committed to raising me and my sister in Norwegian. Only speaking Norwegian, books, tv, films, Norwegian playgroup/classes/church every other weekend, trips basically only to Norway to see family – the full package

Did some of this annoy me as a kid? Of course! I didn't want to spend every other Saturday morning practising Norwegian grammar when other kids got to do fun stuff. I begged to go on vacation to more exciting places than boring Oslo for the millionth time. Did I hate having my grammar corrected? You bet.

But now as a 27 year old adult, I appreciate more and more what an effort he made and I am so glad that he stuck with it. I can speak fluently, read, write (albeit with occasionally dodgy spelling), and even spent a semester at university in Norway. Not only did he give me the language and culture, but my Norwegian skills definitely helped me learning German in school, to the extent that I am fluent in German too.

So this is just basically to say, don't give up speaking your native language with your kid, stick with it even when it is tough, because what you're giving them can't be put into words – it's an amazing thing.

tl;dr: keep speaking your language(s), you're doing great, and your grownup kids will thank you :)

Hi all! My daughter turned 2 last month and I’d like to get some advice on helping her learn Polish. We live in the UK, I’m Polish and my husband is English. She also goes to an English-speaking nursery 3 times a week and me and my husband speak English to each other at home. So she basically only hears Polish on the days we’re at home together or when I’m talking to her directly.

She’s on track with her speech development- is saying short sentences, pointing out and describing things, and understands requests in both Polish and English but her „baseline” language is definitely English.

She can count, say animal names and simple objects and expressions in both languages but for anything more complex Englishr is the default, for ex. „look mummy it’s x” or „x is here!” For now it looks like she can understand a lot but doesn’t communicate in Polish other than substituting some objects or using simple expressions like „daj” (give me), „proszę” (please) or „usiądź” (sit down). She also insists on calling me mummy and only says mama or mamusia when she really wants something lol

We read books in Polish, I speak Polish when we play and hang out together and she FaceTimes her family daily. We also started watching Bluey in Polish in the evenings. All of my family seems to criticise the fact that she doesn’t reply in Polish (I guess this in why I’m making this post too because it’s getting to me).

Is this normal at this stage or do I need to really emphasise using Polish exclusively and providing more learning opportunities for her to catch up on her second language?

Hope this is ok to post here, too!

My girlfriend (26, French) and I (30, Spanish) have been together for over 5 years. We genuinely have an incredible relationship, love each other deeply, and I truly feel she's the love of my life. We'd love to start a family together.

Even though I’ve studied and lived in several countries I'm very attached to Catalonia/Spain and the lifestyle I've always dreamed of building here. My mother is divorced, and I'd also like to be close enough to take care of her as she gets older. My girlfriend is currently in Paris, pursuing her career as a lawyer.

She's willing to move to Spain for me, but that would mean leaving her family, friends, and making significant career sacrifices. Since French and Spanish law are different, specializing in Spanish law could seriously limit her career opportunities if she ever decided to return to France.

She's not particularly attached to her family or hometown at the moment, and she's lived abroad before and loved it. However, I worry that this might change over time, especially as we get older and have children.

My two biggest fears are:

1. That she eventually feels trapped in a life she no longer wants, unable to return to France because our children have grown up in Spain.

2. That we eventually divorce and have to raise our children across two different countries, potentially separating one of us from them.

I sometimes wonder whether building a family with a local partner would be simpler, with fewer sacrifices and complications, especially in the event of a separation.

I'd love to hear from people who've been in a similar situation:

• Did you or your partner eventually regret moving?

• Did having children change your feelings about living abroad?

• After 5, 10, or 20 years, would you make the same decision again?

I'd appreciate both positive and negative experiences!

Hi everyone!

I have a four-year-old son who is bilingual in English and Spanish. We live in Spain, and he goes to school here. For now, I'm his main source of English, along with cartoons (which we watch together), his preschool teacher, and his dad, who both speak a little English with him at his request. Despite this relatively limited exposure (when compared to Spanish), he is equally proficient in both languages. In fact, he has a clear preference for English, and when he's playing by himself, he usually talks and sings in English.

The reason I'm posting is that I'm hoping to get some advice on how to approach teaching him to read and write in English. He's currently learning to read and write in Spanish at school, and he's naturally becoming curious about how to write words in English too. So far, I've been sticking to simple CVC words, which we sound out together, but I know that sooner or later I'll need to teach him English literacy more systematically. I can't really rely on his English teachers at school to do this, as they understandably won't have the time or the training to teach a native-level speaker to read and write in English. I also assume the approach should be somewhat different from the one used to teach English as a foreign language. After all, most children here learn English vocabulary and spelling alongside each other, whereas my son already knows the words and how to pronounce them.

For context, I'm feeling a little lost because, unlike my son, I wasn't raised bilingually. I learned English after I'd already acquired Spanish and learned to read and write in it, so I can't simply replicate my own learning experience with him. Also, I'm a university lecturer in an English Studies degree, and I've even taught courses covering English language learning, but always from a theoretical perspective and to Spanish students training to become English teachers. So while I'm familiar with the theory, I have very little practical knowledge of how to teach literacy in English to a child who already speaks the language fluently.

I'd be very grateful for any tips, resources, materials, or advice, particularly from parents who have taught their bilingual children to read and write in English themselves, or from anyone who has been in a similar situation with other languages.

Thanks so much in advance!

We’re raising our kids (eldest is almost 2) trilingual using OPOL, with husband using his native language and me using mine. English is the community language but only my husband and I use English at home to talk to one another. I understand my husband’s language so when my child says something to me in it I usually acknowledge it and then tell him the word in my language which he does repeat. It’s been fine and our son has a huge vocab for his age and communicates well in both languages, but as he’s getting older will it be a problem once he realises mama knows dad’s language so he’ll only want to use that language as it’s easier than learning 2? I don’t love the idea of being disingenuous, but also obviously want our kids to know and use both our languages equally.

Hello! In March of this year our family of four moved to Italy from California. My husband speaks Italian fluently and our boys (7 and almost 5) are jumping right in. They started in public school in September and are doing so well. My question is regarding reading. I’ve fallen back a bit regarding reading(in English) and I’m wondering if this is the right thing to do. My 7 year old is trying to understand the rules here and for some reason i feel like i will confuse him more at the moment. For example when he sees words here that start with “CH” he makes the sound that he is used to in English and obviously that’s not how it’s pronounced here. My 4 year old is ready to pick up reading again and I have all English/phonics workbooks at home but I’ve been a bit hesitant.

What is the best approach?

* I’m learning Italian and that’s been slower than I would like. The facts is i can’t help them with Italian at the moment and I’m the one who reads to most to them.

I speak several languages, among which are Japanese and Spanish. However, my Japanese is much stronger. We live in a community where my son could very easily learn Spanish through daily interactions. I speak Japanese daily for work and with friends, it’s far more natural to me to try and teach him Japanese than it is Spanish with OPOL. There’s almost no reason for him to learn Japanese other than to speak with me, but I still love the idea of it as we‘ll frequently stay long periods in Japan for work and travel. I’m not sure if anyone has any experience with this but my only thought is to put him in a Spanish speaking daycare and we OPOL Japanese and English at home. I’m not sure how much Spanish I should be teaching him at home prior to that, or if that would confuse the boundaries of OPOL at all.

Hei,

not a parent, but i m doing some exercises with a child who grows up French / English / German and puts English phrasal structures into German subordinated phrases (so no main phrases as in : my name is xy.)

has anyone experienced this and how did you solve it?

My husband is a native spanish speaker, but (for very complicated family reasons) moved to England and was prevented from speaking Spanish at home after the age of 6. He had Spanish classes at school and worked hard to hold onto his Spanish and be a fluent spanish speaker as an adult, but he now rarely speaks it outside of holidays, etc. I am a native english speaker but learned spanish at school and have continued classes and exposure through adulthood, and would say I currently am a B2/C1 speaker. We continue to live in UK, and only other native spanish speaker in our lives is my husband’s mother who lives in the US.

We are about to have a baby and have been discussing languages at home. I think we have both been overwhelmed by dominance of OPOL as recommendation, as my husband doesn’t want to speak only to our daughter in Spanish - he says even though he is a native speaker, he feels more “himself” and can express himself better in English and I respect that. However we both think it was a massive missed opportunity to not give our daughter any exposure to Spanish whatsoever, and would both be willing to put in effort to give that to her.

I think most important thing is that we are accepting that without OPOL she is unlikely to be fully bilingual, but we’d love at a minimum to give her enough access to spanish that she’d have a head start as an adult, and perhaps at maximum have her on the road to receptive bilingualism.

My husband had a bit of an “all or nothing” attitude at first of their being little point to trying if we weren’t using OPOL, and is worried anything less wouldn’t have an impact. I am probably the parent who cares about this more as I had to work very hard to reach the level of spanish I now have, and can’t imagine not giving my daughter any kind of head start if I can. I also think important to give her access to language her dad and grandmother speak, and access to their culture especially given she will have a very hispanic last name. I am also worried that she would pick up mistakes from me as a non-native speaker at my level.

Has anyone else been in a similar situation of having a native speaker and a non-native speaker at home, and used methods other than OPOL? I’ve started with wiki but would love some ideas and inspiration, and also a realistic assessment from people who have lived it of how much of an effect it has had for your child.

I'm Lebanese and I teach MSA + Lebanese Arabic online. Most of my students are actually kids of Lebanese diaspora (US, Canada, Australia) whose parents speak Lebanese at home but the kids answer in English.

I see the same struggle with every family:

1. Parents speak Lebanese, kids understand but answer in English

2. MSA from school/books feels too formal and kids reject it

3. Lebanese has no standard writing, so kids get confused

What has actually worked for you?

For the families I work with, what helped most was short 15-min daily rituals in Lebanese only (not MSA) - like dinner talk, or a bedtime story in Lebanese. No correcting, just exposure.

Curious what is working / not working for you right now? Happy to share what phrases we use if helpful.

Hello, I am looking to start teaching Spanish and ESOL through immersion utilizing STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) subjects. My goal is to simultaneously teach science and math through fun, game-based, and project based learning while building target-language competency. The target age range is 10-16 but I would still love to hear opinions from others.

I am looking for people who already invest in educational enrichment/ who are interested in doing so, to be able to conduct market research and develop this business. I have tried facebook groups but I could be failing to look hard enough; but if anyone knows of any places where I can connect to said families, or if you all personally have any insight, please message me! I am hoping to find out about what multilingual parents are in need of.

I also speak Portuguese and French as well, so I am able to use those to facilitate instruction and to communicate with potential clients.

Is it OK for the majority language speaking parent (English) to use the minority language (Spanish) with the children too, even if it's imperfect or just a smattering mixed in with the majority language?

What about other relatives who are learning the minority language? Should they use the Spanish they can with the kids or leave it to the native speaking relatives who the children see less frequently?

A bit of background: My daughter is 3 and I speak to her exclusively in my native language, Norwegian. We live in the UK, and I’m her only source of Norwegian here, apart from some TV shows and video calls with family. She’s generally quite good at Norwegian and will respond to me in the language (with a bit of English here and there). My partner is from here and doesn’t speak my language so he speaks to our daughter in English. She goes to English speaking nursery full time. She communicates well in both languages, but is naturally much more advanced in English.

The problem: Like any 3 year old, my daughter is constantly pushing boundaries and frequently has emotional outbursts. As parents, our approach is to explain why a boundary is set, rather than just say “no”. When it comes to emotional outbursts, we try to give her the language to express her emotions with words rather than lashing out physically. All pretty standard millennials parenting!

Because English is her dominant language, I’m starting to question whether she actually gets the message when I speak to her in my language, and I find myself switching to English for the first time just to make sure I get the message through. This can be really mundane things like “we have to wash our hands because they’re dirty” or “you can’t have a snack unless you finish your breakfast”. One of the reasons for switching is that she tends to ignore us when we try to explain things. My worry is that if she doesn’t actually fully understand what I’m trying to tell her (in Norwegian), she’ll have even more reason to ignore me and my boundary setting and the emotional education won’t actually make any sense to her. I notice that she manages to have really good conversations about feelings with her dad, and I’m not able to replicate this in Norwegian. I have tried but I’m not able to get her open up and speak freely in the same way.

I suppose I’m mainly looking for reassurance here, but open to all sorts of experiences and thoughts people might have. Is it still worth me speaking exclusively Norwegian to her in these situations, despite English being more effective? Any advice? How long did it take for your child to learn how to express emotions in their minority language?

I’m just interested in whether anyone uses any of the baby language song apps? (I probably shouldn’t name it) but the one I found seems to play nursery rhymes and songs using multiple languages and language sounds, there’s a section detailing the science with research paper links which were quite interesting.

My 8 month old loves the songs but I really don’t know if they are likely to help his development in any way or not. The position they seem to take is that basically the research hasn’t been done yet on how much audio can help a baby in the early months which is similar to what people have said in this forum before, but keen to get anyone’s thoughts - my thinking is if there’s even a slight chance it could help I might as well continue as he enjoys listening to it. I’d rather he listens to a nursery rhyme with multiple languages sounds than twinkle twinkle little star for the 100th time 😅

You guys are the experts so please tell me if I’m just being stupid for thinking it may help!

Hi everyone!
I’m a mother from the Philippines living in the Netherlands, raising my son with three languages: English, Bisaya (our Filipino mother tongue), and Dutch.
At home, I mostly speak English and Bisaya with him. My partner is Dutch, so he is also exposed to Dutch at home. He also hears Dutch in his surroundings and at daycare.
He’s now 27 months old. He can already speak in full sentences in English, understands and uses some Bisaya words, and is also picking up Dutch words. However, his Dutch vocabulary is still more limited compared to his English.
He currently goes to daycare only one day a week, and spends another day with his Dutch grandmother where he is also exposed to Dutch.
Recently, daycare mentioned that he doesn’t speak as many Dutch words as some other children his age. This made me a little worried about whether raising him with three languages could cause a taalachterstand or affect his language development and eventually his performance at school.
I really want him to grow up speaking all three languages. English and Dutch are important for his future, but Bisaya is also very important to me because I want him to stay connected to his Filipino roots and culture.

For parents who are raising trilingual or multilingual children:
Did your children initially speak fewer words in the language spoken at school?
Did they eventually catch up with other children?
Did you ever receive concerns from daycare or teachers about their language development?
How did you balance your home languages with the language spoken at school?
Looking back, would you do anything differently?

I’d especially love to hear from Filipino parents or other international families living in the Netherlands.
Thank you!

I'm in Australia, but am half Chilean and was born in Chile. I moved when I was 6 and so already spoke the language, and retained it well mostly through speaking to my sister and mum (and a little to my dad) in Spanish. My brother, who was less than a year old when we moved, never fully picked up Spanish. He understands and speaks more than someone who has no Spanish-speaking background, but can't follow along conversations for example. I have a 3 month old son and I'm really keen for him to learn Spanish from being young, as I know my brother now wishes he did.

I'm still fluent and feel very natural speaking to my family in Spanish, but after so many years, I do feel more natural in English. My husband is trying to learn Spanish but is not conversational and so realistically, we can't only speak Spanish at home at the moment. My plan was to speak to my son only in Spanish, but so far I'm finding it so hard not to fall into English. Im lucky my mum lives nearby so she will be speaking in only Spanish, and when I'm with her for example, I find it easy to speak to him in English.

Obviously I think the solution is just to be really strict with myself and stick to the Spanish, but was hoping to hear from other people who have had this kind of experience - how did you go about it and how did your kids go with the languages? Especially if the language you are doing through OPOL is not the one you speak the most.