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.

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?

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!

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 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 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?