When English Is Not Parents First Language

I was just reading in a book that it is best to teach children both languages from the start. Their brains can and will absorb it all. You don't want him to get to school and not be able to speak with his teachers or class mates. You also don't want him to not speak his native tongue. Good Luck and I hope he learns both languages well.

J.

Although English is not my first language, it is the primary language that I speak now, and is my husband's first and only language. However, I would like my daughter to learn Spanish as well. Most of what we are teaching her is English, and that is the language of conversation at home. But I do teach her Spanish vocabulary, and she does hear Spanish at daycare.
I think ultimately both methods will work, but very young children are just sponges for language, my personal opinion is that they should be taught both languages at once. There may be some confusion and mixing of languages at first, but they will sort it out.
One thing that I do try is to be consistent about is that we try to stick to a single language for a given sentence and try not to mix the two languages together. We hope that our daughter will recognize that they are separate.
Good luck!

We are raising our children bilingually, since we are American/German. We first lived in the US, now in Europe, Austria. We follow our instincts, a number of bilingual friend-families and recently a few books that have come out on this topic. All of these sources agree that you should speak your native tongue with your kids, no matter what the other partner and the outside world speaks. That's what we have done: my husband talks Engish to the kids, i talk German. When we lived in the US our familiy language (when all of us are togteher) was German, to balance the English world out there. Now our family language is English, to balance the German-speaking world out there. Our youngest doesn't talk yet (5 months old), my son is 2.5 years, speaks very well, mostly German, a little English with his father.

A close freind of mine raised her daughter in Sweden, but is German herself, with the father beng Scottish and English being his only tongue. Their daughter learned Swedish through daycare and Kindergarten only -- it was not spoken at home. She was fine. Now she is fluent in Swedish, English and German. The father still knows only English, and the mother became fluent in Swedish, in addition to german and English.

I think the books and my experience suggest that you talk polish to your child always, except when in a grop with English-only speakers. That would mean that your shild starts speaking polish, but will surely catch up with the English quickly and completely as soon as going to an outside-of-the-family daycare.

Trust the remarkable flexibility of children. Good luck!
D.

Hi E.,
I am an American born to Italian parents and raised in Argentina from 11 to 15 years pf age. My first language was Italian, my second Spanish and my third English. My daughter needed to be able to speak all 3 languages in order to just communicate with her grandparents and aunts/uncles, so I chose to speak to her exclusively in Spanish until she started daycare at 10 months, at which point she heard exclusive Spanish from her childcare provider and exclusive Italian from me. Her father is not in the picture. She has always been very chatty but slower to form coherent sentences, yet fully understands any of the three languages she has been raised with. Although she never heard English from any of her caretakers we read lots of books and she has her cherished shows (like Dora and Blue's Clues) so she was always exposed to English as well. Now she is almost 3 and has had a vocabulary explosion in both English and Spanish (although she shows a strong preference for English). Because she was raised to understand that one item can have several names she understands the concept of synonyms and readily acquires new vocabulary. Being trained in child development I knew simutaneaously exposing her to several languages would pay off, and now I am happy to report the research is right on!

my husband is a native english speaker and I am not so we've similar issues in picking which language to teach our boy. However, in the montessori teaching, they recommend that you can start bot languages simultaneously, however each parent must speak exclusively one language over the other (i.e. your husband polish to your son and you english to your son only). Of course conversations between you and your husband can be both languages.

i haven't really tried out whether it works or not. but i have friends who do that to their kids and it seem to work.

English is my first language; for my husband, it is Dutch. He speaks exclusively Dutch to our son who is 2.5yrs, and I speak English (although I speak Dutch and will read to him, or speak Dutch for e.g., if his Dutch grandparents are around). He goes to day care 4 days per week, where English is spoken. It was only a few months ago that he started to really speak (although it was clear that he was developing a passive understanding of both Dutch and English). His Dutch grandparents were here for three weeks a few weeks ago for the birth of his sister, and his language literally exploded - repeating what we say, constructing his own complete sentences - whole stories- and talking to himself when he plays alone or as he wakes up.

There are a number of resources you could turn to - try your local town or library. We live in Natick, MA and there is a non-profit group organizing lectures around child-rearing in addition to playgroups. They recently had one on this topic. One thing that was stressed was that the children learn from exposure to others (native speakers) speaking the language (vs. videos, for e.g.). A website that might interest you is : http://www.multilingualchildren.org/

E.,

My husband is Spanish and I am French. Our son was born here in Boston. He is now 15 month old.
I talk to him monly in French and my husband only in Spanish.
At home, we have boks in French, Spanish, English and also books without texts.
I was warned since the beginning that the mix of languages would make him speak a little bit later than average (and, having more toddler tantrums due to lack of understanding).
I sign to him to avoid this misundserstanding problem.

Now, he understands most of what I say (as any French baby). He also understand some Spanish (as his father is out of the home all day, he doesn't hear so much Spanish during the day) and reply to basic greetings in English (Hello, bye-bye...).
The baby sitters speak to him in English and none ever complains about his understanding skills. I believe signing helps a lot.
He signs around 15 words and is a very happy baby. He doesn't speak much (mama and papa, and some noises like wuaf-wuaf for dog or vroum-vroum for car)

So, at 15 months, he understands nearly 2 languages and makes himself understood most of the time. Most people around us speak to him in English but we don't bother teaching him. We prefer him to learn it when he enters school with native speakers (so he wouldn't speak English with a French or Spanish accent)

We have many bilingual-parents friends and it seems to us that this approach (each parent speaking exclusively his/her native language) gives the best results.

please teach your children in the native language. i regret not being able to stick with mine which is spanish and i understand most of it it is very hard for me to speak it. english will be learned in school then if the native language is not kept up with it will be lost forever. my 1st 3 children needed early intervention and they do not accomodate other languages although i wish they did . my children at the begining learned spanish but because early intervention teaches only in english they lost the spanish especially since i have a hard time speaking it. english is so widely used that all other languages are being forgotton.