Raising Bilingual Children - Links and Blogs

As we all know, the internet is a big maze and if there is a topic dear to your heart, most likely somebody else has written about it already. Same is true for blogs about raising bilingual children. I have put together a short overview of sites I found helpful and informative, most of them have even more links for you to follow and spend endless hours reading and stepping further into the net…

First of all, a good collection of bilingual family blogs can be found on the homepage of the Bilingual/ Bicultural Family Network. They also have a link to the Multilingual Family Magazine, daily bilingual tips, and a resource page with playgroups, publications, organizations as well as general support links and a monthly newsletter.

For a good overview with links to articles and blogs, UK based, click here.

A review of English books about raising bilingual children can be found in this blog.

There is also a publication called the bilingual family newsletter, to which you can subscribe with PayPal.

If you want to read a blog about the academic side and current research about Bilingualism, try this blog by a group of US researchers or Claudia Rinaldi’s site.

Finally, there is a You Tube channel devoted to raising bilingual children with lots of videos.

Enjoy your browsing!

Tricks to keep the kids bilingual!

Here is a brief list of ways to incorporate a foreign language into you household:

The best way to teach your kids is, of course, speaking to them a lot and only in the target language. But our lives are busy, we have to work and do chores, so we are not constantly able to shower our children with speech.

However, if you have the time, make it count. As tempted as I am by the beautiful English books in our house and at the library, I ONLY read German ones to the kids. (It has the added benefit that I can reread my childhood favorites and make a connection to “When Mama was a little girl…”) If the kids want a specific English book or brought a book home from school, they have to wait for their Dad to come home and read with them. This division of books has been there from the very beginning and when we got a new one, the first question often was “Is this a Mama book or a Papa book?”.

When they got older, I also purchased some books on CD for them to listen to and 80% of the time we listen to German children’s songs in the car - especially around Christmas time! If this is the only entertainment available, they tend not to complain and I often get rewarded by hearing them sing the songs in their rooms later!

TV in our house is quite restricted. We avoided commercial television from the beginning and when we started to introduce DVDs, we did so only in German! The combination of kids occupied + learning another language + defined end of TV time was priceless for us! For a while they didn’t realize some movies could have different language tracks. I remember my youngest coming home from the dentist (who had a TV in the waiting room) telling me incredulously: “Mama, Nemo spoke ENGLISH!” By now, we also own English DVDs – mainly given as presents – but I still make a point to alternate languages when it comes to TV. I just feel that, if they are already watching TV at least they can broaden their vocabulary at the same time.

The kids have learned quite a bit of German from watching movies – just think of the fish and ocean words in “Finding Nemo” or the car and repair vocabulary in “Cars”. Plus the characters quite often use expression I would never use! Too funny when you hear your child express his frustration like a pirate! This brings me to an important point: Your child will only have the breadth of language that YOU speak – and your active vocabulary is much smaller that your passive one, especially when talking to a child! So make sure you expose your child to a broad variety of language – fairy tales, science books, TV, classic and modern children’s stories. And explain and rephrase often with your own words. In addition let them hear a variety of accents – books on tape read by actors or authors as well as family and friends from different parts of your country. These days, it is easier than ever to stay connected - we talk to grandparents and relatives on Skye, once a week on the phone and recently our oldest started typing emails in German to his Opapa! 

Finally, if your children start to find it tedious to communicate in your language, there is one thing that will get them asking in whatever language necessary: candy. Yes, it’s bribery, but in my house, gummibears have to be asked for in German! And in a friend’s house, where the children are in their teens and rarely still speak French, the afternoon snack is a special treat – French Madeleines or pastry and café au lait. While this is served, there are only French expressions of delight heard!

Raising Bilingual Children - Intro & Research

If you and your partner speak two different mother tongues or you live in a country that speaks another language than your family at home, you could give your children a great gift for life: two fluently spoken languages - BILINGUALISM!

There is plenty of research that suggests, children who learn a second language are more creative and better at solving complex problems. They develop meta-linguistic awareness (natural awareness of how language works), cognitive flexibility (since choosing between languages can develop a flexibility of thinking that can be applied to other problem solving areas) and social sensitivity early on. (Nursery World 07 May 2009) Studies at Goldsmith University in London showed that bilinguals outperform similar monolingual peers on both verbal and nonverbal tests of intelligence and tend to achieve higher scores on standardized tests (in secondary school), if their first language is supported alongside English.

In addition, individuals who speak more than one language have the ability to communicate with more people, read more literature, and benefit more fully from travel abroad and knowing a second language also gives people a competitive advantage in the workforce.

So academic talk aside, how do you raise bilingual children in today’s world?

There are basically two ways of raising bilingual children that almost always work: the one-parent-one-language approach and the home-vs-outside language evironment. Other options - like language 1 in the morning, language 2 in the afternoon or different languages on different days of the week (yes, I’ve met a family with this approach!) – tend to confuse the children more than encourage learning.

In our house, we have used the one-parent-one-language solution ever since the children were babies. I speak only German to the kids, my husband speaks only English. It just so happens that we have also lived in English speaking countries for their childhood so far, which nicely balanced out the fact that my husband is home less – so more German at home and English in the evenings with dad and during the day with others. If mom and environment speak the same language, dad will have a harder time to teach his language, if he is not home during the day.

For the rest of the blog, I will report from this perspective – teaching German in an English speaking environment - in order to avoid the constant “mother tongue or non-environmental language” vs. “local language or main environmental language”…

Raising children bilingually, requires a lot of discipline from the parent that does speak the local tongue – it is sometimes VERY tempting for me to slip into English, even if it is just the occasional word. Here are the main pitfalls I have discovered –

a) Using single English words in a German sentence, because I can’t think of the German quick enough or the English is less complicated (there are some REALLY long words in German, where the English has just a syllable or two)

b) Speaking to a friend / neighbor / colleague in English and inadvertently saying something to the child without switching

c) Being in a playgroup and separating a fight, having to speak English so that the other child (and mother!) understands that my child is being punished and has to apologize. Same goes for having house guests that do not speak German and to be polite speak English – and of course announce plans for the day or meal times in English so that everybody understands.

d) Having a spouse that does not speak your language and insists on his language to be spoken only when home. (Luckily that’s not the case in our household, but I know plenty where it is)

Some solutions that I have found to the above mentioned issues:

You need to really try to never let the other language creep in. Your mother tongue will deteriorate by itself ANYWAY - slowly over time, if you are not practicing with anybody else but your children. If you let foreign words take a hold, the mixing will accelerate and you (and your children) will end up speaking a mish-mash that’s incomprehensible to most people but you. So discipline is key and self-checks are recommended.

I have always made a point to tell friends, playgroups and relatives that I speak only German to my children, that it is not meant to offend, but that it is necessary for their language development. It would never say anything about them behind their back and if it concerns another child, I will say it in English, too. All of my friends have been very understanding of this issue, even though I imagine it must be hard at times, listening to me explaining something complicated in German to my son while they don’t understand a thing and wait patiently! When we have guests, I make sure that all important information is told in both languages, FIRST German, then English. (Even better, I tell the kids in German and they can go tell Grandma & Granddad in English.)

Coming up in the next blogs: Bilingual Baby Years & School Age, Tips and Trick to smuggle the second language into everyday life, how to deal with a doubtful / resistant partner & family!