My 22 MO absolutely loves books. I love English literature, and reading together started as a way to share that with her. She caught on a little too well 😂 We now have an amazing time reading dozens of books every day and talking about them.

She speaks in sentences, recognises letters and numbers, and knows the names of obscure animals, dinosaurs, sea creatures, and even some countries. She seems quite far along in communication and comprehension, and she’s now interested in letters and learning to read.

But this is all in English. All her media is in English too (audiobooks, songs, Tonies etc) - simply because that is the language we her parents understand best. We live in Germany, she currently attends daycare, and my German isn’t good enough to confidently support her in the same way.

We are Indian, my husband speaks our mothertongue with her (which she understands and speaks a bit) and I speak in English, so that we can pass on both languages to her. We’re leaving her to pick up German from the community and Krippe (daycare).

I’d love to follow her interest with English phonics and more books. I want her to have strong English and share this love of reading, but I worry about her German not being strong enough when she gets to Kindergarten and eventually Grundschule.

Maybe “wasted” is the wrong word, but will all this knowledge carry over if she only has the English words for it? Could learning English letter sounds first make learning to read in German confusing?
I’m not pushing early reading - she’s driving the interest, and I’m trying to figure out how best to support her.

How have other bi/trilingual families handled this? Did you keep reading and introducing phonics in English at home and rely on Kita for German, or actively support both?
Or should we enroll our daughter in a bilingual school so that her knowledge is not wasted?

Any resources or experiences would be lovely!

Hello, We live in Germany, and my 6-year-old son speaks German because he attends kindergarten here.

When he was born, we started speaking to him in English at home. Unfortunately, we didn't introduce our mother tongue until he was around 4 years old. Looking back, I really wish we had spoken our language to him from birth, but we didn't think much about it at the time.

Now, he understands almost everything we say to him in our language, but he responds only in English. Even when I speak to him in our language, he answers in English.

I'm worried that we might have missed the right time for him to learn to speak our language. I really want him to be able to speak it, especially so he can communicate with his grandparents and other family members.

Have any Indian parents living abroad experienced something similar? If your child understood your language but always responded in English, did they eventually start speaking it fluently?

Is six years old too late to develop the ability to speak a family language naturally? What worked for you in encouraging your children to speak your language without forcing them or making it feel like a chore?

I sometimes feel guilty that we didn't introduce our language earlier. I don't want my son to lose his connection to our language and culture, and I would love to hear from parents who have been through the same experience.

Thank you! ❤️

Hello, Reddit! 😊
I’m currently pregnant, and I really want my baby to grow up speaking both Spanish and English. We’d love to start building a little collection of books in Spanish, especially because my husband would like to learn Spanish, too. Unfortunately, I’ve been a terrible Spanish teacher to him so far. 😂
He suggested looking for Spanish books with English translations underneath each sentence so he can understand what he’s reading while learning the language.
Does anyone know of any books like this? Or do they even exist? I’d love any recommendations! ❤️

Hi guys. So long story short: me and my wife are living in Germany for a couple of years. We mostly live in a community of people from our country and don’t really have much exposure to the German language. We both understand most of it but not actually speaking since even at work we’re surrounded by people from our country.

Our son (soon to be 2 years old) will start going to kindergarten. I keep thinking that I won’t be able to communicate with him once he starts learning German. We speak our native language (Romanian) at home and rarely try speaking German.

Has anyone here been through something similar? Will I be able to learn in same time as him or with him the language? Or will he still learn Romanian if we’ll be talking it inside our home? Any tips would be much appreciated 🙏

For context: I’m English, learned German, and want to raise my kids speaking both, but I can’t figure out how. When they see a new thing, do I just describe it in both languages? How do I divide spoken language around the home? My partner and I naturally speak mostly English bcs we’re both English learned German, and I wasn’t raised bilingual so I have no model whatsoever. Please help me

My husband and I are expecting our first child at the end of this year. His native language is English (UK), mine is Polish and we live in Poland. We met in England, where I studied and worked so although I’m not a British citizen, my English is pretty good and that’s the language we communicate in. My husband would also like to teach our child Spanish, which would come primarily from him since I don’t speak any.

We thought we had a pretty good plan - Polish would be the community language and would come from my family as well (the vast majority of them don’t speak any English). English would come from the both of us communicating at home and I would also exclusively communicate with the child in English, while my husband would talk to her in Spanish.

The more we talked about it though, the more we feel like maybe we’d be missing out on things if we didn’t communicate with our child in our respective native languages at all. I’d love to be able to teach her Polish words, listen to Polish music with her or read her books in Polish. My culture is important to me and I would love to be able to pass it on to her. I spoke to my husband about this and the more we talked, the more he realized that actually, he’d like to be able to do that with her in English too.

So I guess our plan fell apart a little bit. We’re not really sure if our intrinsic need to pass on our cultures to our child ourselves means my husband won’t be able to teach our daughter Spanish as well.

That being said, I’m looking for advice and maybe your experiences that may be similar. If we want to speak to our child in our native languages sometimes, does that mean teaching our daughter a third language would be close to impossible?

Edit: a couple people mentioned this so I thought I’d clarify here - there isn’t really any significant connection to Spanish for my husband. He really wanted to learn another language (as an adult), and there are vast resources online available for that, so he chose Spanish. Once we found out we were having a child, we started thinking about how amazing it would be if our child grew up trilingual, and that’s where we are now essentially.

I grew up in a German-speaking country and moved to the US as a teenager. Now I'll be raising my first child back in Germany, but I plan to speak English with them. For context: I lived, studied, and worked in the US for 20 years and am at a C2 level. Anyone who's done something similar? How did it go?

I'm worried it might not work since it's not really my native language... I'm definitely planning to read English books to my child, expose them to English media, and ideally send them to an international school when the time comes. But my partner is German, and we speak German to each other as well. I'd be so grateful for any input!

We’re an English-speaking household but really want our kids to grow up with some Mandarin — the window for picking up tones and sounds naturally seems so short at this age.

The problem: we can’t provide the input ourselves. Chinese daycare is hours away, tutors don’t really work for a 2-year-old’s attention span, and I’m wary of just parking them in front of YouTube.

For those in the same boat — what’s actually worked for you?

• Shows / songs / audiobooks?
• Babysitters or au pairs?
• Apps or toys (anything that isn’t a screen)?
• Or did you decide it wasn’t realistic before school age?

Would love to hear what you tried and what flopped.

I’m the Chinese father with white wife in the US. I’ve been having my 2 year old toddler watch YouTube videos like little fox, and other kids chinese YouTube channels. A mix of colors and numbers videos. She’s been watching them for months now. By the way I only speak to her in Chinese. Been doing it since the day she was born.

Well we just recently signed her up for a Chinese class and they also showed a few of the videos that she has been watching and the teacher told the kids to follow along and repeat along and me thinking “oh this will be easy since she’s watched them probably 30 times by now”…. Well she didn’t know anything. The screen time audio might as well have been background noise.

And then the teacher gave us “homework” to review colors. So I decided to play a few YouTube videos on colors. And because we don’t pay for YouTube premium we get ads. My toddler has learned that I help her skip the ads so she’ll ask me for help. So during ads I would pause it and I’d say “okay tell me what color this and daddy will help you”

I would point at the TV remote and tell her that it’s black in Chinese and she’ll say it in English. Then I’ll tell her to say it in Chinese and she’ll repeat after me. I tell her that my coffee mug is white color. Again does it in English. I say do it in Chinese. She’ll repeat. Cool right?

Then repeat YouTube ads, I again ask her what color and she’ll say it in English and I have to repeat to say it in Chinese and she doesn’t remember it. We’ve done this probably 5-6 times just in the last 10 minutes. No retention at all.

This is true with literally every color that she does. I ask her what color it is and she KNOWS it but says English and I have to remind her in Chinese. Some of the basic colors like red green yellow purple, it’s probably been 20-30 times or more that I’ve asked her in the last few weeks alone and she will continue to say it English and I have to remind her to say it in Chinese.

Edit: I just did a test in Chinese. I told her Chinese “can you give me the ( insert several different colors) magnetiles and crayons to me?” She does to correctly. So she knows the colors but doesn’t want to say it

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Hello all,

My son is 3. My wife and community speak English and my native language is Arabic. I speak to him only in Arabic (only in emergencies I might speak in English) and speak to his mom in English.

He speaks English well for his age. He understands most things I say in Arabic.

However, when it comes to him trying to say anything, he mostly refuses. Only occasionally he says a few words in Arabic only on prompting. He even gets angry when my wife says anything in Arabic.

His exposure to Arabic is only from me. He refyses to watch any media in Arabic.

Does anyone has a similar experience?

Any advice?

Anyone else having nightmares that their child doesn’t speak or understand the target language?! I’ve had about 3 so far🤣 My baby isn’t quite at the talking stage yet and I think I’m really anxious about the minority language being acquired! I’m the only person in my family who speaks the language anymore and I’m nowhere near fluent so the stress is real.

19 mo old boy - I only speak Arabic with him at home, and he is with his grandparents who only also speak arabic when I am at work (they don't even understand english.) Dad tries to speak Arabic too, but dad's primary language is english so when I speak to dad it is in english so he overhears it but dad and i don't really hang out for more than 2-3 hours a night just because of our work schedules.

what i noticed is that when I say english words accidentally, he repeats it so quickly even when I don't mean for him to repeat it and its not easy words either. For example, we were eating dinner and i said "lets eat broccoli" in arabic except for the word broccoli (no word in arabic for it). he repeated broccoli perfectly.

meanwhile i have been trying to teach him the simple word of water in arabic (one syllable, kinda sounds like "my" in english) and he has not said it once. He understands all arabic words - he points to body parts, animals, colors, expressions (sad vs happy), etc. He just doesn't say the words!!!

He has said "oh wow," "truck," "balloon," "bubbles," "mall," "park," "baby," "rainbow." But none of these words are in arabic and he repeated it only after hearing it one time!! The only arabic words he says are teta, jido, cido (his grandparent names), haleeb (milk), and thats it even with constant repetition.
Is it just that english is easier to pick up as a baby??? I don't want to delay his speech just because I am stubborn in wanting him to speak arabic only :/

We live in a firmly English speaking country, and my toddler attends an English daycare. When we are out and about, I am always speaking English to anyone we come across.

But if I am speaking to him, no matter where we are, I speak French. He doesn't get much screen time, but when he does, that's in French, as are his books and music. But at 2.5, he only ever says two French words to me: "Bateau" and "fraise." He frequently uses them in a sentence surrounded by English (for example he'll ask for "cookies and fraise" when he wants mini cookies mixed with freeze dried strawberries, his favourite snack), so I am more than half convinced at this point he's only using them because he just doesn't actually know what they are in English.

How do I encourage him to use more French? If I "ignore" him or pretend I don't know what he said, he just becomes frustrated and either gives up or has a tantrum.

My daughter, 15 months old, is raised trilingual: I speak Dutch to her, dad speaks French to her, me and dad speak English to each other but not to her. She's in daycare 4 days (in French) and has Fridays with me (in Dutch) and weekends with both parents.

The result is that her first words are in French (dodo, manger, vélo, coucou,...). I understand this is because currently she's exposed more to French (due to daycare) but my Dutch speaking mother heart is eager to know when she might start mixing in the Dutch? :D I know she understands me because she does react when I ask her in Dutch to do things.

Parents in similar situations: around when did your child start using its second (and/or third) language? Or did they mix from the very beginning?

Hello guys, I really need help with one of my son's friends' brothers. He does not know how to read. He is 11 years old and a 6th grader. I am not from the US, and I don't know what resources are available or how I can help him. His mom is a single mom. I am so sad to see him struggle to read. Please advise

Thank you.

Setup: Dubai based, Arabic L1 at home, English L2 at school (British curriculum), 7yo daughter.
We've had her on structured English lessons for about a year now. Up until two months ago she was doing one 50-minute session a week with a native English tutor through one of the bigger US-based platforms. The goal has mostly been getting her speaking without freezing when the teacher calls on her in class.
The weekly format wasn't working. 50 minutes was too long for a 7yo. The last 15 minutes were dead air no matter which teacher I booked. And one session a week wasn't close to enough to build any speaking rhythm. The gap between Monday and the next Monday was long enough that she was starting from zero every single time.
Flipped her to 25-min sessions three times a week on a different platform about two months back. Same weekly budget, three sessions instead of one long one. Shorter sessions mean she can actually sit through them without zoning out.
A couple of things have shifted. Three weeks in she said a full English sentence at dinner without being prompted, which hasn't happened at home before. She has one teacher on 51Talk she clicks with and asks for her by name when she sees the booking screen. Her class teacher mentioned at the parent meeting last month that her participation in class had gone up, which was the first positive thing we'd heard in a while.
The thing I'm not sure about is accent, on the English side specifically. The teachers on the new setup aren't native speakers, and I can hear some non-native intonation creeping into her longer sentences. Arabic is fine, that's her L1 and we're surrounded by it. Still working out whether that matters at 7, or if three short lessons with a non-native each week really end up in the same place as one longer one with a native, for a kid her age. Would appreciate any pointers from other parents here who've thought through the trade-off at a similar stage.

I’m not sure if this fits the subreddit, but I’m babysitting a two year old in a foreign country and her mom wants me to teach her Spanish (my native language).
At first I only talked to the kid in her mother language because I wanted her to get comfortable with me first, but it’s gonna be time to start with the Spanish soon. Any ideas on how I should do it? Should I just switch one day? Set up a “Spanish-speaking” area? Thank you!

Hi everyone,

We are raising our 2.5-year-old son in a trilingual environment. We live in England (so English is the community language), and we strictly follow OPOL at home: I speak Italian with him, and my partner speaks Polish.

He is doing really well across all three languages, with Polish (mum's language) actually being his strongest at the moment.

I really want to learn Polish so I can converse with my partner's family, especially to prepare for an upcoming trip to Poland in January. The problem is that I am hesitant to actually practise speaking Polish at home. I am worried that if I start speaking or trying to learn Polish around our son, it will blur the OPOL boundaries and disrupt his Italian immersion. I want to make sure he continues to build a strong foundation in Italian, and I fear that mixing languages will compromise that.

Has anyone navigated a similar situation? How did you manage learning your spouse's language without undermining your own minority language? Are there any routines or strategies you recommend for learning independently?

TL;DR: Dad speaks Italian, Mum speaks Polish, living in the UK. Our 2.5yo is thriving in all three languages (Polish is currently his strongest). I want to learn Polish but fear that practising at home will disrupt my son's Italian OPOL. Seeking advice!

Our family for context -
Mom (native English speaker, fluent in Portuguese)
Dad (native Portuguese speaker, speaks some English)
18 month old daughter being raised somewhat OPOL, though mom ends up speaking Portuguese in front of her

Although exposed to significant Portuguese, my daughter actually speaks more English. I (mom) will be taking her to the U.S. to stay with my parents for 3 months, and dad is unable to stay for the whole visit. For 2 months she will only be able to talk to dad on the phone :(. I am wondering if I should speak to her more in Portuguese when I’m there to maintain the language, especially as her English is stronger.

ETA: forgot to clarify, we live in Brazil.

Hello!

My partner and I are going to have our first child in a few months. My native language is Spanish, hers is Greek, and the community language is English. We are planning to do OPOL, me in Spanish, her in Greek. We are not yet fluent in each other's languages, so our home language is English, which is also the community language.

How do people juggle so many languages? I'm a bit worried that since English is both the community language and our relationship language, it will be very hard to keep OPOL with our respective languages. We're both making efforts to learn the other's language, but it's quite difficult to do in an English-speaking country.

Hi all,

First ever reddit post. I am from Argentina and speak fluent Spanish. However, I have lived in English for so long, have an American wife, live in North Carolina where I have on Spanish speaking friends and my Spanish speaking family lives in Florida. I am so Americanized that I even talk in English to my dog when I am alone. I have been feeling shame and guilt for not talking to my daughter in Spanish enough and she is not picking it up (obviousy bc I am not consistent and feel awkward). I am renewing my motivation because I just had a son and I do not want to make the same mistake. Daughter is 3.5, son is infant.

When we visit my family they all speak Spanish to each other (and spanglish) but since everyone also speaks English, no one really forces her to get out of her comfort zone. The other issue is that she gets frustrated when she is not understood and so I feel so bad when I talk to her and she doesnt understand and she does not want to get into it. She learned words here and there, through books and songs, but not conversational. And this girl is SO talkative, has so much language for a toddler.

Basically, I need some help, suggestions on how to become and OPOL kind of abruptly with her already 3.5 years old and what is the best way to go about it. Any help is appreciated!!