I don’t know if I’m really qualified to teach people how to raise bilingual kids. I think I constantly fall into a slight panic of “oh gosh my kid is speaking so much English, I failed as a mother!!” mode. But, alas, I guess I can share our experience and let others know how tolerant kids are, and how even if you feel like you’re failing all the time, they still surprise you.
Our setup
I’m a native Mandarin speaker (grew up in Taiwan, stayed there throughout collage, came to the US for grad school), and my husband is a native-ish English speaker (grew up in New York, with both parents non-native speakers, but they spoke English at home, so he learned accented English at home). His parents are Hungarian and Colombian, so there are our 3rd and 4th languages to add to the mix.
When my son was born, we decided on a few things:
- Mandarin Chinese is important for me, so we have to speak at least 50% Mandarin at home
- Husband will not learn Mandarin (he already speaks 3-4 languages and considers himself not very good at learning languages…), but is willing to pick up the language as our child grows
- We think 2 languages is enough. Our 3rd pick would be Spanish, and since Nona (grandma) is around, we will let her try to speak Spanish to the kid.
- I speak Mandarin to the kid and only Mandarin. Husband speaks only English. We speak English to each other. We have a dog - dog is off-limit and we can speak whatever language to the dog.
Skills to have
Language skills
We’re both very comfortable with each of our languages. I later learned that it’s a privilage! Some people want to have a bilingual kid but aren’t fluent in the languages they want to teach.
I do notice being able to articulate, speaking slowly, and adopt a more child-friendly vocabulary is helpful in keeping the child engaged.
Switching languages
While I definitely consider myself to be very qualified to speak Mandarin to my child, initially I struggled for a bit on switching languages constantly. Since I talk to husband in English, sometimes it’s hard to speak to two people in two different languages at the same time. I confused myself a lot in the earlier days and end up speaking Mandarin to my husband and then English to my child. Luckily, my parents were here at our home for the first 1.5 months, and that set up a really nice environment for me to getting used to “this is a Mandarin-speaking child” mentality. After that, it became very natural for me to always be speaking to my son in Mandarin.
This is definitely a skill that needs to be practiced - I observe my relatives and close family, who are perfectly capable of speaking both lanauges, switching to speaking to my child in English and couldn’t make the switch back, since he responded in English.
I also need to emphasize that I find this skill to be necessary for me to have, since my son speaks more English and a lot of times will talk to me in English, it was important for me to always respond in Mandarin, regardless of the language I hear.
Books
We have some limited collection of Mandarin books, and a lot of English books (they are much easier to come by here). But we have a subscription of 巧虎 (equivalent to Daniel Tiger, probably) and he LOVES them. He looks forward to the delivery every month and loves repeating the magazines again and again. In general, he understands that Mama reads books a lot more than Dada does, and she will read English books but translate them into Chinese in real time, just so she can avoid speaking English. He’s generally happy with the arrangement and enjoys reading a lot.
He was able to recognize the alphabets very early on. He showed a lot of interest in recognizing patterns. He also was eager to pick up some Chinese characters, which surprised me. I wasn’t too eager to teach him to read yet.
Songs
My son loves to sing and to listen to songs. I have a full set of Mandarin children’s songs for him in a reading-pen thing. He loves Cocomelon, so most of his songs are in English. But he knows Mama won’t sing English songs with him (unless we’re all singing the same song together then Mama would give in), so he’s happy to sing a few of his favorite Mandarin songs with Mama.
Numbers
Chinese numbers are a lot easier to say and to learn (rules are simpler and all numbers are single syllable), so he was able to count in Chinese early on, probably before he was 2. He was also able to count to ~50 in Chinese a lot earlier than English.
He’s forming a natural dictionary!
My son seems to be picking up the idea that Dada and Mama speak different languages from a very young age. I remember he pretty much had the vocabulary of 50 words in both languages at age 1.5 or 2 (?). He also did a very cute thing where if my husband says a word in Mandarin, my son would correct him and get upset that Dada didn’t stick to his own language.
What’s fascinating is that we never taught him “this is fish in English, this is 魚 in Chinese”. We just each speak in our own languages as we go. And naturally, the child forms a dictionary in his head to map these words together. It’s the most fascinating thing to observe, and when that happens (it still happens every day) it makes you feel like everything is well worth the effort.
These days though, my son has upgraded to “laughing at Dada when he speaks Mandarin the wrong way” and he has great fun doing it. It’s slightly mean, but we found it very cute and didn’t correct him. He’s also able to read an entire 巧虎 book to Dada in Mandarin “just to teach him”, which is very cute. He does seem to understand that Mama’s English is good, so there’s nothing to laugh about there.
Speaking
There’s a ton of mixing the two languages when he speaks. I think it’s natural (and hilarious). I know some parents force the kids to speak their language by pretending they don’t understand them if they’re in the wrong language, but I couldn’t do that. So I usually just repeat whatever he was saying but in Mandarin. Sometimes I ask him to repeat after me, and sometimes I don’t.
Results
My son is only 3.5 and we don’t know how long his bilingualness can last. But it really has been a very rewarding and very fascinating experience. It’s not just about the results, but also as he learns, we observe the resiliance and the processing that goes in his head, and it amazes us how the human brain learns and adapts. Sometimes I realized it’s not just about the results, of how well he can speak or understand, but it’s about the journey and how it trains the child to adapt to different situations, while having two languages talking to him at the exact same time.
For example, the other day Dada was sick in bed, and wanted an apple, so he told our son, and my son came to tell me that Dada wants an apple.
Son: Dada says he wants 蘋果. (Dada says he wants an apple)
Me: 好。你去問他要不要削皮. (ok, go ask him if he wants it peeled or not)
Son: (runs into the bedroom) Do you want skin?
Dad: no. But wash it.
Son: (runs out) Dada要皮 but wash it (Dada wants the skin but it needs to be washed)
Me: (washed an apple, gave it to son, he went into the room)
Son: (returned to the kitchen, gave me his own apple that he almost finished) I want 削皮 (I want mine peeled)
Me: (laugh)
I honestly found this exchange pretty difficult! I was quite proud of him for handling this telephone game perfectly. No information was lost, and he was even able to get his own apple peeled.
Discipline
I actually feel that I’m not that disciplined. I don’t really force my son to speak Mandarin and I also find it annoying to schedule time to teach him. The only thing I keep on doing is to consistently speak to him in Mandarin and avoid speaking any English to him. He gets the idea.
There were many times that he came back from daycare and was speaking all English and I have little panic that I have failed in my bilingual training. But I let that go and try to tell myself it’s fine - even if he doesn’t speak or understand Mandarin in 10 years, it’s still fine. But to my surprise, I find it the most effective that when I do fun things with my son, he loves the experience, and the language sticks. So I realized as long as I try to have fun with my child and I keep speaking my language to him, he’ll get it.
Kids are very tolerating that way, and I find it extremely rewarding.