Raising Bilingual Children: Is It Too Late To Start Now?

‘I spoke nothing but french to my one year old for seven weeks now, and all of the new words he has now is in french. It seems that he also understand me completely!’. Two months into her campaign in raising her children to speak both french and english, Sheila had noticed a dramatic difference in the progress of her two children. Her oldest one, 3 and half years old. Is resistance. She found it a lot trickier to get through her. Even though she only talked in french, her daughter always replies back in English. It did seem like she understands about 70% of what Sheila was talking about, but frankly Sheila was worried that for her 3 year old, she’s too late to become a fluent bilingual.

Another example would be two different families. Agnese started with the child very fluent in her mother’s Italian tongue language, but as soon as the child enters school, she starts to forget, and is now scared to use the second language in fear of using it wrong. The second scenario, was Sienna tried to use both language from birth, the child was so confuse that she was not able to speak for a very long time. As soon as her parents started using English, she blossomed. Afterward, then only the family started inserting the second language, and she was able to have two languages. Both scenarios, children are not fluent in their second language and prefers English, they are able to understand and speak in the second language enough to communicate, but are too afraid to use the minority language especially when they are around people who speak it fluently.

Nowadays, in a culture where we feel that if our offspring do not attend to a ballet lesson or violin when they’re two or three, they’ll be too late, we do sometimes feel scared of missing the boat. However, although there is no doubt that their optimal moment to start learning languages is at birth, it is also possible to achieve fluency later in life. In fact most bilingual people started with one language first. Later in life, the more language interaction that you provide them, the more dramatic the progress will be, and the more easier for the child to learn.

Even older children are still kids, they are generally chatty, and unhampered by self-consciousness. Transitioning into multilingualism requires motivation, and is a very big challenge for the family. English is usually the easier language, mostly because most of the TV programs, shows, games are in English, therefore they are used and is exposed to English no matter what their first language is. The biggest challenge is to teach your children a different language rather than English, especially if you live in an English speaking countries such as Australia.

Below are several tried-and-true tips for parents who are up for the challenge!

You know that ‘why’ question whenever you tell them to do anything from bedtime to tidying up their own bedroom? Expect to get the same reaction when you try to introduce this new language program. ‘Why do I have to say it in Vietnamese if I already know how to say it in English?’ This is a fair question, and you’ll need to answer with the necessity, in flattery or come up with a fun answer.

Some possible answers are:

‘Because all your cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents are speaking Vietnamese’, ‘Because you did it so well yesterday!’, ‘So you can teach your baby sister when she’s a big girl like you!’, ‘So we can have our own secret language!’, ‘So you can understand this book/game/show’, and the list goes on.
The next step after the explanation and when your child had agreed to learn the second language, speak only in the minority language yourself. Translate it, whenever you get that confused and glazed look. Be reasonable, accept replies in the primary language when you first start out.

• When you feel that your child knows a particular word, but is struggling to remember, help provide the first syllable to jog his memory.
• Don’t dampen their enthusiasm by making the second language an inflexible rule or something that becomes a nightmare for them.
• Say ‘Yes’ whenever your child answers in the community language, but then repeat the sentence in the minority language.
• Try to find the balance between the rules you set up and the reality. For example, when you’re child is just asking for a snack or a glass of milk, remind them to ask it in the minority language, but if you’re child is too excited to tell you what happened at today’s excursion to the zoo, just listen, and repeat and ask them back in the minority language. That way, you still provide them with more vocabulary knowledge, but in a positive fun way.
• Last but not least, as always, praise them. Endlessly. Even when you’re the one who is providing them with translations, or if they just made tons of grammatical errors in the shortest sentence. The fact is that children under three, would not understand it even if you try to correct them. The best way would just be to repeat the words correctly (this process is called modelling). Alternatively, you can also make a joke and say ‘Oopsy! That came out wrong’, laugh and then provide them with the correct way of saying it. Try to make it playful rather than corrective.

A lot of parents have asked, ‘Now that the child have the vocabulary to understand the second language, how do we stay firm?’. Sticking to the language strategy is essential, if you don’t, you’re back to square one, which is the primary community language that you started with.

Let’s look at it this way. Think of all the things that no matter how much you’re child whines, begs and throw tantrums at but you will never ever let them do? Things like not brushing their teeth, crossing the road by themselves, and not using a seat belt? By you not negotiating about the use of the minority language, just as you don’t negotiate about the things above, your children will get the picture eventually. Give it at least 6 months, you’ll see that your persistence will be richly rewarded.

Sheila, says that she now see that all her trouble has is well worth it, and has stopped worrying when things are too late. Agnese, and Sienna had also started to enforce using the minority language back into their household, and are seeing better result. Instead of looking on how she should’ve done things, she now look at the great achievements her little family had done so far!

- See more at: http://www.mumzone.com.au/raising-bilingual-children-is-it-too-late-to-start-now