📚education
Anonymous User
9 months ago
Raising baby bilingual
Any thoughts from other parents on best method for raising baby bilingual without confusing them in the early stages of language development? This is for one parent who speaks another language, so only reinforced by a single parent.
Anonymous
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9 months ago
We heard a lot of OPOL above. I’ll add that, as much as I tried that, it’s just so hard to consistently speak a language my partner doesn’t understand in front of him. My brain just doesn’t want to do it because of my own habits. So we try to emphasize outside people who are consistent (I.e., her grandparents), and now I want to try (in our case) Tagalog Tuesdays or something. We do do a lot of books and songs.
Btw, our pediatrician said in her experience it’s really common for multilingual babies to have some delays in starting to speak at first, and then rapidly catch up or (often) even outpace monolingual kids once they do start. She was so reassuring, and that has indeed been our experience with our kiddo. I think my own parents were often given that sense that multiple languages can confuse a child and worried about speaking our home language for that reason (among others), but babies can actually identify the differences between languages they hear in the really early months. It’s just a matter of sorting out how they will use them themselves, and they will eventually get it!
Here for solidarity. It can be tricky, and for me at times emotionally loaded! But it feels so special when I see her picking it up these family sounds.
Anonymous
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9 months ago
Both my wife and I speak Spanish - she much better than me - and we want our boys to speak Spanish. Like@MP Diaz-Frasenewe aren't doing the One Parent One Language. Instead we just do an unstructured mix of both English and Spanish. I do think his language skills were a bit slow to develop, but he's now approaching age 3 and he's very bilingual. The big things that have helped with language development: trying to speak as much of the second language as possible, having family like a grandparent spend lots of time speaking that language (he had lots of language breakthroughs when the grandparents were in town), having other care givers like a nanny who speaks Spanish, lots of children's books in multiple languages and finally sending our son to a Spanish school/day care starting at 2 years.IMO the easiest things to implement are structural than behavioral. For example, the burden isn't on us to speak Spanish all the time when he's in a Spanish school. So that takes the pressure off. And FWIW, the thing about kids getting confused just doesn't resonate with what I saw. These kid's brains are so maleable and they learn so much so quickly that bouncing between languages is just second nature. Speaking more than one language is a beautiful that you can give to your child! Good luck!
Anonymous
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8 months ago
My partner and I both speak two different Indian languages and we both speak to him in our own language and also in English. He is able to distinguish between both languages and sometimes lets us know a word in English, Gujurati and in Tamil. I think the more they are exposed to it through music, interactions with grandparents and friends that speak the same language it will help quite a bit.
Anonymous
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8 months ago
@Ambika DevaThat’s amazing that your child speaks three languages! And how could I have forgotten about music!? It’s such a good way to learn a language. My son is obsessed with the new Bad Bunny album and demands that we play it every evening and morning.