Our minority language use needs a reboot

Hi Juliana,

I think Amy's suggestions are great and a wonderful starting point for 'rebooting' your use of the ml. My daughter and I live in the US, where she was born, and her minority languages are Spanish (I'm a native speaker), German (I'm an advanced beginner of the language only on my best days ), and French (I can't speak it, unfortunately). So far, Spanish is definitely her strongest language, and to my surprise, she's actually using more German than I thought she would. Anyway, one day we were doing a lesson on a story where the main character wanted to cook pancakes, but got distracted, the whole kitchen burned, and the firefighters had to get involved. In addition to learning about the dangers of fire , the topic gave me an idea: I'd prepare pancakes with my daughter, and we'd only use German. I had to prepare the whole thing beforehand to make sure I knew all the vocab I would probably use, and when I felt ready, we proceeded with the activity and prepared those pancakes. SHE LOVED IT, and we both used German the whole time. She was really into it, and I think that contributed to her use of German. Also, I made it clear that she would only be able to eat the pancakes (and the syrup, she loved the syrup part) if we talked the whole time in German...and it worked!

Not sure if your kids like pancakes or not, but if you can think of something that would catch their attention to the point of having to use the language in order to enjoy it, I'd say go for it. It may be painting something and hanging it on the wall/decorating their favorite mug with it only if the whole painting process takes place in the ml, for example. Or maybe, if there's a board game that the like, you might try to get it in Spanish so that they play with it using the ml (I think Amazon sells the Monopoly Junior version in Spanish, although I'm not 100% sure about that), and whoever wins can eat something that they like. Probably you have those games in English, but I think it helps when the kids see the actual materials written in the ml (it also helps with reading and visual letter recognition. .

Hope it helps!

Marisa

It's good to hear from you, though I'm very sad to hear of your bilingual struggles.

To supplement my previous suggestions:
- Here is a post I published yesterday that you might want to consider. Some other bilingual mums tried my little Flags trick (mentioned in my suggestions) and they got pretty good results (haven't checked on them since early April): Activate your child's bilingual ability using the Flags Technique 
- Organise a weekly board games night (or any time of day really) with your two eldest kids, with the condition that only Spanish can be used. It's a lovely time spent together, with lots of fun moments, that should ease the use of Spanish.
- Revert fortnightly to this thread to keep yourself accountable (to yourself that is! ). It might help motivate you and we'll be here to cheer you on and provide suggestions.  

To be honest I'm not too worried about my daughters' ML, as they will never be able to escape it living in the ML country! Add to that, hearing us speaking the ML on the phone during our working hours, ML homeschooling the eldest, our daily calls to my family who only speak ML. Things will balance themselves out on their own when they return to school in September. Plus we probably won't be travelling to Spain this summer, so that means even less Spanish exposure for the girls.  

Hope to see you around soon to let us know how things are going!

Hi Juliana,

I can perfectly understand what you're going through! It's definitely a difficult time for everyone, for sure. Trying to keep going while balancing work, homeschooling, house chores, and life in general is complicated, so when I get upset or anxious/frustrated, I do my very best to breathe and say "just keep going, you'll get 'there' somehow...,' so here I am!

Let me begin by saying that I do consider myself lucky with my personal situation in these difficult times. I have the option to work remotely from home, I can keep my job (and salary!), and my daughter and I are healthy. Those pillars are crucial, and I have a check mark on all of them, thank God. However, I feel I'm being challenged/stressed out on a daily basis. It's just my daughter and I living in the US, and my whole family lives in Spain, so right now no one can travel and visit to give me a hand because of international traveling restrictions. That means I'm here at home, with my daughter with me at all times (her daycare is closed), and trying to teach my classes while I tell my daughter to stay downstairs watching some cartoons, and of course...she doesn't do that, she goes upstairs and interrupts her mom while teaching. It was truly frustrating at the beginning, but I can't do much about it, so I do the best I can handling that situation (fortunately for me, she just wants me to hold her and talk to me, she hasn't had a tantrum or anything like that...I'm keeping my fingers crossed!), and I've still been able to do my job successfully (or so I hear from my students!).

In addition to that, I have to do house chores, find a way to get my groceries without exposing ourselves to Covid-19, and...generally speaking, I have to find a way to keep my mental sanity, and my daughter's happiness, intact. Easy-peasy, right?

In terms of language goals, the idea of homeschooling my daughter (she's only 4, but I want her to have the daycare structure and do more than just watching cartoons) was daunting (still is), and of course I'm not doing what I had in mind, but the truth is, I think I set up goals that were difficult to achieve. Reality has kicked in, and sure, I haven't been able to teach her all those wonderful things that I was planning to do using our mls...but we're not doing too bad either. Similarly to what Elise mentioned in her post, I'm doing the best I can trying to stick to my basic goals: keeping my daughter well fed , happy, and using our mls as much as we possibly can.

We continue reading daily in both languages, and sure, she's been watching more TV than I'd have liked (I always joke and say that YouTube is my co-parent , but...it's been TV in the mls. She's definitely using Spanish and German more, and to my surprise, she's actually memorizing most of the 'read aloud' clips that I show her on YouTube, and then she offers her comments about them!, so once again, not what I had planned, but I'll take that as a successful result. 

My main concern was, as a matter of fact, her use of the ML, because our house is a ml haven, and we don't use English. Being with me at all times, and not attending daycare or her taekwondo class, her exposure to English is virtually non-existent. I've made arrangements with two people, and we meet via Zoom twice a week so that they can read to her in the ML and interact with her in that language (she just does 'her thing,' but I hope the listening helps). Occasionally, I'll let her watch some cartoons in English (when this happens, and it doesn't always happen, it's never more than 30-40 minutes a day), and oh well, the moment she can be in daycare again, that's the end of any sort of ML presence in the house. To my surprise, she now begins to understand that there are different languages that she can use, and the ML is 'what she uses at school with her school friends,' whereas Spanish and German is what she uses with mom...and for the time being, she's sticking to it pretty well. Seems that all 'conditioning' is finally paying off, ha, ha!

As you can see, right now she might hear some ML in the house (never from me) to maintain what she's accomplished, but my goal is the knowledge/use of the mls. We're definitely doing the 'time and place' thing, although we don't always stick to the same time/place. Breakfast is normally for German reading/talking, but if she happens to read a Spanish book and wants to talk about it, then we do it in Spanish, and we find another time/place for German (normally while she's playing or coloring). I'm also using some educational games to facilitate the use of the mls (and, at the same time, practice other skills like math, art, or music) and sure, I'm not doing most of the things I had planned, or doing them with the frequency that I'd like (I just said 'educational games' and 'math,' and you might think we do this daily, when the truth is we don't because I'm either exhausted, or she's more interested in doing something else, but when we do something, I do my best to practice several skills)...but with some small, basic efforts, she seems to be improving her use and knowledge of her mls, even though I might have some difficulties acknowledging that because it's not what I had originally envisioned.

When summer school ends, I'm planning to be more proactive (hopefully!) and have more time to work on effective ways for her to learn/use the mls. I'd like to finish this post echoing Elise's words about bilingualism goals. I think we have this grandiose idea that we're going to teach them, and they're going to learn so much kind of like by osmosis or something , and when things don't happen exactly as originally planned, we get frustrated, and that undermines what we in fact accomplish. In the wise words of Gerald the Elephant (my daughter's favorite Mo Willems' character) in the "Should I share my ice cream?" book, "*that* was not my plan. Oh well...this works too!" As long as you don't give up and keep trying, as long as you make the effort to use the ml, even if it's something small, you're in fact accomplishing something. Seems to me that you're doing that, so that's the way to go! I think you've got very good advice from our fellow Bilingual Zoo keepers, so I hope it works for you and your bilingual efforts!

Marisa

I appreciate this thread's a few months old but just wanted to ask a question about the ml@h method.

Very keen to try this, as I have a 4 and 2 year old who understand quite a bit but won't speak the ml much because I have always let them off. I thought Amy's flags blog post sounded like a great idea and really want to give it a go. The question I have is people's experience where there is a non-ml speaking partner? My husband will have a go, reads to them in the ml and tries to imitate what I say, but is mostly monolingual (unless you count being able to order a beer in about 5 languages, which probably isn't so relevant at the moment!).

Is it just a case of keeping it small and doing a Time and Place requirement initially for say one room (e.g. bathroom) and basically pre-approving the vocab with them at the start? Or asking them to respond in the ml but the partner can use ML (feels a bit like that might work for a couple of months but not long term).

Lockdown gave me the opportunity to speak the ml more consistently to both kids which seemed to really help (lack of confidence meant I have not been as consistent as I should have been previously). I'd like to build on it but at the same time I am conscious of maintaining the family relationship and I don't want my husband to feel pushed out. Totally open to the dynamic changing, but just want to be sensitive to the whole family, it would be great to hear other people's experiences of managing that dynamic, where one parent doesn't really speak (much of/any) the ml.

Angela